How Hard Could It Be?: Unfocused and Unabashed

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Yes, I am that unfocused. Here I was, the CEO of a bootstrapped software start-up, and instead of making software, I was futzing around creating a custom shipping system.

There are plenty of companies that will do this for you at a reasonable price. And they're a heck of a lot better at it than I am.

I should be writing software. Or selling software. Or designing software. Software that our customers need, not software that we need for an in-house, peripheral, inconsequential function like selling a bunch of movies that were already a distraction from our actual product line (although they did get a lot of attention for Copilot.com, the remote tech-support system the interns were working on).

Making the movie was somewhat distracting. Sometimes when the filmmaker missed something really interesting, he would drag the interns away from their work to stage a reenactment. To their credit, the interns still managed to get their work done. But I'm more understanding now about why reality TV is so morbidly bad.

I'm still happy we made the movie. We ended up paying the filmmaker about $30,000. But DVD sales reached about $100,000, so we made a nice little profit. And the movie showed how much fun it is to work at Fog Creek, which helps us recruit great computer science students.

And I'm happy I took the time to build our shipping station because this is what it means to be a bootstrapped company: You grow slowly and carefully and you take the time to figure everything out. You build your own tools--not only to save money, but also so that you can make them exactly the way you want.

Many companies don't have time for this nonsense. They've got investment capital that they use to trade money for time. They might only get 95 percent quality instead of 100 percent, and it might cost 200 percent more, but who cares: They're growing at 963 percent a year!

The good news is, we have no outside investors, so I don't have to justify crazy projects to anyone. And here's the thing: Building the shipping station was probably the most fun I had all year. Isn't that a good enough reason to do it?

Frankly, the main reason I had to start this company was to have fun at work. Working at Fog Creek is intentionally designed to be pleasant. We started the business because we wanted a great place to work, to spend our daylight hours. And we have a disturbing tendency to try to do a lot of things ourselves, especially if it's going to be fun or if we think we can do a better job. It takes us a little longer that way, but I figure the journey is the reward.

Joel Spolsky is the founder and CEO of Fog Creek Software in New York City and the host of the blog Joel on Software. This is his first column for Inc.

To watch a trailer of the movie Aardvark'd, go to www.projectaardvark.com/movie.

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