How focusing on these 3 philosophies have helped us run a healthy business for 9 years (and counting)

We turned 9 last week.

This is the longest job that I’ve held and the memories of my corporate life prior to this appear blurry. There are days when it feels like I’ve always been doing this. But on other days, I feel as if I’m just starting out.

When someone asks me to share how does it feel to run a business for 9 years, I go blank.

Honestly, it still feels that I’ve to prove to myself every day that I’m capable of the opportunity destiny gave me.

You see, I’m not one of those visionary entrepreneurs who start out with crystal clarity of what they want from their ventures — world domination, unicorn status, or extradition charges.

I’m an accidental solopreneur who merely wanted to build design-led products with some cool people while having fun. I had no aspirations to change the world with it. I was merely trying to develop products for startups the right way. I had, both, succeeded and failed, and had learned some valuable lessons along the way. Primarily, what not to do.

I was completely enamored by IDEO’s and Apple’s design philosophy, Google’s work culture, and Thoughtworks’ approach to doing agile development. I wanted to mix all of that…