Six months on: Leaving Acumatica, traveling Mongolia, resuming my ERP consulting practice, and launching a new add-in for Acumatica and Excel
As some of you may know, six months ago I announced to my team that I was leaving Acumatica. Today marks the first time that I am publicly talking about my departure. My decision came as a huge surprise to people, but for me, it was the result of a very long process which started even before my first day at Acumatica in 2013.
Back then, I was in the process of ending a business partnership. Our business had grown very rapidly in the years following its formation but we had been going through a rough patch, with slumping sales and an increase in expenses for two straight years. Just as I was coming to the conclusion that I had to part ways with my then business partner, I was contacted by Mike Chtchelkonogov, co-founder and CTO of Acumatica, who had heard about my plans through the grapevine. It was the push I needed to finalize my decision, and it took Mike very little to convince me to join his company. I was about to enter into a non-compete agreement and wouldn’t be able to start a similar ERP business in my area for a while, and after running a business for 7 years I was ready to give the corporate world another try. It was a win-win decision for both of us: I knew Acumatica inside-out, I had a very good relationship with many key members of the development & leadership team, and it was going to be a good opportunity for me to learn a new set of skills as a product manager.
I was excited about the opportunity, but I also had some doubts: I felt like I was ignoring my entrepreunarial spirit and my passion for programming by accepting a product management role. After all, coding is what I had been doing since I was a child: I started reading programming books before even owning a computer, and used the money I earned selling hockey cards on the street to buy my first computer at 11 (a VIC-20); that eventually led me to build and launch my first real product, EZ Fence, at 16 years old.
I finally convinced myself to give the job a try for at least two years. I ended up staying for four years, which felt like one very long marathon.
To be fair, I was enjoying it, and being in a startup afforded me with the independence and ability to drive new projects and ideas almost as easily as when I was running my own business. There was often friction and frustration, but it was offset by all the new things I was learning and all the people I was getting to meet and work with inside and outside the company. I was also getting to travel around the world and spread the joy about Acumatica on a regular basis.
I have a strong type A personality, and one of my biggest challenge when it comes to work is saying ‘No’ to people. After a while, I hopped on the overcommitment train, and rather than pushing back, I doubled down on work to be sure I wouldn’t disappoint. That worked for a while, but eventually the constant stress and fatigue started to negatively affect my satisfaction at work, and more importantly my family life and personal relationships. I had lost my balance and simply could not continue at this speed.
It was time to re-evaluate my life, passion & purpose — and to do that, I needed a long break from the daily grind. In May, I officially tendered my resignation, with an idea of what I would be doing next, but with the priority of reconnecting with myself and my loved ones.
Disconnecting from the world in Mongolia
My oldest daughter loves horseback riding and while reading the local newspaper a few years ago I stumbled on an article in the travel section about a family of 11 (!) that was traveling across Mongolia on horseback. I promised her that one day we would do a similar trip. We enjoy traveling and rarely get an opportunity to be away for more than two weeks at a time. Having a full two months ahead of us was an opportunity we couldn’t miss. I would make good on my promise to my daughter, and early July we left for Mongolia for a long tour across the Gobi Desert and Central Mongolia.
For the first time in four years I was spending completely uninterrupted time with my wife and my kids. It was not the most relaxing trip, but everyone in the family was happy and our stress level was down to zero. Being around nomad families made me appreciate life’s most precious commodity: time. Simple living is what it’s all about.
Having no electricity, running water, let alone internet connectivity, I also had a lot of time every day to think about what I wanted to do next…
Going back to consulting
Some people love having lots of structure and direction, but others thrive on independence. Having spent roughly half my professional life on my own and the other half in the corporate arena, I’m more convinced than ever that being the owner of my destiny is the best way for me to succeed and be happy. Going back to consulting was the natural conclusion. This is what I was doing before joining Acumatica, and over the years I have built a very good network of customers that require the type of expertise I have to offer. I was never short on opportunities, and being experienced means you can choose your customers and projects. Building back my practice was not difficult.
I think that I’ve now found a good balance in life. Balance in the amount of work that I have, but also balance in the type of customers (big and small, local and international, direct and indirect), projects (pure development, integration, customization, architecture, ERP selection), and technologies (Acumatica, Dynacom, .NET, PHP) that I work on.
My company name is Velixo, and for now it’s mostly a freelancing business — it could just as well be called Gabriel inc. The biggest challenge for me will be to maintain that balance, and likely forcing myself to stay small or find a different and smarter way to grow my business.
…and launching a first product
One of the goals I set myself when I chose to go back to consulting was that I wouldn’t spend every waking hours of my day billing clients. I would do just enough to live a decent life, while making sure to be there every day when my kids come back from school to help them with their homework. I would also free up as much time as possible for learning and creative activities. With a systematic approach, i’m convinced that one day I will strike gold with an idea that will evolve into something bigger. Minimally, I will build a portfolio of new products and services that I can offer to my customers.
Velixo Reports for Excel and Acumatica is the first outcome of that approach and the result of a consulting mandate I’m doing with a French accounting firm doing finance and accounting BPO for one of the largest chain restaurant operator in Europe. Every month, they need to prepare a complex spreadsheet containing more than 50 tabs, with hundreds of rows and sometimes dozens of columns in each, and upload it to the SAP system used by the head office. There is no way on earth you can simply export a report in Acumatica and expect to match the layout required, and manually entering the data would require days and days of work every month. What if we could harness the power and speed of Acumatica ARM financial reports directly from Excel?
Velixo Reports for Excel and Acumatica
I’m afraid i’m not going to tell you more about it today, beside the fact that it will initially be offered as an open source product, and that the first pre-release will be available tomorrow. This post is also an opportunity for me to announce that I will be blogging here on a regular basis, starting with a post on my new add-in. I have a set of (mostly technical) topics centered around ERP software development that I would also like to cover in the near future, and I sincerely hope that you will enjoy the content I have to share with you.
