Each year we put together an overview of the status of the company. It is less about the exact numbers, and more about how and where we spend our time and money. The company continues to evolve. You can read any of our previous Annual Reports.
These are meant to be a guide for others who might be starting out or struggling. We’re definitely not the “best” or “right” way to run a company. We’re a small, digital company, if you are too, then knowing where your money is going compared to others can be helpful.
Finances
We exported all our invoices from the bookkeeping software and much like everything, we’re pretty steady. We’re sending ~1.5 invoices a month. One invoice is our retainer, the others are additional projects, usually in Australia, sometimes Iceland or the UK.
| Year | Customers | Invoices | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 02021 | 3 | 12 | EHF. company transition from SLF., not a full financial year |
| 02022 | 4 | 18 | Two customers should be merged. The same project, invoiced to a different company. |
| 02023 | 3 | 16 | |
| 02024 | 3 | 17 | |
| 02025 | 2 | 18 |
In 02025, we invoiced 2 different customers. There is a 3rd customer missing from this year. It was a small project for a friend who’s working with an Icelandic company that needed some HTML/CSS/PHP help with their WordPress templates. We did the work late in the year and they reviewed it and had more ideas. Rather than send two small invoices we are in the process of bundling them together. So we did the work in 02025, but will send the invoice off in 02026!
All our 02025 customers were from abroad. ~92% of our income currently comes from a single US customer that we are on a retainer. That doesn’t mean it is a single project! We’ve probably had conversations with 6–7 different companies. It’s great work, fun, and interesting, but we are well aware it is a single point of failure. We’re pretty comfortable with all the teams we work with and could we “cut out the middle-man” if needed. We’re not worried about the interactions and relationships, but more about the declining exchange rate.
In 02026, one of our goals is to get back into local networking and look for more paid projects locally.
There are also several other projects that we are trying to turn into products. PETALS, a dog-based app idea and a web service are all volunteer work between jobs. The goal is to grow them into revenue generating projects.
Services
Programming/Prototyping & Ideation
The vast majority of what we’ve been doing has been programming. HTML/CSS, Django/Python, iOS and PHP are some of the languages we’re paid to use.
Software is malleable. We’re much more in the ‘use it like a hammer’ camp than ‘use it like a scalpel’. For most of the teams we work with, the software is either a temporary solution, or something that is supporting another tool. No one asks for ‘a great app for my apartments’ they ask for ‘an app for our sales people to sell more apartments’. That changes the narrative and means we are always shifting priorities.
Sometimes that means the software works just well enough and isn’t robust for the future or large traffic. Those are problems we’ll solve when they come-up. We are building for the immediate needs rather than ‘what ifs’. That does lead to some decisions being bad ones in the long term, even though they were good for the short term. It also leads to some crufty code, but we’re ok with that since some of these projects get cancelled. We’d rather get 3-4 valuable tools in their hands quicker and getting feedback sooner than waiting for ‘the perfect solution’.
Meetings
From Jan-October, we had daily stand-up meetings. They were only (suppose to be) 15 min each day, but sometimes they dragged on or we had much longer reviews. In October, we were no longer needed in attendance and that freed-up our afternoons. Since then we probably spend only 2-3h a week in various meetings.
We have a loosely schedule Monday meeting, which is an hour blocked out of our calendar to meet-up and chat with a few people in the UK. It’s been a nice way to both not talk-tech, but also get feedback, listen and offer ideas to everyone else who joins the call.
Data Analytics
This year was actually pretty minimal when it comes to analytics. We worked pretty hard the previous year(s) getting everything into a good spot with Spellstruck. Now we are just making sure things keep running as expected.
We volunteered at ‘Game Makers Iceland’ help any teams with analytics, but no one took us up on the offer.
Consulting
Toward the end of the year, we were brought in on a project to just ‘get the app to connect to a different API’. That turned into a whole new prototype to connect to the new API and then we’ve stuck around and are involved in consulting and prototyping while they raise money.
