New year, new company, same dream

First off, Happy New Year everybody!

Well, it's official.  For the first time in my career, I have a boss.  It's kind of fun, actually. (I always wanted to know what it felt like to talk about the boss behind his/her back!  Oops, guess we'll see if he really reads my blog...)  Our acquisition by Intuit officially closed in mid-December, and for all of our customers who expressed some doubt, the earth still appears to be rotating around its axis!

I have gotten many comments from friends, family and customers along the lines of "man, this must feel SOOO good" or "how long until you buy your <insert material sign of wealth here>?" or "so you're totally checked out about now, right?"  Not exactly.  I appreciate the sentiments, but it doesn't really feel like that.  The people who have best related to our range of emotions are other entrepreneurs and very close friends/family who have watched us care and feed Homestead over the past ten years.  The simple fact is that selling your baby is hard and, once you do, it doesn't make you care about it any less.

No question, it does feel good to have external validation for something we've worked so hard to build.  But, as I shared with you in my original post about the acquisition, this is not why we strap on our boots every day.  In fact, having a third party pay a significant amount of money for our "work in progress" actually makes us feel even more of a responsibility to keep building.  We don't really know what else to do in both good times and bad, except keep building. 

I think this explains why people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Richard Branson keep showing up for work every day.  You get addicted to building things, not just for the financial reward, but for the feeling you get when you see employees loving their jobs, or customers who are addicted to your products, or a world that--in some small way--has one less problem, or one more smile.

So, I know I speak for all 150 people on the Homestead team when I say that selling our company doesn't mean we've reached the destination.  It's just a big milestone on a long journey.  And it hasn't changed our dream, except to make it bigger.

Thanks for all of your continued support, and we look forward to lots of exciting new adventures in 2008.

--jsk