What it takes to launch your own company. By yourself.

February 20, 2025

Miles, my cat, is sitting on my lap and digging his claws into my legs as I type this. The photo above is of two prototypes with enclosures I made on the 3D printer. Should I make some pedals this way for sale? I'd have to figure out how to close the bottom. They're kinda neat though!

I've been working on getting Maysonic Pedals launched. There is SO much to do. There's the obvious and most important things like getting my first circuit dialed in to perfection. That's almost the easy part, ironically. To do that all I need to do is have my guitar and breadboard and enough time to spend dialing in the circuit until the tone is right and the feel is right. It does take time and it's not easy but it is almost a meditation. I do need the right parts on hand of course to meet my sonic goals.

And then, speaking of parts, I need to spend time sourcing parts - particularly transistors and capacitors but even my preferred resistors can be hard to come by. It's getting harder and harder to find good through-hole parts these days and some of the types I like to use have either become obsolete or they have terribly long lead times. Oh, and now there's tariffs. And while it's not that expensive to source the parts to build ONE pedal, try sourcing enough parts to build dozens or hundreds of pedals. And I need to invest that money up front in the hopes that I will recoup it by building and selling the pedals. Sourcing parts is almost a full time job in itself.

Then there's the website. Fortunately today there are great platforms available to be able to configure a really nice website that can do sales transactions and handle payments and shipping carriers without coding. But someone has still got to design, configure, and maintain it.

Then there's the financial stuff. Accounting software. Bookkeeping. Rules and regulations. Payment systems. International export regulations. Tax filings. Managing cash flow. Budgets. This is also a full time job in itself.

But the challenge is remembering where it all starts. From the love of music and the sound of the electric guitar. The challenge is finding time to play. And to grow as a guitarist.

And of course I need to keep up with social media posts. Like this blog!

May 13, 2025

The past couple of months have been very stressful. I'm trying to start Mayasonic with my own meager funds — slowly dwindling down from living expenses and the myriad expenses involved with getting Mayasonic going. I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to make it.  Everything is hurry up and wait. I've had a few great circuits dialed in for some time now. That was almost the easy part. But there are so many moving parts to this machine known as Mayasonic Pedals LLC.

And we're living in a time of great turmoil and change. In the past couple of months we've all been faced with an economic roller coaster of insane tariffs. I am still waiting on critical parts to be able to build my pedals and they are being manufactured in China. As of last week I was faced with having to come up with 200% (!) of the price of my order to get them here — the total tariff was at 175%. And then with shipping it was basically 200%. Bloody f'in hell! But this week the they started to roll back the tariffs. As I type this they are at "only" 82.5% on the parts I ordered. My nest egg is trying to hang on long enough to get to product launch.

But every time I plug into the first pedal I'm releasing, Fuzz One, I know I've got something guitarists are going to love. I've always been extremely picky and every pedal I've ever designed I gave my utmost obsession and Fuzz One is no different. I do have those days though — the imposter syndrome days where I wonder where I got the audacity to think anything I came up with was any good at all.

I'm really grateful to the people that have supported my work during all this time. I'm always humbled by the kind words people write about the pedals I've designed over the years. Special shout out to you, the person reading this, for caring enough about what I do to bother reading this! Thank you.

August 6, 2025

I ended up spending the past two months mostly waiting for all the remaining parts to show up so I could start completing the builds. Things finally came together in mid-July. All my parts finally arrived and I could work to complete the builds for the first batch of Fuzz Ones. The build days helped reduce my anxiety levels — Now I could just pop in my AirPods and listen to music or a podcast and just build up all the pedals. Concrete goals, concrete steps. It was almost relaxing. And then once I had some builds I could also start to take photos for the website. And photos to share on Instagram! Finally, the reveal has happened. My first run is fifty Fuzz Ones. I built those and tested them and had only one failure — and that was due to a faulty footswitch. No biggie, replace it and all good. But I had no solder or wrong part errors. Not too bad!

I now have all the pedals on the shelf, packaged with the case candy and all ready to go. Now I can put on my ecomm hat again and make sure the website is configured properly and ready to go. I'm launching without dealers so I will be shipping each individual order. I don't mind doing that, actually — I like the idea of personally taking care of each person's order. You're spending your hard-earned money on something I made so I need to make sure you have a good experience and that you receive a killer product. But it does mean that I will have to wear the fulfillment/shipping hat for a period of time. I think that's how this one-person operation is going to work — wearing the different hats one at a time. Hopefully, I can make it so I won't end up having to wear too many hats on any given day.

August 12, 2025

I think I've got everything ready to go. I've set the launch date for Monday, August 25, at noon Pacific Time. Although it's still a lot of work, today there are tools that make it even possible to be a one-person company building, selling, and shipping a product worldwide. One key part are the tools that allow me to create this website — it is now possible to sell and ship to many countries in the world in a professional way without hiring a specialist. And I've also started to use AI chats to help me too, mostly for things like accounting/bookkeeping procedures and navigating through all the international shipping regulations. I don't use AI to generate copy though; I might have it proofread it for me but I'm still the person writing the words. This blog, for example, I swear it is me, Howard, writing this! 

It's kind of funny, I'm using all of this latest technology to run the business but the products themselves are proudly 1960s/1970s tech. One of my design mantras is — use only the technology available during those decades but be informed by what we know today. And it's not only the circuits and sounds but the enclosure too. I designed it with the classic wedge fuzz enclosures of yesteryear in mind but also somehow looking "now". The mantra is form-follows-function. And I always thought of Leo Fender's way of making it easy to repair instead of just merely easy to build. Everything that is essential is there and nothing that is superfluous is added.

I'm excited, and nervous, to see what everyone thinks of Fuzz One. Here we go!....