Today we officially launched our first product, Exceptional.
525 man days, 2472 commits, 5103 lines of code (83% Ruby, 16% JavaScript).
4 guys (me plus 3 fucking amazing team mates and business partners), 10 late-night deploys, 10 late-night arguments, 2 RailsConfs, 6 RailsConf tickets, 50 encouraging encounters with our Rails heroes.
1,345,346 Enterprise Ireland forms filled, 4 Amazon S3 instances, 680 users (with 10 new signups per day), 641 apps, 2 surprise competitors, 25,000 e-mail notifications per month, 1,000 SMSs per month, 1 app.
This has been a long, tough, emotional, risky and expensive adventure and without warning it was all made worthwhile: our first paying customer just signed-up.
At least once in your life, try this: make something someone wants and try to sell it to them. There’s so little science involved and so much magic that it’ll never be a risk-free affair. But it’s guaranteed to be a lot of fun.
We owe so much thanks to everyone that helped and encouraged us along the way (you know who you are). We couldn’t have done it without you. Our App School is just one way in which we intend to give back to those Irish guys and the others we can only pay back in love and respect. Cheers.
23 Comments
Congratulations guys. This really is great news.
Posted by David Barrett at 5:34 pm on 10 October, 2008.
I really wish you guys the best of luck with this - you are all so passionate about what you do, it’s fantastic and inspirational to see. Exceptional!
Posted by Stewart Curry at 5:36 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Your my heroes!, Getting your first paying customer is a huge milestone, well done!
Posted by Joe Drumgoole at 6:09 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Dave, Stu: Thanks!
Posted by Eoghan McCabe at 6:09 pm on 10 October, 2008.
A genuine milestone to be admired. Feck the beer — break out the champagne! And nice photo of the adoring woman gazing at Paul.
Posted by Brian at 6:25 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Great stuff, guys. Well done! I’d have to echo Stu above and say, if nothing else, that your obvious and outspoken passion continues to be an inspiration.
Best of luck going forward!
Posted by Michael Flanagan at 6:26 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Congratulations!
It was quite a surprise to suddenly see a picture of myself whilst reading your blog!
Very best wishes xx
Posted by aimee.mychores.co.uk at 6:33 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Congrats lads, really great to see this all coming together. Delighted for youse.
Posted by Dave Cahill at 6:36 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Fantastic! Seriously congrats guys and the very best of luck in what i am sure is going to be a bright future.
Posted by Alan O'Rourke at 7:19 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Bottle of Brunello on the way!
Posted by Lar at 7:59 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Hey Guys! Congratulations!!! I follow everything you do because it’s always a joy to read. Keep it up!! All the best from one of the adoring women
Posted by lena at 8:12 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Serious congratulations lads.
Posted by Damien B at 10:18 pm on 10 October, 2008.
Great job…
5000 lines of code!! I must write very verbose code
But what I really want to know… was it Eoghan’s Mum who just signed up?
-R
Posted by Robin Blandford at 1:06 am on 11 October, 2008.
Nice post - reminds me of our own late nights and heated arguments building TeamworkPM.
Best of luck with this Guys.
ps. I really like the product site.
Posted by Topper at 7:33 pm on 11 October, 2008.
Great work guys, congrats. Great blog post, love hearing the stats behind the project.
Posted by Lee at 5:07 pm on 12 October, 2008.
Congratulations guys.
I really like the app, and the pricing seems to be spot on.
Posted by Ciaran Lee at 11:49 pm on 12 October, 2008.
Congrats on customer #1!
Posted by Colm Larkin at 9:18 am on 13 October, 2008.
I love the cards.
Posted by Ron at 4:10 pm on 13 October, 2008.
Brian, Michael, Aimee, Dave, Alan, Lar, Lena, Damien, Robin, Topper, Lee, Ciaran, Colm, Ron: Thanks so much for your support!
Posted by Eoghan McCabe at 5:02 pm on 13 October, 2008.
Looks like a great app - I can’t wait to try it out!
Posted by Grant at 5:39 pm on 15 October, 2008.
Nice one lads. I sent Exceptional to some colleagues as a tool we should use in our new Rails project. I had no idea it had a bunch of Irish guys behind it.
Posted by Paul M. Watson at 6:19 pm on 15 October, 2008.
Congrats on the launch and the first customer. Does that mean that you guys are no longer doing apps for other folks and will concentrate solely on your own products?
I’m looking for some great talent to help me build some apps.
Posted by Allan at 2:16 am on 16 October, 2008.
Grant, Paul, Allan: Cheers!
Allan: We’re still making apps for good clients and will be doing so for the foreseeable future. I’ll drop you a mail.
Posted by Eoghan McCabe at 9:42 am on 16 October, 2008.