Thank You – We've survived a year!
We’ve a lot to be thankful for in our first year in business
Wednesday the 6th September 2017 is the day Tosbourn Ltd. turns one year old.
I’m not a big one for marking occasions – a year is a fairly arbitrary amount of time, I did want to mark the occasion by saying thanks to some people who have kept Tosbourn Ltd. in business by helping in some way.
There are many more people and companies who I am thankful to, hopefully you know who you are and aren’t too annoyed by your absence, I wanted to keep this fairly short.
The mentions in the following sections are in random order (well, pseudo-random, randomness is complicated).
Family
First up I want to thank my family.
I 100% need to thank Elaine Osbourn for being the most supportive wife ever. At the start of all of this she was completely supportive of my strong desire to work for myself, and for the last few months she has been an incredible help by joining the company as a second director and second developer!
She has done an amazing job of balancing learning web development, dealing with a stressy husband, and delighting clients all at the same time.
I also want to thank my soon to be brother-in-law Andy for sending me details of folk who needed web work done, it means a hell of a lot to think people are thinking about me when they come across that type of stuff.
I’m very aware of how easy it can be to focus too much on the business and not enough on family! I appreciate so much everyone’s patience whilst I work on that.
Clients
I’ve had the pleasure of working with some amazing clients, I love being able to work across so many different, interesting, and varied projects and with some incredibly smart people.
PiggyPot have been an absolute joy to work with. I’ve worked with a lot of the team before and respect all of them so much. They’ve given me opportunities to learn new languages like Elixir and play with tech stacks I’m not used to.
With Forward Leading I’ve had the privilege of seeing someone’s passion become a reality and oversee two iterations of a project in very quick succession. I’ve especially enjoyed getting to grips with the technical issues around multilingual websites.
Working with Nancy Estrocio on a project has been wonderful. She is incredibly easy to get on with and without having her as a client at the start of all this I may have been inclined to look for a full time job instead of strike out on my own.
Thank you all for all the amazing money opportunities.
Friends
There have been several people who have been incredibly supportive either emotionally or with sound business advice.
There are a few people I want to call out in particular, again in no particular order.
Najaf Ali for always sharing sound business advice and introducing me to many amazing people. I feel like I could ask him anything and get a timely and thoughtful reply.
I’d also like to thank Derek Johnson, I’ve ranted to him a few times about different things and he always seems to have something useful to say. He is also the best frontend developer I’ve ever worked with, knowing I am sharing something with him makes me want to up my game.
There have been a load of people who have recommended me for various things and offered moral support, one such person who comes to mind is Syed Humza Shah. Several times now he has went out of his way to pass on potential work he has seen or put in a good word.
Lovely humans the lot of them.
Thanks
Thanks to everyone, and here’s to another good few years to come.