A social impact tech company building scalable tech for good. Dimagi’s digital solutions help deliver critical services to underserved communities.

Leading Social Impact Tech Company: Tech for Good | Dimagi

Enabling global NGOs with cutting-edge data collection software &amp; digital health solutions. Discover how Dimagi powers impactful frontline work.

Transforming Social Impact: Data Collection Software & Digital ...

Dimagi is an award-winning technology company, developing scalable ICT solutions for low-resource settings.

Dimagi - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding

Dimagi, Inc. is a for-profit social enterprise based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, that delivers open-source software technology suitable for low-resource settings and underserved communities. The company designs clinical interfaces, health information systems, and mobile technologies to ...

Dimagi - Wikipedia

Dimagi | 15,293 followers on LinkedIn. We build and scale sustainable, high-impact digital solutions that amplify frontline work. | Dimagi is a global social enterprise that powers impactful frontline work through scalable digital solutions and services. Since 2002, Dimagi has been guided by ...

Dimagi | LinkedIn

Founded in 2002, Dimagi Inc. is an award-winning, socially conscious technology company that brings deep expertise in creating scalable ICT solutions for low-resource settings. A leader in open source technology, Dimagi has performed technical strategy, systems design, software development, ...

Dimagi, Inc. | Devex

Dimagi has 5 employees across 4 locations. See insights on Dimagi including office locations, competitors, revenue, financials, executives, subsidiaries and more at Craft.

Dimagi Company Profile - Office Locations, Competitors, Revenue, ...

Based on the B Impact assessment, Dimagi, Inc. earned an overall score of 126.1. The median score for ordinary businesses who complete the assessment is currently 50.9. ... Governance evaluates a company&#x27;s overall mission, engagement around its social/environmental impact, ethics, and transparency.

Dimagi, Inc. - Certified B Corporation - B Lab Global

We also offer employees 10 &quot;personal initiative&quot; days per year, because we believe that all employees should be able to work on projects outside of their normal job duties--to improve their career development, increase their job satisfaction, and improve Dimagi as a company.Read More

Dimagi is a 2021 Inc. 5000 honoree

Find contact information for Dimagi. Learn about their Software market share, competitors, and Dimagi&#x27;s email format.

Dimagi Company Profile | Management and Employees List

The primary business models of Dimagi are: HealthTech &gt; ********* ** **** ** &gt; ******Healthcare &gt; ********* ** **** ** &gt; ****** Let us walk you through our Companies database and other offerings. Designed with precision for VCs, PE, IBs, Incubators, M&amp;A, Innovation and more

Dimagi | Tracxn

Find company research, competitor information, contact details &amp; financial data for Dimagi, Inc. of Cambridge, MA. Get the latest business insights from Dun &amp; Bradstreet.

Dimagi, Inc. Company Profile | Cambridge, MA | Competitors, ...

Dimagi is a social enterprise that powers impactful frontline work through scalable digital solutions and services

Dimagi

The wait is over! - it’s time to celebrate the champion startups of the world. Shout out to all of the participants in our ! You did a wonderful job showcasing your incredible startups and powering through another year. 2023 Startups of the Year is a community-driven voting platform brought to you by HackerNoon that recognizes and celebrates tech startups changing technology and the world for the better. The award started on May 8th, 2023, where the internet nominated and voted for 30k startups around the world. The voting period remained open until December 31, 2023, and now we are here with the winner announcement after a comprehensive evaluation by the HackerNoon team. Startups of the Year 2023 To see the top 3 startups in each respective city, visit and pick a city. hackernoon.com/startups You’ll get a little surprise 😉 Here are the Startups of the Year Regional Announcements: North America Europe Asia Africa South America Oceania Misc/Remote From all of us at HackerNoon, thank YOU for your excellent campaign perseverance 🥺 This year has been awesome! Startups of the Year 2023 is concluded with 623k+ total votes, up from 215k+ votes in the inaugural startup competition. We look forward to seeing you again in the next campaign (stay tuned 😉)! Without further ado, let us kick off the announcement by celebrating the cities with top votes per region for 2023 🎉 North America (11,697 votes): Winner: Bloomfilter Cleveland, Ohio (8,835 votes) - Winner: SerpApi Austin, Texas , California (5,564 votes) - Winner: Finch San Francisco (4,258 votes) - Winner: RELAYTO SoMa, California - (3339 votes) Winner: Windscribe Toronto, Canada, North America (3304 votes) - Winner: Vouched Seattle (2716 votes) - Winner: Seccuri Palo Alto, CA, North America (2671 votes) - Winner: Salsa Valley Miami, FL, North America (2,613 votes) - Winner: Majhi Group Manhattan, New York (2423 votes) - Winner: Flieber, Inc. New York City, NY, North America See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, North America, here Europe (45,612 votes) - Winner: Algomo London, UK (2,344votes) - Winner: Data Lake Warsaw, Poland (1,955 votes) - Winner: Hoken Tech Bari, Italy (1716 votes) - Winner: Not8 Amsterdam, Netherlands (1657 votes) - Winner: KYVE Frankfurt Am Main, Germany (1566 votes) - Winner: BazaIT Kyiv, Ukraine (1496 votes) - Winner:  Unity Network Tallinn, Estonia (1,478 votes) - Winner: Volcaino Ghent, Belgium (1,288 votes) - Winner: Owl Me Dublin, Ireland (1198 votes) - Winner: Groover Paris, France See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Europe, here Oceania (3,350 votes) - Winner: Sharepass Melbourne (2,107 votes) - Winner: The Catfisher Project Perth, Australia (220 votes) - Winner: Gemini AI Solutions Auckland, New Zealand, Oceania (213 votes) - Winner: Nexustorage Wellington, New Zealand, Oceania (138 votes) - Winner: Coviu Sydney (124 votes) - Winner: Bopple Brisbane, Australia, Oceania (124 votes) - Winner: Regional CFO New South Wales, Australia, Oceania (106 votes) - Winner: Edit on the Spot Gold Coast, Australia, Oceania (93 votes) - Winner: Knowledge Satnav Canbera, Australia, Oceania , Australia, Oceania (48 votes) - Winner: Peptalk360 North Melbourne, Melbourne See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Oceania, here Asia (16,345 votes) - Winner: Serenity Shield Singapore (13,588 votes) - Winners: QUIXY Telangana, India (10,168 votes) - Winner: HealthySure Mumbai, India (3,865 votes) - Winner: InterviewBuddy Visakhapatnam, India (3,733 votes) - Winner: Omniflo Bengaluru, India (4589 votes) - Winner: MeNow Tel Aviv (3877 votes) - Winner: ForestVPN Dubai (2478 votes) - Winner: TechGraph Powai, Mumbai, India (1004 votes) - Winner: Reelo Ahmedabad, GJ, India (875 votes) - Winner: Debt Hunter Hong Kong, China See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Asia, here Africa (8,179 votes) - Winner: GO PLATFORM Algiers, Algeria (767 votes) - Winner: Tudu Accra, Ghana (415 votes) - Winner: Treford Lagos, Nigeria (265 votes) - Winner: Phalconwise Ogbomosho, Nigeria (157 votes) - Winner: AbuErdan Cairo (151 votes) - Winner: Eazipay Lekki (144 votes) - Winner: KaziConnect Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (101 votes) - Winner: faceATT Gauteng, South Africa (79 votes) - Winner: Dimagi Cape Town (71 votes) - Winner: Sabi Addis Ababa See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Africa, here South America (376 votes ) - Winner: UpGirl Santiago, Chile (217 votes) - Winner: Klever Sao Paulo, Brazil (191 votes) - Winner: Tributo Simple Buenos Aires, Argentina (127 votes) - Winner: Light-it Montevideo, Uruguay (87 votes) -Winner: Thousand Antioquia, Colombia (108 votes) - Winner: GetLavado Lima (101 votes) - Winner: Cogniflow Medellin (73 votes) - Winner: TPAGA Bogota (73 votes) - Winner: Reliv Quito (47 votes) - WInner: Quantex Cordoba See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, South America, here Misc/Remote: Featured Startups (1500 votes) - Winner: CIC Chain Remote, Earth (1193 votes) - Winner: Reship Colony US Misc (146 Votes) - Winner: Partful UK, Misc (116 votes) - Winner: GoMining British Virgin Islands Misc (283 Votes) - Winner: tomorrowSpace Germany Misc (225 votes) - Winner: Dtravel Cayman Islands See the complete announcement for Misc/Remote startups . here Once again, HUGE CONGRATULATIONS and BIG PROPS to all of the top Startups of each region this year! The whole team at HackerNoon would like to thank you for your perseverance in the campaign, and we look forward to seeing you in the next campaign. About HackerNoon’s Startups Of The Year Startups of The Year is HackerNoon’s Flagship community-driven event celebrating startups that survived and thrived in 2023. 30,000 startups across 4200+ cities and six continents participated this year to be crowned the best startup in their city. Visit our page to learn more. FAQ Companies that blog more get 67% more leads - Jumpstart your company’s blogging journey by purchasing our . Business Blogging Package The 2023 Startups Of The Year is sponsored by: . . The winners get a free .Tech Domain, a HackerNoon NFT, and a Tech Company News Page. TECH Domains

