2x ARR is low... But if they are making $600ARR and barely breaking even, enterprise and growth rates are slowing, or customer churn is high then it isn’t as healthy a business as it looks on paper. Especially if they don't have a new play in a highly competitive space where companies are looking to cut costs.
Author here. 100% this. I bought a fixer upper before my child was born. I gutted our house and did most of the work myself. I saved a lot of money. And I realized something… I don’t actually like home projects. Once my kid was born it exacerbated the issue. I didn’t have time. My wife is a full time caretaker, she was with my kid all week so nights and weekend is my time to lean in. Doing this myself would have strained our whole family. The time just isn’t there, I want to be a present dad, husband. And I want to do things I truly enjoy: making art, playing music, cycling. It’s not a fit for everyone where I’m at in life contracting out work I don’t want to do myself is preferable.
There are many comments on the price point. I would like to comment on one thing.
"$20k is too much"
I agree $20k is an investment. Could I have done it for cheaper? Absolutely. Would a DIY shell been cheaper? Would doing more of the work myself have been cheaper? Could I have saved by putting in the smaller stock windows and not having a skylight? Of course!
But I am a dad with a young kid, he was 1 when I built the office. I didn't want to spend my limited free time on this project. There was a trade-off between paying for labor and the time it would take to do it myself. At this point in my life I always look at these decisions through a lens of: is the cost savings worth my time. In this case I valued my time more than the cost savings. I was lucky enough to be in a situation where I would rather spend money for someone else to build this then spending my nights and weekends on this project.
I am almost 4 years in I would have paid over $20k for a co-working space. We were able to stay in our smaller house with a ridiculously low mortgage rate. We made the right choice for us.
Cheap is relative. Sometimes your time is worth more. There are litteraly entire companies built on this premise, cough DoorDash
I'm in the middle of finishing out my own (significantly larger) shed I just had built, basically all DIY except for the structure itself. The number that popped into my head at the start of your post was $30k - each step adds up when you're paying small job overheads. That you did it for $20k is pretty great.
My 12x16 took way more time, but I did it all myself. I mostly worked at night once the heavy loud stuff was done because of the young kid factor. But at only a couple hours a day, it took about 4 months. Although I did build mine down into a ~3 feet deep basement of sorts which complicated it (I didn’t want it visible from outside my fence). Even did off grid electric with solar to avoid needing contractors or permits. I won’t hate because I get the time trade off, and I really hate/appreciate a few trades more than before (drywall the most). For reference mine was $15k in 2025.
The main thing I’d advise people against and say you could have possibly saved on is the structure. Tuff Shed is usually over priced and could be built usually with $2k-3k of material and labor. But the time you did this may have made that hard too, all the contractors were slammed.
> But I am a dad with a young kid, he was 1 when I built the office. I didn't want to spend my limited free time on this project.
I am very glad that the grainy 40 year old photos of me at that sort of age with my father are us digging a hole together or me crawling around on a freshly poured slab of concrete - rather than at a soft play venue.
That does absolutely nothing for the time crunch. I'm more than happy to give my young child tours of my small construction site or whatever other projects are in progress. But it's not like I can also be working on things while doing that. And someone else was taking those pictures, right?
What memories with a 1 year old? Besides the fact that it's almost impossible to actively access memories from when you're 1 year old, a 1 year old shouldn't be anywhere near a construction site.
There are much better and safer uses of time together with a 1 year old that don't revolve on hoping they'd see a grainy (or nom grainy) photos 40 years later.
I did not reference memories anywhere at any time. I did not imply or state that I had memories of such, could access memories of such nor suggest it was possible in any way.
My handprints however are still in that concrete slab to this day.
Doesn't really matter. Why would it be better to be around a construction site that at a soft play center? Since you cannot remember anything voluntarily, anyway?
I understand the choice of a different activity for a 4 year old or something, or even for a very calm and prudent 2 year old.
Just for the photo? Who cares? You could have had the same grainy photo at the soft play center and it would have been as nostalgic.
