My First Year of Full Time Entrepreneurship

It has been 365 days since I left the 9-5 to follow my interests. It was scary but totally worth it. There is much to be proud about:

• Built 3 webapps in public (comb, photorake, JobSimulator)
• started a webdev blog and youtube channel
• Consulting + freelancing for early stage startups
• Grew an Audience on Reddit
• Met some awesome people (reid, brian, ryan, miguel, thomas, jack, ruben, wei jie, richard, kevon, eli, martin)

I've done a lot besides business too. The freedom has let me explore hobbies I've always wanted to try, like hydroponics, colemak, poker, and meditation. I've also been learning japanese, AI/ML, and how software works.

The Big Lessons

Before I jumped into it, I had so many questions about the solo developer life. After a year in it, I've still got more questions than answers, but the experience has come with some invaluable lessons.

1. Ship More Things
   Building a successful business is a probabilistic domain. If you want to win, you need to launch enough things until something works.
2. Work Smarter
   Optimize for being helpful with as minimal of a product as possible. Start small & let the market decide what to build.
3. Content is Leverage
   Every video/blog post requires plenty of effort. But once it's made, you can share/re-share it for ZERO cost. You can use it to answer the same question indefinitely.
4. Be Helpful
   The best blog posts helps people learn new things. The best books help people see things differently. The best apps help people gain new capabilities. If you can help people in a scalable, repeatable manner, all else follows.

What's Next?

Here is what I'm planning for the year ahead:

• Keep growing the Youtube channel, writing, and meditating
• Keep shipping new ways to help people through code
• Meet more like-minded people (Going solo gets lonely!)
• Keep exploring AI/ML (heres why)

The past year has been life-affirming, and I'm deeply grateful for it. If you are ever curious about taking the leap, I'd be more than happy to chat on twitter or discord.

As always, 'til the wheels fall off 🖖