Stand Up for the Champion Startups of the Year! 

বছরের চ্যাম্পিয়ন স্টার্টআপের জন্য দাঁড়ান!

Setzen Sie sich für die Champion-Startups des Jahres ein!

¡Defiende a las startups campeonas del año!

Défendez les startups championnes de l’année !

वर्ष के चैंपियन स्टार्टअप के लिए खड़े रहें!

今年のチャンピオンスタートアップのために立ち上がろう!

올해의 챔피언 스타트업을 위해 일어서세요!

Defenda as startups campeãs do ano!

Встаньте на защиту стартапов-чемпионов года!

Yılın Şampiyon Startup'ları için Ayağa Kalkın!

Hãy ủng hộ các công ty khởi nghiệp vô địch của năm!

为年度冠军初创企业挺身而出！

CONCERNING THE TWO KINDS OF THINKING

What’s shaping our technology world GitHub is not just a code hosting service with version control — it’s also an enormous developer network. The sheer size of GitHub at over 30 million accounts, more than 2 million organizations, and over 96 million repositories translates into one of the world’s most valuable development networks. How do you quantify the value of this network? And is there a way to get the top repositories? Here at U°OS, we ran the GitHub network through a simplified version¹ of and produced the top 100 most valuable repositories. our reputation algorithm The result is as fascinating as it is eclectic in the way that it does feel like a good reflection of our society’s interest in the technology and where it moves. There are the big proprietary players with open source projects — Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and even Baidu. And at the same time, there’s a Chinese anti-censorship tool. There’s Bitcoin for cryptocurrency. There’s a particle detector for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. There are gaming projects like Space Station 13 and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and a gaming engine Godot. There are education projects like freeCodeCamp, Open edX, Oppia, and Code.org. There are web and mobile app building projects like WordPress, Joomla, and Flutter to publish your content on. There are databases to store your content for the web like Ceph and CockroachDB. And there’s a search engine to navigate through the content — Elasticsearch. There are also, perhaps unsurprisingly, jailbreak projects like Cydia compatibility manager for iOS and Nintendo 3DS custom firmware. And there’s a smart home system — Home Assistant. All in all, it’s really a great outlook for the technology world: we learn, build stuff to broadcast our unique voices, we use crypto, break free from proprietary software on our hardware, and in the spare time we game in our automated homes. And the big companies open-source their projects. Before I proceed with the list, a result of running the Octoverse through the reputation algorithm also produced a value score for every individual GitHub contributor. So, if you have a GitHub account and curious, you can get your score at and convert it to a Universal Portable Reputation. https://u.community/github Top 100 projects & repositories Out of over 96 million repositories Repository: Website: Google Kubernetes Container scheduling and management https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes https://kubernetes.io/ Repository: Website: Apache Spark A unified analytics engine for large-scale data processing https://github.com/apache/spark http://spark.apache.org/ Repository: Website: Microsoft Visual Studio Code A source-code editor https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode https://code.visualstudio.com/ Repository: Website: NixOS Package Collection A collection of packages for the Nix package manager https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs https://nixos.org Repository: Website: Rust Programming language https://github.com/rust-lang/rust https://www.rust-lang.org/ Repository: Website: Firehol IP Lists Blacklists for Firehol, a firewall builder https://github.com/firehol/blocklist-ipsets https://iplists.firehol.org/ Repository: Website: Red Hat OpenShift A community distribution of Kubernetes optimized for continuous application development and multi-tenant deployment https://github.com/openshift/origin https://www.openshift.com/ Repository: Website: Ansible A deployment automation platform https://github.com/ansible/ansible https://www.ansible.com/ Repository: Website: Automattic WordPress Calypso A JavaScript and API powered front-end for WordPress.com https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso https://developer.wordpress.com/calypso/ Repository: Website: Microsoft .NET CoreFX Foundational class libraries for .NET Core https://github.com/dotnet/corefx https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/ Repository: Website: Microsoft .NET Roslyn .NET compiler https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/roslyn-sdk/ Repository: Website: Node.js A JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine https://github.com/nodejs/node https://nodejs.org/en/ Repository: Website: TensorFlow Google’s machine learning framework https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow https://www.tensorflow.org/ Repository: Website: freeCodeCamp Code learning platform https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/freeCodeCamp https://www.freecodecamp.org/ Repository: Website: Space Station 13 A round-based roleplaying game https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation https://www.tgstation13.org/ Repository: Website: Apple Swift Apple’s programming language https://github.com/apple/swift https://swift.org/ Repository: Website: Elasticsearch A search engine https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch https://www.elastic.co/products/elasticsearch Repository: Website: Moby An open framework to assemble specialized container systems https://github.com/moby/moby https://mobyproject.org/ Repository: Website: CockroachDB A cloud-native SQL database https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach https://www.cockroachlabs.com/ Repository: Website: Cydia Compatibility Checker A compatibility checker for Cydia — a package manager for iOS jailbroken devices https://github.com/jlippold/tweakCompatible https://jlippold.github.io/tweakCompatible/ Repository: Website: Servo A web browser engine https://github.com/servo/servo https://servo.org/ Repository: Website: Google Flutter Google’s mobile app SDK to create interfaces for iOS and Android https://github.com/flutter/flutter https://flutter.dev/ Repository: Website: macOS Homebrew Package Manager Default formulae for the missing package manager for macOS https://github.com/homebrew/homebrew-core https://brew.sh/ Repository: Website: Home Assistant Home automation software https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant https://www.home-assistant.io/ Repository: Website: Microsoft .NET CoreCLR Runtime for .NET Core https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/ Repository: Website: CocoaPods Specifications Specifications for CocoaPods, a Cocoa dependency manager https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs https://cocoapods.org/ An analytics and search dashboard for ElasticsearchRepository: Website: Elastic Kibana https://github.com/elastic/kibana https://www.elastic.co/products/kibana Repository: Website: Julia Language A technical computing language https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia https://julialang.org/ Repository: Website: Microsoft TypeScript A superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript https://www.typescriptlang.org/ Repository: Website: Joomla A content management system https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms https://www.joomla.org/ Repository: Website: DefinitelyTyped A repository for TypeScript type definitions https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped http://definitelytyped.org/ Repository: Website: Homebrew Cask A CLI workflow for the administration of macOS applications distributed as binaries https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask https://brew.sh/ Repository: Website: Ceph A distributed object, block, and file storage platform https://github.com/ceph/ceph https://ceph.com/ Repository: Website: Go Programming language https://github.com/golang/go https://golang.org/ AMP HTML Builder Repository: Website: A way to build pages for Google AMP https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml https://amp.dev/ Repository: Website: Open edX An online education platform https://github.com/edx/edx-platform https://open.edx.org/ Repository: Website: Pandas A data analysis and manipulation library for Python https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas https://pandas.pydata.org/ Repository: Website: Istio A platform to manage microservices https://github.com/istio/istio https://istio.io/ Repository: Website: ManageIQ A containers, virtual machines, networks, and storage management platform https://github.com/ManageIQ/manageiq http://manageiq.org/ Repository: Website: Godot Engine A multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine https://github.com/godotengine/godot https://godotengine.org/ Repository: Website: Gentoo Repository Mirror A Gentoo ebuild repository mirror https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo https://www.gentoo.org/ Repository: Website: Odoo A suite of web based open source business apps https://github.com/odoo/odoo https://www.odoo.com/ Repository: Website: Azure Documentation Documentation of Microsoft Azure https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs https://docs.microsoft.com/azure Repository: Website: Magento An eCommerce platform https://github.com/magento/magento2 https://magento.com/ Repository: Website: Saltstack Software to automate the management and configuration of any infrastructure or application at scale https://github.com/saltstack/salt https://www.saltstack.com/ Repository: Website: AdGuard Filters Ad blocking filters for AdGuard https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters https://adguard.com/en/welcome.html Repository: Website: Symfony A PHP framework https://github.com/symfony/symfony https://symfony.com/ Repository: Website: CMS Software for the Large Hadron Collider Particle detector software components for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider https://github.com/cms-sw/cmssw http://cms-sw.github.io/ Repository: Website: Red Hat OpenShift OpenShift installation and configuration management https://github.com/openshift/openshift-ansible https://www.openshift.com/ Repository: Website: ownCloud Personal cloud software https://github.com/owncloud/core https://owncloud.org/ Repository: Website: gRPC A remote procedure call (RPC) framework https://github.com/grpc/grpc https://grpc.io/ Repository: Website: Liferay An enterprise web platform https://github.com/brianchandotcom/liferay-portal https://www.liferay.com/ Repository: Website: CommCare HQ A mobile data collection platform https://github.com/dimagi/commcare-hq https://www.commcarehq.org/ Repository: Website: WordPress Gutenberg An editor plugin for WordPress https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ Repository: Website: PyTorch A Python package for Tensor computation and deep neural networks https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch https://pytorch.org/ Repository: Website: Kubernetes Test Infrastructure A test-infra repository for Kubernetes https://github.com/kubernetes/test-infra https://kubernetes.io/ Repository: Website: Keybase Keybase client repository https://github.com/keybase/client https://keybase.io/ Repository: Website: Facebook React A JavaScript library for building user interfaces https://github.com/facebook/react https://reactjs.org/ Repository: Website: Code.org Code learning resource https://github.com/code-dot-org/code-dot-org https://code.org/ Repository: Website: Bitcoin Core Bitcoin client software https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin https://bitcoincore.org/ Repository: Website: Arm Mbed OS A platform operating system for the Internet of Things https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbed-os https://www.mbed.com Repository: Website: scikit-learn A Python module for machine learning https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn https://scikit-learn.org Repository: Website: Nextcloud A self-hosted productivity platform https://github.com/nextcloud/server https://nextcloud.com/ Repository: Website: Helm Charts A curated list of applications for Kubernetes https://github.com/helm/charts https://kubernetes.io/ Repository: Website: Terraform An infrastructure management tool https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform https://www.terraform.io/ Repository: Website: Ant Design A UI design language https://github.com/ant-design/ant-design https://ant.design/ Repository: Website: Phalcon Framework Documentation Documentation for Phalcon, a PHP framework https://github.com/phalcon/docs https://docs.phalconphp.com Repository: Website: Documentation for CMS Software for the Large Hadron Collider Documentation for CMS Software for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider https://github.com/cms-sw/cms-sw.github.io http://cms-sw.github.io/ Repository: Website: Apache Kafka Mirror A mirror for Apache Kafka, a distributed streaming platform https://github.com/apache/kafka https://kafka.apache.org/ Repository: Website: Electron A framework to write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS https://github.com/electron/electron https://electronjs.org/ Repository: Website: Zephyr Project A real-time operating system https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr https://www.zephyrproject.org/ Repository: Website: The web-platform-tests Project A cross-browser testsuite for the Web-platform stack https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt https://www.w3.org/ Repository: Website: Marlin Firmware Optimized firmware for RepRap 3D printers based on the Arduino platform https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin http://marlinfw.org/ Repository: Website: Apache MXNet A library for deep learning https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet https://mxnet.apache.org/ Repository: Website: Apache Beam A unified programming model https://github.com/apache/beam https://beam.apache.org/ Repository: Website: Fastlane A build and release automaton for iOS and Android apps https://github.com/fastlane/fastlane https://fastlane.tools/ Repository: Website: Kubernetes Website and Documentation A repository for the Kubernetes website and documentation https://github.com/kubernetes/website https://kubernetes.io Repository: Website: Ruby on Rails A web-application framework https://github.com/rails/rails https://rubyonrails.org/ Repository: Website: Zulip Team chat software https://github.com/zulip/zulip https://zulipchat.com/ Repository: Website: Laravel A web application framework https://github.com/laravel/framework https://laravel.com/ Repository: Website: Baidu PaddlePaddle Baidu’s deep learning framework https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/Paddle http://www.paddlepaddle.org/ Repository: Website: Gatsby A web application framework https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby https://www.gatsbyjs.org/ Repository: Website: Rust Crate Registry Rust’s community package registry https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index https://crates.io/ Repository: Website: Nintendo 3DS Custom Firmware A complete guide to 3DS custom firmware https://github.com/hacks-guide/Guide_3DS https://3ds.hacks.guide/ Repository: Website: TiDB A NewSQL database https://github.com/pingcap/tidb https://pingcap.com Repository: Website: Angular CLI CLI tool for Angular, a Google web application framework https://github.com/angular/angular-cli https://cli.angular.io/ Repository: Website: MAPS.ME Offline OpenStreetMap maps for iOS and Android https://github.com/mapsme/omim https://maps.me/ Repository: Website: Eclipse Che A cloud IDE for Eclipse https://github.com/eclipse/che http://www.eclipse.org/che/ Repository: Website: Brave Browser A browser with native BAT cryptocurrency https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop https://www.brave.com/ Repository: Website: Patchwork A repository to learn Git https://github.com/jlord/patchwork http://jlord.us/patchwork/ Repository: Website: Angular Material Component infrastructure and Material Design components for Angular, a Google web application framework https://github.com/angular/components https://material.angular.io/ Repository: Website: Python Programming language https://github.com/python/cpython https://www.python.org/ Repository: Website: Space Station 13 A round-based roleplaying game https://github.com/vgstation-coders/vgstation13 http://ss13.moe/ Repository: Website: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead A turn-based survival game https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA http://cataclysmdda.org/ Repository: Website: Material-UI React components that implement Google’s Material Design https://github.com/mui-org/material-ui https://material-ui.com/ Repository: Website: Ionic A Progressive Web Apps development framework https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic https://ionicframework.com/ Repository: Website: Oppia A tool for collaboratively building interactive lessons https://github.com/oppia/oppia https://www.oppia.org Repository: Website: Alluxio A virtual distributed storage system https://github.com/Alluxio/alluxio https://www.alluxio.io/ Repository: Website: None XX Net A Chinese web proxy and anti-censorship tool https://github.com/XX-net/XX-Net Repository: Website: Microsoft .NET CLI A CLI tool for .NET https://github.com/dotnet/cli https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/ [1] The explanation of the calculation of the simplified version is at the . U°OS Network GitHub repository