Design
All the prototype projects we did this year we also designed. There is only one project which we worked solely (so far) as a designer. For that project, we created a storyboard for a short six-minute VR film idea. First was hand sketches, then some placeholder renderings. We put that into video editing software with temp tracks and placeholder videos. This was never meant to be the product, it is the ‘object’ the rest of the team uses as their starting place. We didn’t want to get lots of talented, expensive experts together and everyone to stare at a blank page and argue about what todo. At least with this design prototype we can start a genuine conversation about what’s good, what’s bad and how to fix it.
Expenses
| Category | 02015 | 02016 | 02017 | 02021 | 02022 | 02023 | 02024 | 02025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office Supplies | 1.49% | 3.80% | 2.44% | 12.29% | 7.1% | 1.96% | 4.75% | 4.9% |
| Tax | 55.78% | 57.63% | 52.22% | 35.24% | 53.3% | 25.04% | 43.22% | 42.1% |
| Salary | 34.84% | 33.76% | 38.39% | 46.51% | 36.9% | 67.10% | 47.19% | 52.0% |
| Conferences | 2.34% | – | 5.05% | – | – | 2.39% | 2.61% | – |
| Projects | 1.69% | 0.27% | – | 3.6% | – | 0.83% | – | 0.3% |
| Professional Services | 2.72% | 5.56% | 1.64% | 2.36% | 2.7% | 2.68% | 2.27% | 0.8% |
Like last year, we’re looking at the last 10 years of spending and comparing. Right now, categories are pretty stable. We haven’t done any travel, so Education, Conferences are 0%.
Our Projects have also been slow, therefore we haven’t spent much on them. It is also a grey area since ‘web hosting’ is a fixed cost in ‘office supplies’ our side project costs are absorbed into general operating costs. Most of the actual project spending is direct domain renewals or printing costs.
The big surprise was that our professional services costs dropped. In 2021, when we restructured the company, we stopped paying an accountant to do everything. Instead, we use PayDay.is web-based bookkeeping software. The cost of the software, plus our new accountants, was around the same cost as just letting the old accountants handle salary, taxes, invoices and receipts. The downside using the old accountants was that we had no idea of our financial status. We took over that roll, which requires time from us, but we have a much better sense of the company’s financials. The PayDay monthly software subscription is put under Office Supplies (which has remained constant), but finally our hard work reconciling all the bank entries has dropped our annual Professional Services cost!
Much like 02024, we spent more money than we brought in. Over 12 months we only lost a small amount. We closed the overall gap with additional projects and revenue. The biggest factor is that at the start of 02025 the exchange rate between the US dollar to the Icelandic kronur was ~140, but has since dropped down to ~125. That’s an 11% decrease in our USD invoices. Had the exchange rate remained the same, we’d easily be in the black!
Travel & Conferences
It was a busy year and we stayed at HQ. We didn’t attend or present at any conferences (local or abroad) and we didn’t travel for work or meetings. It was nice and the year flew-by, but sometimes it is also good to get out, mix and learn with other folks.
Publishing and Web Stats
We’re moving all writing and publishing information over to the annual Omnibus article. You can see the full table of Web Traffic Stats there. Here is a short list of the top visited webpages.
| Article | Year | Traffic |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome, the entire land | 02009 | 20.47% |
| Yankee Candles Levels of Abstraction | 02022 | 15.95% |
| SF Symbols Font | 02019 | 2.43% |
| What 2D Barcodes aren’t | 02011 | 2.21% |
| Near future of sports from a spectator’s point of view | 02009 | 1.58% |
| CERN Line Mode Browser | 02013 | 0.99% |
| TweetCC a Creative Commons Journey | 02010 | 0.94% |
| Color Name Abstractions | 02022 | 0.80% |
| Titanic: Behind the numbers | 02012 | 0.78% |
| Latency and the Sea | 02025 | 0.78% |
| iPhone IR Photography | 02023 | 0.78% |
| Pool Numbers | 02022 | 0.70% |
We publish our content as articles on /required and via our feeds. We also have a newsletter which is unique content not published here. You need to subscribe so it gets delivered straight to your inbox. Occasionally, we’ll post something to social media (LinkedIn or Mastodon)
iOS Camera Apps
In 02025, we publicly released three iOS camera apps and we have 2+ more that we’re still testing internally. We made these fun little apps not to compete with others, but to scratch our own itch. When it comes to photography and seeing the world in a different way, we thought it’s worth sharing with others.
