Back on October 16, 2007 I set up shop here at AnotherStartup and began my journey toward a product launch. Truthfully, I had been considering commercialization (and blogging about it) for over a year, but the creation of this blog was a milestone in that it marked the official beginning of my Masters project at Purdue.
So it’s been a year since I began to commercialize ClimbPoint in earnest, and it’s been fun watching my ideas grow into realities. Here’s a look at what’s happened over the past year…
A few stats
My three most popular posts have been on crafting an effective elevator pitch, designing a decent logo, and finding icons for Windows applications.
I’ve also watched traffic to the blog increase steadily over the past year, and at this point I’m very close to breaking 300 page views per month. The last time I checked I also had 10-12 people who subscribe to the site feed or receive email updates. So the blog is still relatively small, but I expect that it will continue to grow steadily.
Above: page views per month since October 2007.
Major milestones
There have been a number of major milestones over the past year, which are summarized below. To this point the full release of ClimbPoint this past August was the biggest one, but I think the October announcement will eclipse that.
- Began a beta program with four universities – October 2007
- Released a beta version of ClimbPoint to the public – February 2008
- Learned The Art of the Start – March 2008
- Settled on a logo – April 2008
- Finished a new website – May 2008
- Attended my second Climbing Wall Association Summit – May 2008
- Released ClimbPoint 0.7 – August 2008
- Started building a sales machine – September 2008
- ??? – October 2008
It’s hard for me to keep the big announcement for October under wraps, but I think it’s substantial enough to warrant a separate post. Stay tuned 
To summarize, it’s been a great ride so far. There have been many ups and downs, but I’ve been able to move forward at a fairly steady pace. I continue to question my motives for starting up, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon. I do know that I enjoy creating useful, mistake-proof software, and it’s always rewarding to hear positive feedback.
