Year one: what building Aildco taught us
Lessons from the first year — what worked, what did not, and why we would do it all again.
How it started
We did not write a business plan. We did not raise a seed round. We did not rent an office and fill it with bean bags. We opened a bank account, registered a company, and started sending emails to people we thought we could help.
The first client found us through a referral from someone we had helped for free. The second client came from the first. By month three, we had enough work to be uncomfortable about capacity and too busy to be scared about it.
The business model on day one: do excellent work, be easy to work with, and let people tell other people. It still is.
What worked
The projects we declined in year one were as important as the ones we took. We turned down two large engagements that would have been financially comfortable and creatively deadening.
We send weekly progress updates on every project. Not because clients ask — most do not — but because silence breeds anxiety. A short Friday email with three bullet points keeps everyone calm.
Our contracts are clear, short, and human-readable. We walk clients through every clause before they sign. By the time work starts, there are no surprises.
What did not work
We charged below market rate for the first two projects because we were building the portfolio. The clients were happy. We were resentful by the end. Low prices do not buy goodwill — they just make the work feel less valued.
In month five we had four active projects simultaneously. All of them suffered. We have since capped concurrent engagements and built a waitlist. Counterintuitively, the waitlist made us more attractive, not less.
Every project taught us something. We did not write any of it down until month eight. When we finally did, we discovered we had developed opinions and patterns that were genuinely useful — and could have been sharing them sooner.
Year two
Year two is about depth over breadth. Fewer projects, longer engagements, more of the kind of work that requires genuine trust to even propose. We want clients who bring us in before the wireframes, not after the failed launch.
Year one proved the model works. Year two is about making it sustainable — and making the work better.