I hate it.

It’s an amazing resource, this internet thing, with Skype and Hangouts and email and online apps and GitHub and Stack.

But I hate collaborating online, when compared to working in an office with people. Phil Sugar just commented on this in response to my comment on AVC:

“One way or another you have to be able to assemble a small team and crank the vision, otherwise its a hobby.  I’m old school, but I also like an office, where you come in and work together.“

So much more is communicated in person than over a video chat. Or chat. Or phone.

I’ve been working for 3 years out my my home on a few different projects. I’m done with that. My goal is to raise a small round, get a team together, and crank in the same room together and release a great, focused first product.

The last year has been a hellhole of hodge-podge passes at the product. It’s not the quality of the people helping me, it’s our lack of focused, contiguous time together.

I finished up the next beta over the weekend, for the most part. There are some tweaks to the UI I’m working on this week, and given no rush and Christmas coming up, I’m going to do a slow release out to a few trusted people.

And then what? Well, any further work needs server work. Which means I either hire rails developers, learn rails, or move new stuff to Node, which is my inclination.

I’m tired of the remote thing. The goal is to raise enough to bring on a few team members and get us all in the same room. It’s so basic. I’d rather start from scratch with a team in the same place than continue to work the way I’ve been.

It works for some people, but it clearly doesn’t work for me.