I hate these ill intentioned judgemental comments like yours.
Yes, I do. And that's why I came down hard on the previous commenter.
Someone shared their benign personal experience and the FIRST reply was the Holier-Than-Thou typical garbage of "akshually, you're a bad parent because you did not do X Y Z parenting micro-optimization".
One one hand, "implicit memory" [0] begins at birth and being around one's father building impressive things is a huge bonding experience. Research seems to say that even at 1yo these things imprint on our brains.
On the other hand, it shouldn't get to a point where a 1yo is crawling into freshly laid concrete. There are safer ways to do it.
The 1yo stage is surprisingly convenient for that sort of stuff. At ages 2-4 they're much more mobile and experimental and harder to watch. Then from 4 or 5 upwards they're at school a lot and starting to lose interest in what their parents want to do.
Also, the first 18 months establish a good deal of a person's attachment security, connection to parents, and emotional intelligence. The brain continues to be flexible for some time, but gradually becomes harder to rewire.
> Then from 4 or 5 upwards they're at school a lot and starting to lose interest in what their parents want to do
I had to disagree with this. Thought this might be a European experience, in the US there probably isn't a lot of time to interact with the kids during the typical work week.
I would say that interest in what we do has stayed steady if not increased after about 3 years old because now they understand more things.
At this rate I expect the "losing interest part" to start during the tween (8-12) or teenage years.
So long as it is safe, a kid even at 1 years old should be tagging along with the adults doing things. Like building, working out in the yard, helping friends with projects, whatever.
It is very settled science that brain connections happen rapidly in these years. Bubble wrapping your children is not the way to go in my opinion.
Everyone is going to have a different take on this, but for me the choice is immediately obvious. Kids should fit into your life (within reason), not have you change to revolve around theirs.
That said - I highly doubt a 1 year old did much more than watch and have short visits while being cared for by someone not doing the construction work. It’s a great bonding experience even with limited direct involvement.
A half-mobile 1 year old can be quite hard to control. There is more than enough time for them to bond during a construction project in the following as-many-years-as-they-want-to-tag-along-until-adolescence-hits-hard".
If I would give a bit of pushback, it's really, really hard to understand the value assessments if you've never done the work yourself.
Part of the reason someone DIYs isn't that you're just trading time for money, it's that you understand the value of what you pay for in expertise. Even if you contract out in the future, you'll be better at getting value.
To put it another way, DIY is an investment in yourself. The things you learn doing the work you get to keep forever.
For myself, the biggest cost to doing DIY over many, many years has been an unwillingness to hire contractors because I know I will do the job better than them.
There are a few exceptions:
1. pouring a concrete pad (too dirty, too much work, needs a crew to really be done right)
2. adobe mud plaster (once you've seen people who know what they're doing do that thing, you'll know why)
3. diamond and venetian plaster (same as #2)
4. 3-phase anything (i understand the concept, but that's not enough)
but electrical, plumbing, framing, finish carpentry, flooring ... I'm sorry guys, but I'm better and I care more than most of you.
What I'm not: faster than you.
I'm sure there are amazing trades folk out there who could put anything I do to shame, but finding them and being able to pay them is another story altogether.
Hey I just wanna say, way to go, I loved your post. I like how you went on what I think is a good combination of DIY and paying people to do stuff. This is really relatable, I feel like most of the decisions in projects are deciding on what to focus on when.
Beyond the fact that there's absolutely no reason for you to post this, I'm not sure what you're looking at. I'm not a pro but I've been building sheds and things for decades and based on the pictures here I don't see low quality. Maybe I'd put more joists in the roof but Portland doesn't get a ton of snow so I'm sure it's fine. $2k is a fine price for that slab, especially compared to the pain of lifting 80lb bags of concrete yourself all day. People shouldn't be afraid of spending the money on a pro if they've got the money to spend.
