Brett and me at SunshinePHP in 2016
Just over three weeks ago on Friday, February 16th, from a hotel room in Acapulco Mexico, I sold my half of FoxyCart.com to my business partner. I'm now focusing full-time on cryptocurrency-related opportunities and ventures. Technically, I'm no longer a business owner.
That's a really strange feeling.
As I talk about that feeling, I'll include some screenshots of the FoxyCart website from the way back machine.
February 2007
Major Foxy releases
I created FoxyCart, which has now become Foxy.io, with my business partner and friend @brettflorio over ten years ago. It's a platform for enabling merchants to add custom ecommerce to their existing websites and projects. It's just the cart, checkout, and receipt instead of trying to do everything including inventory, order management, and fullfilment. Even with our narrow focus, we still include recurring payments, downloadables, shipping, taxes, coupons, discounts, single sign-on, and more.
I've put so much of my life into this code with many major releases over the years and a really kick-ass Hypermedia API that got a lot of attention in the API space. I'd go to API conferences and hear people talking about this Medium post I did in 2015 Why Your Colleagues Still Don’t Understand Hypermedia APIs (which I also published on Steemit).
In 2014, I gave a keynote presentation at PHP World on turning my code into a company. I've spoken about FoxyCart and what we developed at conferences in Texas, Tennessee, Washington D.C., Florida, and South Carolina. I've spoken on a number of podcasts including:
- WCN14: Luke Stokes on FoxyCart and Bootstrapping a Startup
- Wide Teams #39: Luke Stokes and Brett Florio of Foxycart
- Voices of the elePHPant: Interview with Luke Stokes
- The Entrepreneurial Mind: Luke Stokes - FoxyCart
- Entrepreneur On Fire #705: Luke Stokes: How to live life on purpose
FoxyCart has been a major part of my identity for over a decade. People would see me at conferences and say, "Hey, you're the FoxyCart guy, huh?" The funny thing is, over time, they started to call me the "Bitcoin guy" as well. I've been talking about cryptocurrency pretty consistently since the beginning of 2013 (I'll be sharing a bunch of bitcoin tweets from 2013 soon, so stay tuned).
May 2012
FoxyCart has been such a big part of my life that it's strange to imagine being without it. The team Brett and I built and the thousands of stores who use Foxy daily now get along just fine without me. I know, because I've been mostly uninvolved since the beginning of this year as a sort of trial run and things have been great.
Over the years, we've built so many great relationships with the PHP community both by sponsoring events and by speaking. Brett even gets into the crazy stuff like Regex:
Our rainbow-pooping unicorn and shark-with-friggen-lazer-beams shirts have always been a hit in the community.
It'll probably take some time for people to not think about me as the "FoxyCart guy." It's taking me some time as well.
December 2012
I shouldn't be too surprised, as I could see this change coming from a long ways off. Back in January 2013, when I bought my first bitcoin (I paid $50 for 2.5 BTC), I knew blockchain technology would revolutionize the world. I gave a Nashville BarCamp talk about how Bitcoin may be more disruptive than the Internet. I was already fired up about it way back then.
I remember trying to convince Brett shopping carts themselves would go away once everyone started using Bitcoin. I pushed hard to get a Coinbase integration in January 2015 and BitPay before that in 2013. We actually have an entry on the Bitcoin wiki which I didn't know about until writing this post.
I've been pushing cryptocurrency through FoxyCart for quite some time:
- April 2013: Why Does FoxyCart Support Bitcoin?
- November 2013 Could Bitcoin Be More Disruptive than the Internet?
- December 2013: Why Shouldn’t You Accept Bitcoin?
- February 2014: We Took a Risk with Bitcoin. Should You?
April 2015
Working with cryptocurrency projects has been my passion for a while now. I started the first Bitcoin meetup in Nashville in 2013 and was mentioned in the Tennessean as well.
I also watched as the price of bitcoin skyrocketed up to ~$1,200 and then crashed back down to ~$250. I didn't sell then because I truly believed in the long-term value being created. It was sad to see community excitement and involvement go down with the price. I got voted in to participate in a non-profit idea to help onboard people to bitcoin in Tennessee, but that unfortunately turned out to be a big waste of time. Fortunately, I met @sean-king through that group who was one of the two people (along with @billbutler) who first told me about Steemit.
Steemit changed everything for me. When I joined in June of 2016, I immediately knew this is what I've been waiting for. This is a killer app for mass adoption of cryptocurrency. All my efforts to get stores to accept bitcoin were not helpful because everyday users weren't demanding to pay in bitcoin. Critical mass had not yet been reached and wouldn't be reached for quite some time without a way for normal people to get some exposure to cryptocurrency.
Even when I was promoting FoxyCart, I was rocking my Steemit shirt:
I've been excited about this place since day one. I've heard many people tell stories of quitting their jobs and "going full-time with Steemit" and it always made me cringe just a little. I had to ask myself what value are they bringing to really justify quitting their jobs and cashing out enough STEEM to live on or support their family? Are they just living off the value of other investors supporting the price of STEEM?
Foxy.io Today, March 2018
I don't want to tell another story about how I'm cashing out STEEM which only has value because others are investing in it. Since I've already paid off my house with bitcoin, I'm in a pretty good financial place to take some risks. I'm able to focus full-time on what I'm currently most passionate about: distributed ledger technology practically implemented to improve the world. I hope to diversify within the cryptocurrency space to have multiple forms of income instead of just relying on value increases in my portfolio.
I plan to blog on Steemit, remain active as a STEEM witness, support interesting masternode projects like SmartCash, engage in more cryptocurrency trading opportunities, and (eventually) focus on learning C++ and learning/contributing directly to blockchain (and possibly DAG in the future) core technology. I may also engage in some for-pay consulting and conference speaking.
I plan to continue adding value because I do believe, if you help enough people, you'll never have to worry about money. I do think the early adopters who are educating and empowering others for the future tokenization of the world will be greatly rewarded for their efforts.
I believe in a decentralized future where we use technology to live more free, voluntary lives.
I'm so thankful for Brett Florio who made this transition easier than I could have imagined. I could do a whole post on how we went about exiting from a 50/50 partnership and how we worked so well together for so many years. He remains one of my best friends and someone I enjoy talking with every day. I'm also so very thankful for my amazing wife @corinnestokes who is willing to take a risk with me and leave behind a stable company we spent ten years building to branch out into the unknown, even with three kids to care for. Her support is invaluable.
It's taken me a bit of time to write this post because there are so many emotions involved with changing something so fundamental to my identity. I'm not yet sure how I'll answer the ever-so-common "So, what do you do?" question. I don't know what the future will look like. Interestingly, multiple amazing opportunities have been put before me already. I hope to continue living a voluntary life, spending time with my family and friends, and adding value to the world. I hope to never have to take a "job" again (even one I bulid for myself as I did with Foxy). I hope to dynamically, each day, work on what interests me most and what adds the most value.
Thank you so much to all my friends and supporters here on the STEEM blockchain for being with me on this journey.
The family and I are headed to Puerto Rico for a couple weeks to celebrate and attend the Blockchain Unbound conference. If you're in the area, come say hello!
