How I got here
2021
It wasn't impulse.
I left college at 21. I'd spent a year watching strangers on the internet build a living out of things they'd made, and once I could point at a real person doing it, the argument at home ended.
2022 — 2026
None of it was ours.
I freelanced alone, then built a studio with two friends and ran it for three years. We were good at it. Clients came back and the work got harder. I learned more about people in those years than about code — how to say no, how to tell someone their idea won't survive contact with real users, how to keep going when the thing you're building isn't the thing you'd choose.
The one that died
Shipping isn't launching.
The lesson I actually use came from something that died. It worked. It shipped. Real people used it. We wound it down anyway, because we'd built a product and never built a way for anyone to find it. Nobody tells you that until it costs you something.
Now
Being found is the hard part.
So I'm doing it differently. Learning a new craft in the open, posting the work before it's good instead of after it's safe. The product isn't the hard part anymore. So that's what I'm building first.