My Next Chapter

2014-07-02

After 2.5 years I’ve decided to move on from The Clymb. I’m incredibly proud of our accomplishments during my time there: the site has dramatically increased in stability and scalability, the GitHub development workflow really improved code quality and we increased the size of the development team from 3 to 15. On the technical side, we moved from manually-configured cloud-based servers to Chef-managed dedicated servers, switched email providers twice, moved warehouses and rewrote our inventory and fulfillment process, integrated our logistics and fulfillment processes with an ERP system, and much more. I’m really proud to have helped grow the business while they helped me grow in management skill.

What am I doing next?

As Sidekiq Pro sales have taken off, I’ve felt more and more like I need to take a chance and dedicate myself full-time to building and supporting my OSS products. Four months ago I started that process and today I take another big step. Immediately, I’m focused on supporting Sidekiq users and Sidekiq Pro customers. I’ve created a new Support page which details three new offerings:

• a free, weekly Happy Hour video chat for people to stop by and ask questions directly to me;
• a Tuneup audit package, to ensure apps are using Sidekiq as effectively as possible and minimizing their operational costs;
• and Custom Support, for anyone that wants my help with Sidekiq that doesn’t fall into the first two buckets.

But WAIT, there’s more!

To make this all extremely legal and official, I’m starting a company and developing a new product. The plan is to build an MVP for the next 3 months with a similar OSS/commercial hybrid business model as with Sidekiq and Sidekiq Pro. Here’s the shocker: it’s not written in Ruby. Stay tuned, I will announce specifics in good time.

Lastly I’m hoping to have more free time to network and socialize. Are you in Portland, want to meet and talk over lunch or coffee? I’d love to hear what you are doing, email me (mperham AT gmail com) and we’ll set up something.