GitHub’s Top 100 Most Valuable Repositories Out of 96 Million

My 2018 year in Review It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the year of personal growth, and it was the year of personal stagnation. Place Card Me—my SaaS product for making — grew steadily, and made revenue that meaningfully contributed to my annual income earned me a solid hourly wage. I built nothing new, learned very little, and my one big new product idea barely got off the ground. It was a great year for personal projects. place cards online and And it was a terrible year for personal projects. I had more work opportunities than I knew what to do with. I had job offers up the wazoo. I greatly surpassed my annual income goal. I barely had any time, headspace, or energy to make significant progress on any large, open-ended goals. Time came at a premium all year. It was a year of abundance. And it was a year scarcity. This is the tale of two 2018s. A great year and a disappointing year. Mashed together, rolled up into a ball, and impossible to disentangle from each other. Let’s get into it. How I spent my time “The true currency of life is time, not money, and we’ve all got a limited stock of that.” — Robert Harris People like to think of themselves as having principles; priorities; things that define us which are intrinsic to who we are. And we do. But the only real manifestation of those principles is how we choose to spend our time. Everything else is just talk. So for me, understanding where my time went last year is the first and best place to start with in understanding the year itself. Here’s how that looks: My professional time breakdown in 2018 The first thing that’s notable here is that of the ~1,600 hours of “work” I did this year, more than 70% of those — about 1,130 — were spent working for (my “day job”) or doing freelance work. Dimagi Of the remaining 30% I spent on personal projects, about a quarter went to Place Card Me and the remaining three quarters went to everything else — a bucket that includes writing and of my other side projects. all By comparison, let’s take a look at the same data for the previous year: My professional time breakdown in 2017. Unfortunately the colors aren’t the same as the 2018 graph. It’s almost completely flipped! In 2017, 65% of my time went to Place Card Me and personal projects, and only 35% went to Dimagi and freelancing. Thus, emerges the first theme of the year: In 2018 I prioritized working for other people much more than working for myself. Why did I prioritize working for others? So, I spent 70% of my time last year working for other people. Surely that must have been a deliberate decision, right? Right?!? Well, it wasn’t exactly something I sat down and sought out at the beginning of the year, but surely each individual moment was a result of some sort of mental arithmetic in my head. So why I work for others so much? did Reason #1: Money, money, money It turns out that a person literally handing you $100 bills in exchange for an hour of your time is pretty hard to resist. I’m going to be honest — 2017 was stressful. For several reasons, but one of the biggest was that feeling every month of . Even though — thanks in large part to my wife who was supporting us — I was never close to running out of cash, it was still stressful as hell to see my bank account balance going down month after month with no end in sight. not earning any money Going into 2018, one of my important goals was to make sure that I didn’t put us in that position again. I would earn more money than I spent. And earning money? Well it turns out that when you do freelance you have a very real, very tangible dollar value on every minute of your time. So when I sat there looking at my afternoon thinking “well… I spend 2 hours working on that blog post, I could do this freelance thing thing that will immediately put $200 in my pocket,” it was pretty compelling to take the money and run. could or Reason #2: The exposure to new things Here’s another wonderful thing about working for other people: . they’ve already done a huge amount of the work What this means is that instead of starting a new project from scratch and having to learn every little detail yourself, you get to jump into the middle and reap the benefits of everything they’ve already invested. You come in standing on the shoulders of giants. Taking an example from last year: ever since I started flirting with entrepreneurship, I’ve been interested in learning more about the Silicon Valley VC-funded startup scene. Now, if I wanted to get that exposure on my own I might quit my job, find a cofounder, pitch to VC’s, raise money, build a product, do sales, etc. etc. It could take years! After spending a couple weeks working for a startup in in San Francisco I can say that watching the TV show is also a surprisingly good proxy for understanding Silicon Valley life. On the other hand, if I do a two-week freelance engagement at a friend’s startup in San Francisco who has already gone through all of those steps I can get a pretty good slice of Silicon Valley with virtually zero additional effort! Plus, I help out a friend and learn some new tech. So that’s exactly what I did. Want to understand the startup scene in South Africa? Work for a South African startup! Want to learn about data warehousing? Find a data warehousing gig! All of these things happened to me in 2018 and there’s no way I could have gotten those experiences on my own. In reality, the causality ran the other way. That is, first presented itself to me and became a reason to take it. But still, freelancing has been a great way to see different organizations and grow my technical chops, while helping out other people on great projects and getting paid to boot. Everybody wins! the opportunity the exposure Reason #3: It kept me from facing my entrepreneurial fear 2017 was one of . the most pivotal years of my life That said, on a day-to-day basis, I spent most of the year operating in various states of pure terror and self-doubt. Fear of quitting my job and losing my identity. Fear of putting myself out there by writing publicly. Fear of launching a product that was dumb and completely failing at my already-kind-of-pathetic goal of making at least $1 on the internet. Every step of the way was a) terrifying and b) caused me deep, deep self-doubt and anxiety — though I did try to hide it as best I could. Looking back, . I was doing things that were truly new. Putting myself out there in ways I never had before. And really challenging myself on my own terms and with my own agenda. the fact that I was terrified all the time is central to what made 2017 a pivotal year “Don’t do what you want. Do what you don’t want. Do what you’re trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”  — Chuck Palahniuk In 2018? Honestly, I did very little this year that terrified me, thanks in large part, to freelancing. Sure, I did plenty of freelance work that was , but the level of personal stake and sense of self-worth weren’t tied to that work in the way they are with my own projects. I knew that wouldn’t fail with part, and if the project as a whole failed? Well, that was someone else’s problem to deal with. hard I my In short, it was . And choosing safe over scary is pretty easy. safe Working for others became the easy choice. So what did I lose by prioritizing working for others? So we now see how the allure of working for others led to it being a priority — conscious or not — for 2018. What was the cost? The short answer is that . Big time. my personal projects languished All that time I spent working for others? That was time that could no longer go towards pushing out new personal projects, writing, etc. And not just the time but the — that elusive energy necessary to do . So, while it was pretty easy to continue to add small features to Place Card Me and other existing projects, it was much more difficult to find the time and space necessary for a thoughtful blog post or for launching a brand new thing. headspace meaningful work Yes, Place Card Me had a year and I’ll talk about that more in a bit, but everything else I’ve worked on has been a real struggle. Here’s a quick run down: great : A I launched in late 2017 actually became my second monetized product. I made a small push to add a paid tier in April and then did nothing to improve or promote it for the rest of the year. This has resulted in completely flat and uninspiring revenue of about $80/month. Chat Stats GroupMe chat analytics site Chat Stats monthly revenue from April-December was basically a flat line around $80. : Expected to be one of my big efforts for 2018, I was going to create an awesome Django resource on the internet and then figure out a way to make money from it. It’s been almost a complete failure, consisting of a single blog post around an open-source library that I created, and — until the last few weeks — literally nothing else. Build With Django : I added a sad little “buy me a coffee” link to my in hopes of getting some donations (which — incidentally, no one has ever used). More recently I added a few small product improvements, but