 Download DejaView on the App Store |
 Download Ornithoto on the App Store |
 Download Camelut on the App Store |
You can read more about each: DejaView, Ornithoto, Camelut and all the other photography articles.
Projects
In late 02023, we started the trend of working closely with an external company to help them build a prototype to secure funding. Christmas 02023 was rough with weird meetings and deadlines that eventually all fell apart. Half that team split and started a new project. In 02024, we worked closely with them to get their core service up and running and tested. Once they secured some funding, we extracted ourselves and they built their own internal team.
In 02025, we did a similar thing over the summer with a new company. This was focused on WebRTC. The project was due to wrap-up at the end of the summer, but here we are in January and we’re very close to letting friends beta test. At that same time, we started helping yet another nascent company get their prototype off the ground. It’s been slow, but very promising. We have several pilot tests planned and we’ll see where that leads.
We also got pulled into a “quick” prototyping project. We worked closely with ████████ to mock-up an app that blended their offerings with a potential buyer’s. They met with ████, █████, ████, and other publicly traded companies. Our prototype was used in meetings to demonstrate the power of what the acquisition would mean.
Notes for 02026
The first quarter of 02026 is already packed. Traditionally, we have big surveys in February, March and April. There is a lot of planning and prep work. A very old health survey woke-up in the summer and wanted to be ready by New Years. That didn’t happen. In January, we’re working with their tech team to replace the Icelandic Single Sign-On service which closed for non-governmental agencies.
We were also asked to put in an RFP for a big project in 02025, but it was so vague we opted out rather than get shackled to something that had no chance of success. Strangely, we might still get pulled into the project through the side-door.
For the last few years we’ve been helping a premium real-estate company with advertising their offerings in VR. We’ll continue to do that in 02026. One of the properties also requested an app. We’re looking into the logistics and budget of helping.
UTMessan tech event is the first weekend of February. Our friends from Worldmapper will have a presentation and booth. We made a VR prototype with their cartograms. The next step is to clean-up the images, since they were never meant to be shown in 360, and work a bit on how we’re going to demo this at their booth.
Publishing
In 02025, we challenged ourselves to write something every week and we did! We want to keep a similar pace in 02026, but don’t feel that we need to write every week just to write. So maybe we’ll miss some weeks in 02026, but that’s ok. We are still actively publishing our ◍ Quarternotes newsletter and would like to get back into the more relaxed ⪮ Good Morning newsletter in some fashion.
Internal Project
We have 3 internal projects we’d like to focus on more in 02026.
- Time Tracking Web App
- On Demand Printing (Adventure Mazes and a new project)
- A dog related service
We’re dog-fooding our own time tracker and have one other company using it. We need to add more beta testers to get feedback and improve it.
The On Demand Printing just needs some attention. It is all there and working, but finding the right time and place to promote it is not our forte.
The new app idea comes from a nephew who’s really taking the ball and running with the idea. We’re mentoring and volunteer helping along the way. We have a new potential team member and we’re attending some events at the end of the month to learn more about product pitches and fund raising.
Those are the 3 we want to focus on, but there are a BUNCH more ‘weekend’ projects that we’d love to see come to fruition as well.
Workload
We’re never not busy. We have a good mix of paid projects, fun projects, volunteer projects and potential projects. In 02026, we need to add ‘local’ projects into that mix and rebuild our network.
Good luck, it’s tuff out there so lend a helping hand when you can. Always remember:
A rising tide lifts all boats.