In-depth founder interviews, MRR journeys and post-mortems, with the real numbers.
140 posts
A composite founder diary. A preservation demand landed 22 days after my 90-day retention rule had already deleted the exact window it asked for. Rule 37(e) has three conjunctive conditions, and most of the panic failed at the first one.
Ruby Central's Form 990 reports $3,107,120 of revenue in 2024, the best year in its history, and a $160,579 surplus. Sixteen months later its board said the organisation was in real financial jeopardy. The number that reconciles the two is the reserve: 11.5 days at the end of 2023 and 44.8 days at the end of 2024.
A composite founder diary. I tried to write off $18,470 of stale customer credits and found that Delaware voids the expiry clause I had written myself, that the $50 threshold I relied on governs a letter rather than a liability, and that two states' notice windows never overlap.
Software in the Public Interest reported $685,055 of revenue and $925,737 of expenses in 2024, a third consecutive deficit. Its audited statements report a different revenue figure for the same year, and the Part X split shows the shortfall belongs to the projects it sponsors, not to SPI, whose own reserves rose 46.22% while Debian's balance fell 63.40%.
A composite founder diary. I sent a $21,600 collection letter and got back a sentence about a certificate I did not hold. California bars an unregistered company from suing on that business while deeming it to consent to being sued. The threshold that decided it was $177,000, not the $757,070 every guide quotes.
NumFOCUS reported $8,376,226 of revenue and $11,090,430 of expenses in 2024, its second consecutive deficit. The two returns carrying those figures are not on its own public records page, and the line that would tell you how much of the money it can actually spend is left blank on both.
A composite founder diary. A customer filed Chapter 11 and their counsel demanded back $8,550 of ordinary subscription payments. The statute prints a $5,000 floor; the operative floor is $8,575. I was twenty-five dollars under a line I did not know existed, and the date that decided it was not mine.
Two of Conservancy's Form 990s are filed with the IRS and published nowhere. Revenue fell to USD 2,487,144 in the year to February 2024 and recovered to USD 3,214,723 in the year to February 2025, while unrestricted reserves more than halved. Three filings, 63 arithmetic checks, and the one dollar that does not reconcile.
A composite founder diary. A customer's procurement form asked whether we were a high-risk AI system under the EU AI Act. The headline penalty is EUR 35 million or 7% of turnover. Article 99(6) quietly inverts that for small companies, and the exemption I chased turned out to carry its own registration duty.
Eleven years of ISRG's tax filings and seven annual reports, assembled into one table and audited three ways. Revenue collapsed 36% in 2023 and rebounded 85% to a record in 2024, the question has two correct answers 733,260 apart, and the filing that carries the answer has no structured record anywhere.
A composite founder diary. A 190 line fork of an AGPL library, shipped and forgotten for fourteen months, drew a demand for the complete source of a 148,000 line platform. The licence asked for something 779 times smaller, and the letter turned out to be the only route to permanent reinstatement.
Eleven years of the OpenStreetMap Foundation's filed accounts, assembled into one table and checked three ways. 2024 was its best year for income and its worst for losses, corporate membership now pays for half of it, and the most recent accounts are missing from the page that lists the accounts.
