phpworld keynote: Turning Your Code into a Company: The Parts They Don't Tell You by Luke Stokes

Turning Your Code into a Company: The Parts They Don’t Tell You by Luke Stokes - @lukestokes. Founder, CTO of Foxycart. Founded in 2007. Goal was to provide income for his growing family.

Starting a company is hard - it took 4 years of working full-time and then building Foxycart in the evenings and on the weekends, working as much as 10 hours on Saturdays. Don’t believe the hype on TV - Shark Tank isn’t real life. It’s hard to build a company. But it’s worth it!

A human being should benefit from what you do as a developer.

There’s no such thing as an overnight success.

Getting “funded” is not a destination.

Build a business, not a startup.

Think about what do you believe - what will keep you motivated at 2AM?

Your focus has to be about the customer.

Belief that commerce technology makes the world a better place kept Luke going as he built FoxyCart.

Coders are insecure - we have a habit of hiding our code away. Don’t be! Every failure is a step closer to success.

As a developer: solve problems, add value, keep learning.

Listen to your customers!

Motivation - passion is required, but it isn’t enough. Who will talk you off the ledge? Think about paying customers. Encourage each other.

There’s no glamour at 2AM - building a business is hard.

Solve real problems - if you’d pay for it, others might also.

How did Luke get to where he is with Foxy cart: slow and steady, grow the team with awesome people, focus on the product.

Focus on the product. Build a solid development team, not a sales or marketing team early on.

Fear can be healthy - don’t make the jump to full time with your new company until revenue is a nice, consistent positive number.

There’s great tools out there to help you build your company now. Check out https://bit.ly/foxytools for some recommendations.