It's been nearly two years since I founded Transmission Begins, with the goal of establishing a software company I (and others) could earn a living from. Last week I signed a contract for a full time position at ARM, so by that measure, I did not succeed.
I don't look on the last two years as a failure, however, and I've enjoyed the entire experience. The evidence of my job hunt for the last few months suggests that it has added useful skills to my CV. There were three of us working on software related to Transmission Begins towards the end, and I enjoyed running the business and writing more software than I have created in years. We successfully released one product - Catwalk, and brought another, Catwalk Radio, to beta release.
Sadly, there has been insufficient interest in that beta, so there seemed to be no prospect of the software growing to pay salaries in a short enough timeframe. A necessary, if apparently harsh, test!
If you're a customer of Catwalk you will not see much changing - Morgan has always done most of the support for you, and he continues to do that. The other projects may live on as personal hobbies, but I plan to put my parts of Catwalk Radio quietly on a shelf to gather dust for a while. Perhaps I can revisit them at some time in the future.
As bills come due, I will be turning off some services - the incoming landline (used in anger once), and the postal address (used mostly by Royal Mail to send bills for the PO Box). I don't plan to take down transmissionbegins.com, indeed I plan to migrate my other websites to this machine.
I would like to thank both Anne and Morgan for all they did, and thank you all for your time and enthusiasm. If you're interested in my further exploits, my personal blog remains a place I write occasionally. Morgan continues to support Catwalk at its familiar home.
© John McAleely, 2010