End of a Journey
Things did not quite go as planned.
But life brought me more joy than I ever could've imagined.
In 2019 I struck out to build my own business. In my head, this meant one of two things:
- Starting a SaaS company, because recurring revenue is great.
- Creating an e-learning company, because I've always enjoyed teaching, and I used to make video tutorials.
It turns out, both of those are very bad for my morale.
Hammering away at features and lessons that might get neither users nor students, inspired a certain kind of fear and self-doubt which I had never felt before. It was easy to dream of this moment; it was much harder to exist in it.
So, I became a freelancer. There's much less stress and self-doubt when people are cutting you checks every week.
But it is a bit odd, looking back: I'm quite introverted and would generally prefer to code all day rather than talk to people. But I sent out endless proposals, took quite a few calls and video meetings, and eventually was earning enough to support my family.
The dream, however, had worn thin.
Wouldn't a normal day job be easier? Certainly, the taxes would be simpler. Some PTO would be nice.
After expressing interest on-and-off for months (years?), one of my long-term clients convinced me to take a full-time job. Now I work at Toolkit, shepherding all the bits that make our apps run.
Will I ever go back to freelancing? Probably not willingly, but I'm glad I know how to do it.
What about my old dreams of being a one-man SaaS? Well, now that I've lived it, the old spark is gone.
At work, though, the dream has come back around: our new SaaS app got a customer before we'd even finished building it.
The most poignent lesson for me is thus: Great software is not built by locking myself in my office until I produce something profitable. Great software is built by building relationships with people, and building them what they need.