People & websites that helped me in 2015 [thank you message]

2015 has been the most awesome year since starting Chandoo.org

Thank you so much for making it happen. This year, more than 11 million people visited our site (up 8%), learned something and took first step to become awesome in their work. 2015 has been an amazing journey, thanks to all your visits, listens, purchases, comments, likes and shares.

A big thanks to you, my dear reader, for supporting me and choosing chandoo.org as partner in your journey to awesomeness.

Apart from our readers, there are also countless people, websites, books, companies which helped me have a fantastic year. This message is my way of saying thanks to them.

People who helped me in 2015

Teachers & gurus:

Running a small business focusing on knowledge requires a lot of training, help and mentoring. Thanks to all these wonderful people who motivated me, taught me, inspired me and corrected me in this year.

Excel folks:

Hui, Jon Peltier, Debra Dalgleish, Mike Alexander, Dick Kuslieka, Rob Collie, Bill Jelen, Jordon Goldmeir, Colin Legg, Mike Girvin, Francis Hayes, & David Hager

Forum members:

Hui, Luke, Narayank, Somendra, Deepak, Debraj, Khalid, Nebu, Asheesh and more.

Business & entrepreneurship:

Pat Flynn, MrMoneyMustache, Tim Ferriss and Tropical MBA.

Health & fitness:

My cycling buddies – Hemanth, Srinivas B, Srinivas C, Sandeep, Sridhar V, Sridhar B and more.

Authors & books

It has been a powerful & inspiring journey, thanks to all the books I could read.

Some of the authors & their books that inspired me are,

• Andy Weir – The Martian
• George Mahood – Everyday is a holiday & Life is a beach
• Rob Collie & Bill Jelen – Power Pivot Alchemy
• Scott Adams – How to fail at everything and still win big
• Stephen King – On Writing
• Foster Provost & Tom Fawcett – Data Science for Business

Note: all the book links are Amazon Affiliate links. That means, if you click and purchase a book thru above links, I will get a few cents from Amazon.

Partners, Affiliates & Supporters

Chandoo.org is able to reach out & help millions of users world wide because it stands on the shoulders of many giants & supporters.

Our partners:

PASS BA & Jen Stirrup:  Thank you so much for inviting me to speak at PASS BA 2015 conference. It was an awesome experience meeting all the Excel legends and PASS BA staff in Santa Clara this April.

Plum Solutions: Thank you Danielle for doing all the ground work to conduct another round of Excel & Power Pivot masterclasses in Australia in 2015. It was a great experience meeting our Australian readers & fans.

EduPristine: Thanks to Pawan, Paramdeep & rest of the staff at EduPristine for partnering with Chandoo.org in running Financial Modeling classes.

Our Affiliates:

This year was great for many of our affiliates too. Thanks to their support, we had more customers and they had more revenues. Some of our most prominent affiliates are,

Dashboard Spy, Francis, Daniel Ferry, Debra Dalgleish, Philip, Ken Puls, Oscar, Jimmy Pena, Victor Chan, Alan Murray, Brad Edgar and many more.

Customers & Readers

In 2015, more than 5,300 people purchased courses, templates, ebooks or products from Chandoo.org. More than 120,000 people are now members of our newsletter / RSS feed. More than 12,000 people regularly tune in to Chandoo.org podcast too. Many more people discover and join our little community every day. Thank you so much for inviting me to your life & letting me help you. My sincere & heart-felt thanks to each and every one of you.

Many thanks to Texas Mutual, University of Tasmania (Australia), Environmental Protection Agency – Ohio etc. for purchasing bulk licenses of our products.

I am also thankful to our Excel Forum members, who continue to share their knowledge & skills selflessly.

Special thanks also to,

• Delegates of my Advanced Excel & Power Pivot Masterclasses in Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane in Australia.
• Delegates of the PASS BA conference in Santa Clara, USA
• People who attended the meetups in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Thanks for spending a lovely evening with me talking about Excel 🙂
• Leonie, Sunil, Habiba, Matt, Susan, Kurt and Danielle for your love, hospitality and warmth during my Australia visit this summer.
• Rickard from Corality and Johann from ModelOff for taking a few minutes out of their schedules to meet me and share a drink.
• Dan Fylstra for sharing his views and insights about Excel in a podcast interview.
• Staff and editors at Apress who helped Jordan & me with our book – Dashboards for Excel.
• Jeff Weir for all his wisdom, time & advice.
• All Excel MVPs and bloggers who attended the PASS BA conference and made it a memorable experience for me. (here is more)
• All our podcast listeners
• Everyone who bought a copy of The VLOOKUP Book or Dashboards for Excel.
• Mixergy, PC Magazine, InvestinTech for all press coverage and love.

Our staff

Chandoo.org staff are the silent soldiers helping me achieve our mission – “to make you awesome in Excel”. I am deeply thankful to their efforts & work ethic.

• Ravindra: for handling student enrollments, customer support & email work
• Joya: for creating podcast transcripts
• Pothi: for maintaining Chandoo.org webservers and helping our site run smoothly
• Narayan: for answering student questions & doubts
• Chittibadrayya: for taking care of our accounting & financial reporting stuff
• Jo (my wife): for helping me with customer support emails.

Companies & websites that helped me

I am thankful to Microsoft for creating Excel and helping me make a living out of it.

I am also thankful to,

Email & Productivity: Google, iPhone

Website, Hosting & E-commerce: WordPress, GoDaddy, Wishlist Member, KnownHost, Amazon, PayPal, E-Junkie, 2Checkout, EBS, GumRoad, FastSpring, Thesis, libsyn

Community & Connection: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Skydrive, pinterest

Software: Paint.NET, Mozy, Notepad ++, Camtasia & Snagit, Skype, Rescue Time, Audacity

Apps: Flipboard, Feedly, Amazon Kindle

There are many other software, companies and websites that help me every day. I am really thankful to each and every one of these. Detailed listing here.

Last but not least…

I am able to perform at my best levels & help you because there is someone else that support, encourage and inspire me every day.

• My family: Jo & kids support me and Chandoo.org in numerous ways. They shower me with love, humor and support everyday so that I can be awesome at what I do.
• All my close friends & relatives: for supporting me & encouraging me to do better.

PS… something for you:

Here is a nice little surprise for you. Open a new Excel 2013 or above file & in A1 type

=BASE(PRODUCT(5,7,83)&REPT(3,2)&REPT(6,2),6^2)
&" "&BASE(2^15-2424,3*12)&" "&BASE(PRODUCT(19,1877,5,3,3),4*9)

for older versions of Excel (2010 or prior):

=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(ADDRESS(8,10^2*2+3^2,4)&
"P"&ADDRESS(2^2,21^2,2^2)&
ADDRESS(16/4,SUBSTITUTE(1517,15,96),4)
&"Y"&ADDRESS(2*4,2424+1000,2*2),8,""),4," ")