A Founder's Retrospective

From the Archives – 20% Time at MetaGeek

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Ryan Woodings

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From the Archives – 20% Time at MetaGeek

Originally published March 20, 2011

Last August we started a 20% Time program similar to Google, 3M and Westinghouse*. Everyone at MetaGeek can take up to one day a week to work on projects of their own creation… and I mean everyone, not just engineering. Marketing, finance, shipping… full-time, part-time, interns… everyone.

It’s been awesome! This picture shows some of the projects that people have worked on: everything from bi-weekly company barbecues to CWNP certifications, experimental hardware, inSSIDer for Linux, YouTube videos, and new ways to visualize Wi-Spy data.

We already had a very exciting roadmap planned for the next 18 months, but every month new ideas that started out as 20% projects become integrated into the official roadmap, constantly refining and improving our products… so stay tuned as these projects mature and are publicly released.

* Although Google’s program is the most famous, 3M and Westinghouse pioneered the concept back in the 60′s.

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I’m Ryan

Headshot of Ryan Woodings in a purple shirt

And this is a retrospective of the sixteen years from founding to selling MetaGeek. Beginning as a “side hustle” that quickly became a bootstrapped tech startup. We survived the 2008 recession, new product successes and new product failures. We learned through growing pains and shrinking pains. Lots of things went well, and lots of things didn’t go so well. This blog will explore it all…

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