Maybe he could have saved a few thousand with different subs (maybe) but your comments are nonsensical. I see tons of janky builds people post on Reddit and this is not one of them. You should spend your commenting time over there.
i think it is pathetic that your rebuttal to a comment you dont like is go back to reddit
youare the same type that tell foreigners to go back to their country because you dont like being called stupid more than you dont like actually being stupid20k for this is a joke like yoi
And he built a $20k shack with asphalt shingles and T1-11 siding. A fool and his money are quickly parted is the current state of building in America.
It looks poor, it is poor.
But we also have a whole nation who thinks paying rent, an HOA, who can take your home from you, is a good idea so everyone can look equally poor together in lower middle class homes with textured walls.
Huh. I would have gone the other route if I was going to rant and say there’s no way to do this for so cheap because I’ve looked at replacing a shed in NH with something a bit more sizable and while you can get a nice looking prefab for like 6-8k, that’s before the pad. Add in real windows and a mini split and insulation and I’ve no idea how to keep it that low, but I am jealous.
You can buy all the Quickcrete you want (not sure the last time you priced it), but it won’t make you good at pouring a level pad. That alone puts me off trying to do it some days.
He's getting downvoted, but he's not wrong - however, finding someone who specializes in doing this would be hard, and knowing how to word it so you can use "standard crews" would itself be $2-3k for a GC.
This is the danger of "cheap projects" - they can grow legs before you know it, and you end up paying half the cost of increasing the square footage of the house (or the garage).
Some things are deceptively complex (foundations and roof trusses come to mind) and the cost if you get it wrong can easily double the total cost of your build 6 months after you think you are done.
Walls, floors, ceilings and everything in between them are both less complex and cheaper to fix than foundations or trusses.
Unless he’s a commercial builder, I’d suggest he is wildly wrong about what is involved in properly pouring, leveling and making sure concrete has properly set in various weather conditions. And if you take a look at his post …
> I’m not even a commercial builder. A bag of Portland cement concrete is $5/bag. You don’t need to pay $2k for such a small foundation.
An 8x10 6” slab has 1.5 cubic yards of concrete. Making concrete takes more than a bag of Portland cement, you also need gravel, sand, a mixer, a wood frame, a source of water, shovels, floats, et cetera. If you want rebar, add in steel and rebar tools and wire.
You could frame up the wood yourself and have Cemstone deliver the concrete but you still need to spread it out, float it, and finish it.
Instead of buying or renting all of that, I would sub it out. I subcontract out light pole bases and concrete pads for transformers, EV chargers, and other equipment all of the time.
60lb premixed concrete bags are $5 in the US, and getting it delivered would be cheaper at this scale - the slab could cost under $500. The other costs sound normal -> materials + markup + labor. The more realistic money saving would have been a prefabbed module that doesn't need a slab for less than half the price. It would be easier to get rid of / sell in the future too. This looks much nicer though.
It isn't easy but you can economize with 4" in the middle. It will still be a lot of concrete to mix up if not using a truck. Fiberglass rebar is easier to wrangle for a DIY job as well.
Author here. I have heard this complaint from others before. If you live in an area where it snows I am assuming this would be a pain. But a 20 foot walk to my house is not a trek. If I was in an office the bathroom and coffee would be farther away. Honestly I like the outside part of the trek, it is a nice change.
Author of the blog post here. That new "for business" line was added in 2024, a year after I completed this build. It's good to know now though in case we sell and I want to do another build like this.
100% to this. Apple weather has a lot of the functionality but it’s not close when it comes to the experience. For wet climates like the PNW this is a hard change.
That's probably the reason. The OP's recent submissions on reddit are all to the same domain and if someone had a "nuke self-promoters" script I wouldn't be surprised if that triggered it.
There's some clues here about how to go about submitting your own off-site stuff:
I don't read r/technology but I checked it out and it looks like they're one of the subreddits that have rules in detail on old.reddit.com and tell people to go read there. The don't seem to have a rule against self-promotion, but there is a rule against linking to "social media" and I dunno if they would consider a personal blog to violate that rule.
I did wonder whether there were trackers or anything but I think OPs site looks pretty clean from what I bother to check (Privacy Badger, uBlock).
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