The sun rises over the east coast of Canada, and caught in the beams is Dale Mugford, slowly rising from his slumber to start another day at BraveNewCode. The head office of BraveNewCode is in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, but unlike many traditional companies, is composed of only a computer and a desk in the corner of Dale’s condo. BraveNewCode does not rent or own any physical office space, other than a few hundred square feet set aside in each of the two co-founders condos.

On the other side of the country, sleeping soundly at the time when Dale gets up, is me. I live in a little town called Chilliwack in British Columbia, a quaint little village lovingly nestled between a bunch of mountains. I recently moved from Vancouver, simply because I found it hard to justify paying the high prices of rent when I was simply going to be working from home. Plus, the scenery around here is breathtaking, and I thought it would be good inspiration for both BraveNewCode and some of my photography.

Strangely enough, BraveNewCode is composed of two individuals who haven’t really spent a lot of time together in real-life. I first met Dale while working on Matthew Good’s website years ago, and since then we’ve obviously become really great friends. That being said, some people are still surprised that we’ve only hung out in person four or five times since we first started working together. But given how easy it is to chat online via iChat, it’s something that neither of us really thinks about at this point any more, and something that will undoubtedly change going forward.

Given that we’re still a young company and that Dale and I both utilize a lot of various technology during a typical day, we wanted to share with everyone some of the tools we use and relate some of our experiences so far.

The Hardware

Like most web companies these days, we exclusively use Apple computers. Each of us has a relatively new iMac computer to use when we’re in our home office spaces. In addition, we both have top-of-the-line Macbook Pros that we use when traveling or heading down to the nearest watering hole to do a bit of work.

For cellular phones, Dale and I both have Apple iPhones, which when coupled with our Mobile Me accounts, further enhances our productivity. Recently we also set up BusyCal, which allows us to synchronize our calendars together. The combination of Mobile Me and BusyCal also allows us to have shared work calendars that can be updated from our mobile phones, making it easy to modify or add events while on the road.

The Software

For design, Dale uses Adobe Photoshop CS4. I have a copy of it around as well, but mostly so that I can look at stuff Dale produces. For development purposes, we use a variety of different tools. Our FTP program of choice is Transmit — it’s simple to use and the FTP server list can be synchronized with Mobile ME. In terms of editors, we both primarily use Smultron 2 for editing code, and in terms of revision control, we use subversion for all of our code.

Invoicing and Time Tracking

For invoicing, we use Freshbooks. Freshbooks is a comprehensive invoicing, ticketing and time tracking service that I’ve been using for my photography invoices for the last few years. When I climbed onboard with BraveNewCode, I set us up with a company Freshbooks account. For the most part, it makes managing clients, estimates and invoices fairly hassle-free. The only complaint we really have is that it doesn’t natively integrate with any of our other Mac tools.

Dale and I don’t really spend a lot of effort tracking our time. Given that we’re still a small company, we both have a pretty good idea of where our time is going. That being said, we’ve had a few clients with business processes that required some form of time tracking on our side, so we’ve been forced to do it occasionally. For that, we’ve been using Freshbooks as well.

Collaboration

Given that Dale and I are separated by nearly 5,000 kms, we obviously rely heavily on various communications tools. When we’re out an about, we can simply call each other on our cell phones. I have a special plan through Rogers Wireless here in Canada that allows me to call certain people whenever I like with no additional charge. Since Dale is on that list, I can call him at any time of the day and no incur any charges, which is ideal in a business settings.

But without a doubt, the workhorse for our entire operation is Apple’s iChat. During a typical day, Dale and I usually have iChat going about 80% of the time, almost always in a two-way audio chat. We occasionally bounce on or off to make phone calls or to do a few errands, but mostly when we’re working we’re actively collaborating over iChat. Given that many of our clients have iChat as well, we often do interactive video chats between Dale, myself and our clients.

Pay Yourself First

The term “pay yourself first” is a personal investment strategy that many people use to help save money. Dale and I have implemented that same philosophy with BraveNewCode right from day 1. With all income we receive from clients, we automatically take 25% off the top and put it aside for company expenses and growth. All our legal expenses, computer purchases, travel expenses, cell phone bills and various other expenses related to our day to day operations come out of that account. Despite our purchases (which have been necessary, but not excessive), that pool has slowly been growing over time, which gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of events we can attend, or projects we can take on. It’s also allowed us to stop worrying about any of our equipment or short-term expenses, as we know we routinely put aside enough to account for any catastrophic failures of hardware or any unexpected travel expenses (such as me having to head out to see Dale on short notice).

Keep Evolving

Dale and I are constantly adjusting the tools we use, either by tossing things that aren’t working, or testing things we think may save us some time. We’re careful not to let the tools interfere with our job, and the moment something starts being more work than the value it’s adding, we toss it out the window. So far, things are going great for BraveNewCode, and we hope to share with everyone some of the cool things we’ve been working on these last few months.

We’ll continually share some of our internal stories here, but feel free to drop a comment or two with anything you’ve been doing that’s working particularly well.