Poker Copilot: One Year Old

Today is Poker Copilot's 1st birthday.

From a year ago:

It's 30th June, 8:43pm, it's the target launch date, and I've made it.

A few minutes ago I uploaded the live version of the Poker Copilot website. Now you can download the trial version. You can also buy Poker Copilot.

In 1995, I ran into some guys I knew from university days, including Peter Lewis. Over lunch, I heard that Peter was producing Mac software under the guise of Stairways Software, and doing very well at it. I was astounded. It never occurred to me that real people could start one-person companies to produce and sell software. Producing software? That I understood. Marketing and selling software? I thought that was for Other People. Big firms.

Now I knew it was possible, this seemed a dream career. The seed of an idea was planted. However I was doing something else at the time that had nothing to do with software. Something that was far more important to me at the time. So the seed didn't take root.

In early 2000, inspired by the crazy dot-com money then flooding the industry and this Jakob Nielsen article, I tried to found a software company to produce content management software for intranets. Somehow though, contrary to my plan, it became a consulting company, and not a software-development house. After some years, I sold my remaining stake in the company, then travelled around the world for a year or so. When I started working again, it was as a body-for-hire contractor.

Now, I seem to have fallen on my feet with Poker Copilot. One year after releasing Poker Copilot 1.0, it's my main source of income, and I've made good progress on version 2. Almost every day I'm learning something new about developing, marketing, selling, and supporting software, and I'm lovin' it!