Matt Bearman

Ramblings about anything that interests me - mainly Music, Cars and Entrepreneurship

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Recognising and dealing with burnout

I’d read plenty about burn out, as unfortunatley it’s a pretty common occurrence amoung tech start ups. The combination of high stress and long hours seem to be a great recipe for burn out.

In that classically human way, I’d always thought it would never happen to me. Although this wasn’t just denial, I really thought I was safe from ever getting burned out.

I don’t buy into the mentality that you have to work 80+ hour weeks to build a successful business, and as such I maintain a pretty good work/liffe balance. When I was running Saber, my average work week probably involves only 35 hours of sitting in front of a computer screen. Sure, some weeks I’ll work more if I’m really in the zone, but it’s by choice, I avoid ever feeling like I have to work long hours.

I also consider myself to be a laid back person, I don’t get stressed out easily. Hence I thought I was safe from ever getting...

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Why I sold my startup for £100,000

I launched Saber, my website feedback tool, as a side project in 2011 - back then it was called BugMuncher. Four years later I decided to stop working as a freelance web developer, and put all of my time, and savings, into trying to grow Saber to the point it could pay all my living expenses, and turn a profit.

I documented my progress with complete transparency on Saber’s blog, and after a little over a year of working full time on Saber, I achieved my goal. Saber was profitable.

This is the final entry in my transparent blog series, as from 1st April 2020, Saber is no longer mine. I have officially sold it.

To anyone who’s been following my progress taking Saber from a side project to a profitable startup, my decision to sell Saber may come as a bit of a surprise. After all, a lot of my previous writing has been singing the virtues of being a bootstrapped, solo founder.

For the...

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