Looking back at 2022 and forward to 2023
This is our yearly recap episode!
Personal updates from 2022
- Tyler
- Goals from last year
- ✅ Plan for travel as part of relationship
- ❌ Build more schedule flexibility
- Other updates
- Figured out personal finance plan with Shelly
- Goals from last year
- Rick
- Goals from last year
- ✅ Reprioritize daily personal health habits
- ❓Spend more quality time with Sable (have a date most weeks) and Oliver (take on errands)
- ❌Writing goals
- Goals from last year
Professional updates from 2022
- Tyler
- Goals from last year
- ❓ Spend more time working, but on my own terms
- ❓ Make space to do more individual contributor design work
- ❌ Release redesign of LACRM
- ❓ Two blog post-worthy updates per quarter
- ✅ Shift product priorities to be more focused on growth/strategy and less on low-impact customer requests.
- ✅ Run the coding fellowship
- Other updates
- More of a CEO, less of a manager
- Growth was bad, but not as bad as expected
- Product team got more focused
- Goals from last year
- Rick
- Goals from last year
- ✅ Structure a partnership and financial plan that enables JD to go full-time
- ❌ Grow the business to 400 clients
- ❓Fully automate the new user onboarding experience
- ✅ Help scale Windfall the right way
- Goals from last year
2023 personal themes/goals
- Tyler
- Take more vacation and make up for it with extra work days
- Start working towards my rich life: Renovate the house
- Rick
- Get weight below 200lbs
- Write a newsletter most Sundays (at least 27 Newsletters)
2023 professional themes/goals
- Tyler
- Reap the rewards we sowed in 2022 (marketing projects and product team productivity)
- Get back to decent growth: +$36k ARR per month
- More of a sense of urgency on the dev team
- Three major product wins
- Redesign
- Finish all "first round" growth projects (Zapier, API platform, event invites)
- Close the gap between us as other CRMs (email logging and/or kanban view)
- If there's a recession, minimize impact on customers and employees
- Rick
- Retain JD for another year
- Double the client base again (~200 clients)
- Build v1 of LegUp Benefits and get to $1k MRR
Biggest worry
- Tyler: Product relevance - Have we lost ground in the CRM market
- Rick: Personal and family health
What do we want to learn?
- Tyler
- How to communicate how decisions are made better
- How to simplify policies so they are easier to understand
- Rick
- How to build a SaaS via contractors and self-taught coding (i.e. without giving up equity)
- Further expertise in digital advertising and data
- Best practices for effective leadership (in the home, neighborhood, and workplace)
Predictions
- Tyler
- Generative AI will advance, but not break through in 2023 (it will still seem more like the future than the present at the end of the year)
- Binance and/or Tether will collapse, and Bitcoin will end the year down
- The recession will get worse
- S&P500 will be down over the first half of the year
- There will be more tech layoffs in 2023 than there were in 2022
- Rick
- Big swing back to co-location as a working requirement
- AI gets embedded into workflows for millennials