overall have done basically zero to promote or do more with the extension despite a modest, growing, and happy user base. Photos New Tab Google Photos Chrome extension : On my personal blog I wrote blog posts this year (five if you count this one) compared to last year. I’m not all that proud of any of them, nor did any of them really get any broader traction beyond the audience I built last year. Even worse, I feel like I’ve completely forgotten how to write well and feel embarrassed and insecure about everything I produce now. Possibly for good reason? coryzue.com four twenty-four Beyond that, and most depressingly, . Build With Django is the closest thing to a new project and it’s a glorified blog with two posts. Compare that to last year when I arguably launched six different things (seven if you count this website) and it’s a huge let down. I didn’t create a single new product of note for the entire year But don’t worry — it’s not all doom and gloom! This now brings us to the fun part of the year. The magical upsides of building products Remember those time wheels at the beginning of this post? If you were looking closely, you might have noticed that I spent almost three times as many hours on Place Card Me in 2017 (283) than I did in 2018 (102). However, because it’s a those hours are not directly correlated with earnings at all (as opposed to working for others which is obviously almost 1:1). product This decoupling of effort from money — also known as the mythical — results in some pretty magical behavior over time. In fact, when all’s said and done in 2018, Place Card Me will have out-earned itself by more than 10x from last year despite the reduced time investment. Here’s the monthly revenue for the entire history of the site. passive income stream Revenue from from its launch through 2018. Data as of December 26, 2018. From the . Place Card Me open startup dashboard Here are some other fun figures about Place Card Me for comparison: [1] As of December 26, 2018 To summarize, in 2018, I was able to continually improve the product and increase revenue while working a totally manageable amount of hours and getting paid a solid wage on-par with my freelance rate! And it’s not just the revenue that compounds on itself. Although the product today is largely the same as it was 12 months ago, I’ve made tons of small improvements throughout the year: tripling the number of place card templates, adding support for different card layouts and paper formats, improving the UX of card making and fixing a whole bunch of bugs. I also experimented and tested my pricing constantly, eventually landing on a pricing model that seems to be working well. What’s wonderful about all that is that the effects of the changes are and . additive permanent The site is always getting better, and once it does it is better forever. Achieving entrepreneurial success in spite of myself When I look back on 2018, I suspect I’ll think of it as the year I tried to juggle freelancing and entrepreneurship and failed. And yet somehow succeeded in entrepreneurship anyways. From a freelancing perspective 2018 was a success by any metric. I helped more people, worked more hours, earned more dollars, and learned more than I ever thought I would. From an entrepreneurship perspective 2018 is more complicated. On the surface of everything it looks great. I made almost $13,000 from not one but online products, despite not trying too hard on them. That sounds amazing, right?! two In reality, I think I achieved this success of my efforts, not because of them. This year, I largely rode the coattails of the work I did in 2017, and that momentum carried me into a good place. But I don’t expect it to hold. in spite Already copycats for Place Card Me — apparently inspired by that sweet $1,500/month — are springing up out of the woodwork. Meanwhile, I’ve exhausted all the easy ideas I had in mind to increase revenue. So looking to 2019, unless I come up with something new to do, revenue will stay flat or possibly even drop if I start losing sales to competition. And now — unlike 2018 — I don’t have a new project ready to start pouring gasoline on to fill the gap. Essentially, I’ve burned through all my 2017 capital reserves and failed to make any new ones. What does that mean? I think it might mean that 2018 was a fluke. And if I want to succeed at this whole passive income/entrepreneurship thing I’m going to have to expect to work quite a lot harder on it moving forwards. So what’s in store for next year? The theme for next year — I hope — will be . reinvesting in personal projects My primary goal/plan for the year is to have a 50/50 split of my time between working for others and working for myself. I figure if time is the only true currency then all I have to do is spend mine properly and I can figure out how to sort out the rest. Practically, that should lead to a few major consequences. Less time freelancing. Substantially less income generated — unless I manage to overachieve on the product side. More uncertainty. More fear. More investment in myself. More at stake to lose. Should be a fun year! Appendix: My 2018 Goal Report Card and 2019 Goals In my , I set four high-level goals for 2018. Now that the year’s over I thought it would be fun to see how I did. Here’s my self-graded report card: beginning-of-the-year post Explanations for the grades follow. Diversity: Have at least one more project generating some passive income Grade: B. I did succeed in generating passive income from a second project. As I mentioned, — my GroupMe chat analytics platform for narcissistic millennials — has earned $770 or about $80 / month since I added a paid tier in April. Chat Stats I gave myself a “B” instead of an “A” despite hitting the goal because I kind of feel like I cheated. I had already built out about 80% of the functionality of the site by the end of last year and I basically just added one new feature and a paid tier and — voila! — a few dollars started trickling in. The intention of the goal was that the diversity would come from a product, and I had hoped it would be a proportion of my passive income, but this was neither. new substantial Growth: Get to $20k total or $2k monthly passive income by December Grade: A- Again, I hit the goal — specifically the “or $2k monthly” part of it, with Place Card Me passing $2k in November and December this year. I’m giving myself an A- instead of an A because it’s a seasonal product and I don’t think I will hit $2k/month consistently, just once or twice during the year. I’m still excited about this revenue, obviously — and I hope that I’ll be able to pass $20k next year — but I wouldn’t feel right not giving myself a small ding on this one. Sustainability: Make $80k of total income (including salary/freelance work) Grade: A I set my target at $80k of income for the year and I substantially beat that due to the aforementioned increase in freelance earnings! At the end of the day I expect my 2018 income to be right around $100k, with about 40% of that coming from Dimagi, 50% coming from freelancing, and 10% coming from my own products. From a sustainability perspective, I could live off of this level of income indefinitely! Hooray. Dynamism: Continue to reflect and iterate on my life regularly Grade: C The poorly-worded, and impossible-to-measure goal here was “continue to reflect and iterate on my life regularly”. And while I did do some reflection — including a quick bout where I — I really didn’t do a whole lot to make any major sweeping changes in my life the way that I did last year. worried things were too easy My life at the beginning of the year was a mix of Dimagi, freelancing, and side projects, and at the end of the year it is basically the same (including the side projects). same So was this because I didn’t need a change or because I wasn’t open-minded and reflective enough to accept change? I’m not sure, and that’s why I’m giving myself a C. Regardless, I hope that this end of year reflection will result in a substantially new course, and I feel it at least partially meets the intention behind this goal. My 2019 Goals And finally, here are my goals for 2019: : Achieve a 50/50 time split in working for myself vs working for others Commitment : Earn $30k income from personal projects Financial Growth : Make at least one sale of my new project: a Diversity Django SaaS template : Do more things that scare me Personal Growth These hopefully fall naturally out of the above and don’t require a whole lot of explanation. I’m also asking myself a lot of questions about 2019, including how best to prioritize my time between growing Place Card Me versus continuing to create new things, how much I should be writing (and what value I get from it), as well as what I should be cutting of my life. out I don’t know the answers yet, but it’s nice to have the questions bouncing around in the back of my brain. That’s it! If you made it this far, bless you and thanks for your persistence. Happy 2019! Our first Christmas as a family. December 24, 2018. Lion’s Head, Cape Town. — Cory (and Rowena and Lockwood) Originally published at www.coryzue.com .

