6

1 Dec 2016 · by David DeSandro

Metafizzy is 6 years old today!

2016 was the biggest year for Metafizzy's product line-up. Major upgrades to three products, plus two new products.

But I'll be real here: I failed.

My goal for Metafizzy in 2016 was to grow license sales by 25%. Now that the year is closing, the numbers are in. Sales will have 0 percent change. That means Metafizzy kept pace with 2015 sales. That in-of-itself is an achievement. But it's nowhere near the goal or even the right direction towards it.

Rather than gloss over this failure, I mean to confront it. It's tempting to project a pastiche of ever-positive progress. I witnessed this behavior while working at Twitter. Failures were framed as lessons. Deficiencies were framed as opportunities. I appreciated the gesture, but what I really wanted was to someone to stand up say "We fucked up."

Metafizzy failed in 2016. I fucked up.

The plan was to do major upgrades to the three principle products, Isotope, Flickity, and Packery, then market these newly updated products. Upgrading the libraries was a worthy project. I'm happy with what I've made. But it was a bigger endeavor than I had anticipated. By the end of it, I was tired of working on the code. I was not motivated for a concentrated marketing effort.

New thing, shortsightedness on Bumpers

This break lead to Logo Pizza. The logos were received better than expected. But I stumbled again, this time in the follow-up. Anxious to start a fresh career in logo design, I said yes to a good number of logo projects brought in by Logo Pizza. Too many. I went from code burn-out to logo burn-out. Again, I'm proud of the work, but I'm worried what it cost.

So it's done. 2016 was not a bad year for Metafizzy — a lot of good stuff and progress was made. But I can't say it was a successful year. I failed the goal. I said it. I'm over it. Onward.