From Startup Exec to Indie Dev, Building Without Permission

After years of building and scaling fintech products, including acquisitions and growing hundreds of millions X in terms of volume, I took a step back.

I’d gone from IC to engineering leader to exec. I knew how to scale teams and design architecture. I hadn’t shipped a product entirely on my own since I was "a kid," and I'd never even looked at code for a mobile app. Thanks to AI, I saw a chance to turn the gap into an opportunity.

I built an iOS app called HarmoniQ to teach perfect pitch to my kids. Now all four of my kids have perfect pitch and HarmoniQ has evolved into a real product with paying users.

Here’s the part I didn’t fully appreciate: building indie felt radically different from building for a startup or mature company.

No meetings. No compromises for stakeholder alignment. No “how will this affect our valuation next quarter?” Just a clear vision, feedback from users, and the ability to act on it directly. The product generates revenue, but I've never had to compromise its integrity to chase revenue.

But here’s what made that actually possible: AI

Because I’d been an executive, I didn’t have the front-line knowledge of the latest libraries, tools, or dev patterns, especially for mobile. AI filled in those gaps seamlessly and instantly. I didn’t just rely on it to give me answers, I used it as a thought partner to speed up work I could already do well and help me move faster in areas where I was less experienced.

I’ve used AI to:
• Get up to speed on Swift and build HarmoniQ as a fully native iOS app
• Localize into 19 languages
• Launch and tune ASO and SEO strategy
• Review and improve HarmoniQ's blog and marketing content
• Design visuals, write copy, and refine UX all without external help
• Move 10-100x faster without giving up quality

I find AI is most valuable to me for things I could actually do myself. Though instead of taking me a few days, I can often get the same or better in a few hours.

Today, HarmoniQ is fully native, with no external dependencies, no data collection, and a user-first philosophy. And I built it by myself.

This is the most creatively free I’ve ever felt building software.