A Tale of Two Years: The Struggle Between Freelancing and Entrepreneurship

A journey of slowing down, purpose, reflection, and looking for happiness One hobby I developed in 2017 was taking pictures of myself looking out over grand vistas to incorporate into my blog. Drakensberg, South Africa, September, 2017. “You know, when I look back on the story of my life I wonder whether 2017 will end up being the year that everything changed.”  — me to my wife, December 26, 2017 It’s funny the things that feel important. In 2015 I moved to Africa. In 2016 I got married. You’d those would be big, transformative experiences, and yet I’m pretty sure that in the story of my life, 2017 will outstrip them all by a long shot. think Why? The most succinctly I can say it is that while every year till now has been marked by changes in , 2017 felt like the first time in my adult life I developed a completely new . events perspective In 2017 I ended up doing a whole mix of things. I left my job. I . I built and launched . I learned to surf. I hiked. I traveled. I started freelancing. started a blog a bunch of projects Eventually, I ended up back almost exactly where I started. Only everything is different now. This post is about that journey of perspective change — a journey of slowing down, discovering purpose, and searching for happiness. Hopefully by the end it will be clear why I feel this was the most important year of my adult life. But to get to there we have to start from the beginning. The year I realized something was wrong (January) A year ago today I was working as CTO of , a title I had held for the previous ten years running. I was working 60-hour weeks regularly, attempting to run a 30-person technology team, lead the coding and architecture of , and keep some of our biggest projects from redlining — all at the same time. Dimagi CommCare HQ I was deeply invested in the work — tying up a lot of my own personal and professional identity in the success of Dimagi and my own contributions to the organization. I was also stressed out, burnt out, and probably not that fun to be around most of the time. Sensing something was amiss, I decided to take a sabbatical from Dimagi starting in March. I would give myself six months, during which I would… . figure it out Figure what out, exactly? At the time I wasn’t sure. I just had the sense that there was that needed to be figured out, since I wasn’t feeling particularly happy or positive by my work anymore. something In that exact moment it was hard to see past the burning fires still in front of me and plan out that future. I hoped that once I had the time and space to escape the pressures in front of me things would become more clear. The year I took a break (March) For the very first time in my career, I decided to take a break. More than anything, 2017 will be defined by my sabbatical. The first two weeks of the sabbatical were a gloriously disconnected vacation. Traveling without computers, my wife and I took a late honeymoon to Mauritius and Mozambique. We dived with manta rays, swam with dolphins, climbed mountains, and ate our faces off. Trying on relaxation for size. Bazaruto, Mozambique, March, 2017. Between activities I spent a lot of time staring into the blank pages of a new notebook and trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with the next six months. It was scary, freeing and fun. Gone was the daily grind of checking email and fighting fires, and in its place was planted a seed of a question that started growing within me. I had literally no responsibilities, and found that the absence of responsibility created a deliberateness of purpose. What did I want to do with my life? This question, despite it being the most obvious, most core, most cliche of questions, was something I hadn’t really thought about in years. It’s a hard question to care about in the middle of the daily grind. I didn’t get to an answer, but that feeling stuck with me, and became a lesson that would carry me through to the rest of the year. Space is important. Rest is important. Big, hard questions are important. I decided that disconnecting was an important way to get to insights previously out of reach and resolved that slowing down would be a major priority moving forwards. I also had a mission: Easy, right? figure out my life. The year I decided to try solopreneurship (March) I came back from that two-week vacation feeling both inspired and disoriented at the same time. Inspired by the idea of choosing my own fate; disoriented by the vastness of choices in front of me. I needed focus. I knew I wanted something slower and less stressful than what I’d been doing before. I wanted something that had the possibility of providing me enough income to live on, and enough freedom to set my own terms, hours, and responsibilities. That was when I came up with — a very specific type of entrepreneurship focused around staying small (one person-sized, to be precise). It’s a subset of bootstrapping that appealed to me because after running a large team for so long I had no interest in having employees or even collaborators. I wanted to do this thing on my own — with all of the autonomy, freedom, and accountability that came with that. I didn’t need a billion dollar exit, just enough money to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly while I enjoyed the flexibility of no longer having earnings tied to hours worked. the idea of pursuing solopreneurship At least that was the plan. So I decided to give myself the six months to build something that was generating income. It wasn’t the loftiest of goals, but I had no idea what I was doing and so I set my targets low. passively I really just wanted to earn a single dollar in six months. The year I made myself get comfortable in public (March) If you didn’t know me before 2017 you might be surprised to learn that I am historically a pretty private person — one who, prior to 2017, had almost no presence online. Prior to the sabbatical starting, my previous tweet was from November, 2013. In the three years since joining Instagram in 2014, I’d posted exactly six times. My website at the time was literally a single page that said “This place is a barren wasteland”. This is the entirety of . The word “currently” contains five years of failed optimism. my personal website from 2012–2017 So why did that change? You see, once I’d decided on this solopreneur thing, I started consuming lots of advice on places like about how to get started. One of the first things I read was from , who had the following advice: . Since I had no idea what I wanted to sell, this sounded perfect. I’d just start with the whole audience thing. Unfortunately, that meant putting myself out there. The motivation for working in public started as a result of the desire to pursue solopreneurship. Indie Hackers Nathan Barry build an audience first, and then figure out what you want to sell to them So, I made my very first project . my own website I would use it to establish my own little corner of the internet, and I’d build an audience by blogging about whatever it was I was doing. I would do this until I figured out what I actually wanted to make and sell. The website launched much as it is today at the end of my first sabbatical week, and shortly thereafter I published my first post about the solopreneur idea itself. My very first attempt at audience building . March, 2017. on Indie Hackers The year I realized I can create things of value (April) I’ve mostly documented my journey this year with — an online place card maker, and the project I invested the most time in over the course of my sabbatical. However, the first product I launched back in April was — a tiny tool to help manage pending subscribers in MailChimp. Place Card Me Chimp List Helper I made it to solve a problem I had: people signing up for my newsletter but never confirming their email addresses. After Googling around and realizing there wasn’t a better solution out there, I decided to make the tool public and post it in a few places. After this, I very quickly saw a slow trickle of people successfully using the tool, and over time I started getting some positive feedback from people who found and used it successfully. A few of the adoring Chimp List Helper fans. Source: . About 20,000 email addresses have been subscribed since its launch in April. this Facebook thread This small step was super motivating! This gave me the confidence to believe that if I just came up with something worth building that I’d be able to add real value to the world. It made me realize that despite how saturated and crowded the internet is today, there were still small things I could build that would solve people’s problems better than anything else out there. The year I became the “place card guy” (May) I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about place cards at least a tiny bit in this post. May marked the initial launch of my place cards MVP and the first people successfully using ! It also marked the beginning of my online identity becoming more and more tied up in place cards, for better or for worse. Place Card Me The most ironic thing about building a product for the wedding industry was how little I knew about it. I ended up embracing my ignorance and it worked out okay. The year I remembered I love writing In high school and college I dreamed about becoming a writer. However, coming from a family of engineers and having a penchant for math and science it never felt very practical. By the time I’d graduated from university with a CS degree it seemed my path had been chosen, and as I got into software development I found product-building and engineering to be a similar creative outlet for my energy. Still I writing, it just mostly took the form of emails, speeches, and the like. enjoyed Remember that whole “audience building” plan? Well it turns out for that to work you have to build a product that to your audience. In my case I ended up making a product for the wedding industry and writing about becoming an indie hacker/solopreneur, which didn’t really work. At all. relates Still, publishing things on the internet regularly had a major side-effect: . it rekindled my interest in writing in a big way The idea that I could actually attract the attention of people on the internet was such a magical concept. A person on the other side of the world thought that this thing I wrote down was valuable enough to give me their time and attention — and sometimes even respond! That’s . amazing At the outset, riddled with insecurity and self-doubt, I never really felt like I would produce anything of actual value, and so the fact that even a modest amount of people engaged with it was super motivating. This created a positive feedback loop of writing and publishing that motivates me to this day. Stats for my ten most-read stories . In total I’ve probably had around 12,000 story-reads, which is a modest but motivating enough number to keep at it. on Medium The year I got my memories back (June) In June, feeling like I might have chosen poorly with the whole place cards idea, I decided to take some time and build something else, mostly for myself. The result was — a Chrome extension to show you photos from your Google account in your new browser tabs. The result? I now get to see the pictures I’ve taken throughout the course of my day. Photos New Tab To embrace an ongoing goal I had of getting outside my own comfort zone, I also did something scary and published myself on YouTube to try and promote it. Me awkwardly attempting to talk up my chrome extension Like most of my projects, Photos New Tab got modest traction, showing about 180,000 photos to 375 active users since its launch in June. The year I figured out there are many paths (July) At around the midpoint of my sabbatical I started getting a little nervous. I hadn’t made any money from any of my products and it didn’t look like I was going to any time soon. I came to the realization that there was no way that I’d be “successful” as a solopreneur by the time my six-month window was up. Attempting to model my future career. July, 2017. This , and I was able to boil my needs down to basically two simple requirements. made me think about what really goes into a career I needed to make money, and I wanted to enjoy what I did. This opened up my mind to to an entirely different future — one where I could design my life from scratch in a way to meet these requirements. I realized that income was going to be the first requirement I needed to solve, and so started figuring out whether I could generate income via freelancing — and also whether I liked it. I also started thinking seriously about the types of attributes I wanted from my future career, and how I might be able to find work that fit the bill. In the second half of the year I would manage to land gigs from five different freelance clients and earn over $32K in freelance software development, proving to myself that it would be a totally viable future, if I wanted it. The year I started taking care of myself The number one goal of my sabbatical was to try and figure out the elusive quest for happiness. And while a lot of that effort ended up getting directed professionally, a second huge component was my health and psyche. I realized pretty quickly I felt better whenever I did the following two things: Get outside Do something active So with this knowledge in mind I set a goal of doing something outside and active five times a week. Thankfully Cape Town is a place that makes this goal as easy as possible. I took up surfing, bought , and ran in the hills around my home regularly. a book of hikes all around me The iconic Table Mountain from Wally’s Cave on Lion’s Head. Cape Town, South Africa, August, 2017. I wasn’t completely successful in hitting five times a week (I ended up averaging about 4.7), but I was successful in feeling healthier — physically and mentally — than I ever have before. The year I got my priorities in order (July) In late May my father checked himself into a hospital in Taiwan because he was nervous about his heart. By June it became clear that something was wrong and a major intervention would be necessary. I live a long way from my parents — 7,723 miles to be exact. But I decided to go home for the surgery. The result was what ended up being one of the best experiences of the year: an opportunity to live with my parents for over a month while my dad prepared for, underwent, and recovered from what ended up being a wildly successful heart surgery. The opportunity to spend more time with my dad, support my mom, and ultimately be there while fear, emotions and tensions were running high ended up feeling like the most important moment of the year. Driving my parents home from the hospital post-my father’s quintuple bypass. Boston, USA, July 2017. I attribute the fact that I was there at all almost entirely to the sabbatical. In another world, the goings-on at home for what doctors were calling a “routine heart surgery” — which sounds a lot like an oxymoron — might have felt far away and inconvenient in the face of a mountain of work. In reality they were obviously the most important things happening in my life, and I felt very grateful to have the time and headspace to realize that and act accordingly. Hearing my dad mutter “piece of cake” moments after a breathing tube was removed from his mouth post-quintuple-bypass — and seeing my Mom’s relief and happiness — is a memory I’ll hold onto for the rest of my life. The year I officially became an entrepreneur (August) On August 24 I made and officially became an entrepreneur! my very first place card sale A week later I made two more $1 sales and remember saying to my wife “You know I think if I get lucky and keep at it, this thing could be making $100 a month in a year!” Little did I know that it would make , and would bring in $500 by December — flirting with $1,000 in total for the year (still modest, but trending well). $100 just two months later usage stats and first five months of revenue, as of December 28, 2017. Sadly, it will likely not crack $1,000 by year’s end. Place Card Me’s The year I didn’t forget my past (October) As the allotted time for my sabbatical drew to a close I was faced with a choice: pursue the new freelancing/entrepreneurial journey I had started for myself, or return to Dimagi — the place I’d invested my heart and soul into over the previous ten years. I realized I wanted both things. Like two sides of a coin, both were a part of me and the life I had established. Dimagi occupying my past and yet still growing and pressing forwards to , while my solopreneurial projects loomed bright in my future dreams of having fully-sustaining passive income. staggering (for us) scale If you want to do both, divide your time in half. Thankfully I was able to sort out an arrangement with Dimagi where I was able make this happen, and in October I returned to Dimagi part-time in with a cool new title: “Chief Accelerator”. This new role allows me to continue giving back to the organization I helped get off the ground while remaining independent enough to enable my other professional life. The year I established a new normal (November) : Dimagi work, make new place cards, surf, write. Monday : Freelance, run, work on new side-project. Tuesday : Hike, Dimagi work, write, fix bug in chrome extension. Wednesday My time split so far, post-return to Dimagi at 40%. My days are now varied with a wide mix of different personal and professional activities. And yet there’s consistency in the variability. Each week I work about 40 hours. About 40% of that time goes to Dimagi, 25% goes to freelancing, and the rest goes wherever I want. I’m also still trying to get outside five times a week. This “new normal” has been going on for about 10 weeks and seems to be becoming as close to a routine as I’ve had since the sabbatical started in March. Between my part-time Dimagi work and freelancing, I’m making about what I made when I was full time at Dimagi. But everything else in my life is far richer. How long will this feeling of stability last? I’m not sure — and I think the answer is not “forever”. But for now it’s pretty great. The year I redesigned my life (instead of letting it slide by) 2017 started with a low point, a question (“what do I want?”), and the space to find an answer. With this space I was able to reassess my life from first principles. What did I want? What did I need? How could I find those things? The answers — once I started looking for them — ended up being simple. Slow down. Keep learning. Stay active. Seek autonomy. Explore. And above all else, be intentional about how I live my life. 2017 by the numbers That’s it for this post! For fun, I thought I’d throw up a few quick numbers from my 2017. Time Revenue Other Projects Links: , , , , , my log Chat Stats Django Wedding Website Chimp List Helper Photos New Tab Cape Town Drought Originally published at www.coryzue.com . Happy New Year! Also, if you’re curious about what’s next you can read about my 2018 plans here .

The Year Everything Changed

Why everyone who can afford to do it should take some time to figure out their lives. Whew. I meant to take some time at the midpoint of my to pop up and reflect on how things were going and suddenly a month had gone by and I still hadn’t written anything. six-month solopreneur sabbatical I thought it would be good to finally take some time to do that. Warning: this post is more personal and philosophical than my recent writings. There are emotions ahead. Proceed at your own risk. On Goals At the start of my sabbatical I spent two weeks traveling with my wife for a late honeymoon. It was the longest either of us had gone without our laptops since — well, probably since we’ve owned laptops. During that time we saw some amazing places and things, ate delicious food, and talked a lot about life and our futures. In the space without work — for the first time that I could remember — I had time and space to . think In place of a laptop I traveled with a paper notebook (ok, and a smartphone… I’m not a ). In the bits of downtime between meals and activities I spent a lot of time staring at blank pages in that notebook trying to figure out what I was going to do for the subsequent six months and why. psychopath I eventually started with the “what” (sorry ) — specifically what I wanted to do with the time. Simon Sinek I ended up writing down just two overarching things I wanted to accomplish: Apologies for the illegible handwriting and terrible photo quality (Lead a) More Balanced Life (Assess the) Feasibility of Entrepreneurship I knew instinctively that these were the things that were important to me, and once I had them written down it was easy to back out the “why”. Once again there were two simple, but big and important things: Ever the optimist, I actually wrote “happiness?” with a question mark Chart a Future Course Happiness Of course, when I got back from the honeymoon and actually started the sabbatical, I promptly forgot about that notebook. Fortunately though, these ideas ended up subconsciously guiding a lot of what I’ve done so far, so I was pleased to find them in there and was happy to see that they still accurately represent my priorities. “It’s not the plan that’s important, it’s the planning.” — Dr. Gramme Edwards So am I achieving these lofty goals? That’s the subject of the rest of this post. A More Balanced Life This one is fun because — as a religious time/activity tracker — I can pretty easily track this goal with actual data. Here’s my weekly “work” timespend for the first 16 weeks of the sabbatical. Time report courtesy of toggl As you can see I’ve managed to hover right around 40 hours a week +/- 10 hours and it averages out to almost exactly 40 hours per week (40 hours and 46 minutes, to be exact). Let’s compare that to my timespend in my last 16 weeks of my CTO job prior to the sabbatical. Note that the axis goes up to 80 instead of 50 here. That 30-hour week is the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Comparing these equivalent periods yields some pretty jarring numbers. In the 16 weeks of my sabbatical I have “worked” than the same period of time in my CTO job. That adds up to almost , or 30 8-hour working days — — of time I’ve reclaimed for other aspects of my life. 239 hours less 10 complete days 6 work weeks Where’s that time going? One fun piece of data to look at is opportunities to do other things outside of work. I started logging my runs, hikes and surfs in January, so I have two months of data pre-sabbatical and now 4 months of data from the sabbatical. Here’s what that looks like: Screenshots courtesy of way of life Surfing was actually going okay before the sabbatical started, but everything else took a huge jump starting in March (July is an outlier because I screencapped these on the 5th of the month). This balance has affected other areas of my life as well: time with my wife, friends, hobbies and more. I’ll have more to say about this later, but for now I think we can wrap this part up. Conclusion: I’m very much achieving a more balanced life. The Feasibility of Entrepreneurship The second goal I had was to assess the feasibility of entrepreneurship. I wrote about this in my , and even made this little diagram to try and articulate it. very first blog post Again, using question marks to convey my lack of confidence So how is this going? In a word I’d say… merrrr?!? I certainly haven’t ruled out the feasibility of entrepreneurship, but I sure as heck-fire haven’t ruled it in either. Here’s a rundown of the things I’ve made so far and how they’ve done: gets between 5 and 15 visitors per day and coryzue.com generates 0 revenue gets somewhere between 2 and 12 visitors per day and Mailchimp Tools generates 0 revenue has about 100 active users daily and Photos New Tab generates 0 revenue has 91 stars, 26 forks and My django wedding website generates 0 revenue gets somewhere between 10 and 30 visitors per day and Place Card Me generates 0 revenue Do you sense a theme? So currently I would say I am sitting squarely in that middle box. I’ve made things, I’ve gotten small numbers of people to use them, but I am getting paid and I’m a very, very, long way away from making a sustainable living from my products. not very On the bright side, I’ve learned a lot and I hopefully won’t repeat the mistakes I’ve made so far. In that means that with every day that goes by, I should be making better, smarter decisions about how to make money. In practice, I’ll probably just make a new set of mistakes. theory Conclusion: the jury is still out on this one, and it continues to be a high-priority goal. Charting a Future Course The larger purpose of my sabbatical was to answer that age-old question: what do I want to do with my life? Going into the sabbatical I knew I wasn’t happy with my current job, but what I didn’t know was . Was I just burnt out and over-stressed or did I actually no-longer like the work I was doing? And if the latter, what I like? why did Where was I going? And was it going to be any good? You can see how the previous two goals build into this one. A more balanced life hopefully eliminates the “stress” variable from the equation and creates a space for me to evaluate my professional objectives without them being clouded by long hours. Likewise the “feasibility of entrepreneurship” goal explores another variable — namely, what would I be doing if I work for my old employer, . The dream of completely working for myself, starting a successful side-business, and “making money while I sleep” were all enticing, but really I knew nothing about the reality of it — didn’t Dimagi including whether I could succeed at it. So exploring entrepreneurship was actually meeting two goals: the first one being , and the second one was a test to see whether I it. Both would be required for it to be a viable and attractive future course for myself. feasibility enjoyed I eventually realized that my goals for my future are actually quite simple and boil down to two basic things. I need to: Generate Enough Income to Live On Enjoy my Work That’s it! Seems pretty simple when you reduce it to that, doesn’t it? So now, all I have to do is find something that brings in enough money for me to live on, and be happy doing it. Once I figured this out I wrote these two things in boxes and started brainstorming what mechanisms existed for income generation and what attributes would satisfy my work enjoyment. That looked like this: I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether “improve lives” was the first or last criteria I wrote down So now, finally armed with this new outlook, all I have to find is something on the left that meets most of the needs on the right. For that reason I’ve been exploring more things than just entrepreneurship in the last month, including taking on more freelance consulting gigs, trying to make a return-path to my old job more concrete, and exploring the possibility of other products that leverage my strengths and might be easier to generate revenue from than a consumer SaaS. This new framing also means that entrepreneurship is a requirement if I can get most of the positive elements of the “enjoy work” section from a salaried position or consulting, which offers a lot more flexibility in terms of finding a happy future. not Conclusion: I still don’t know what I’m going to do next, but I feel like I’m on the right path to getting the data I need to decide. Happiness? Finally we come to that elusive and most important goal: happiness! So where do I find myself here? In a few words — and sorry about the bragging in this section — I would say, mostly kicking ass. In a way I’m cheating, in that I’ve taken the hardest and most important constraint in life — income generation — and set it aside for six months (thanks wife! ❤ you!). If I wasn’t significantly happier, I would be doing something wrong. really However, even given that, I’m overwhelmed by just how much happier I am today than I was four months ago, and not just because I’m not working in the traditional sense. still Happiness is a mountain-top with a view Within my sabbatical work I’m much more engaged. I’m learning new sectors and technologies. I’m meeting lots of different, awesome people in a more diverse set of industries and communities. I’m putting myself “out there” more, taking more risks, and failing much more often than before (in a good way). I’m to start work everyday. excited Outside of work I’ve managed to do something outdoors and active four or five times each week. I’ve explored trails all up and down the Cape Peninsula, seen more sunrises in 4 months than the previous 4 years, taught myself to surf — albeit poorly — and am probably in the best physical shape of my adult life. I’m also more engaged and attentive with friends, keep in better touch with family, and have more engaging and thoughtful conversations with my wife. Basically, I’m a better husband, a better son, a better friend and — quite frankly — a better person. What’s also striking to me about all of that is that I didn’t have to stop “working” 40 hours a week to make it happen. All I had to do was ask a simple question: — and proactively take steps to answer it. how can I be happy? From the initial asking of that question, I eventually decided to take a sabbatical and that’s led me to where I am today: facing an uncertain future, controlling my own destiny, and happier than I’ve been in years. Conclusion: sabbatical life has done wonders for my happiness, and I’m optimistic it will permanently change my life for the better. I really can’t recommend something like a sabbatical highly enough to anyone seeking happiness, and who also shares the privilege of being able to financially and logistically afford one. So…what could a sabbatical do for your life? Originally published at www.coryzue.com . If you liked this post please help by pressing the green heart to help others find it! Much thanks.

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