When did you turn from a developer to a founder?

The moment I started browsing sites like Indie Hackers, looking at the "Products" directory and saying to myself: "Wait, so many these guys/gals have all these mini-SaaS tools that people find so useful that they pay for it." I had so many similar ideas for various mini-SaaS tools for different industries and the fact I could make $$ turning those ideas into reality really opened my eyes.

I've always wanted to run my own business but could never find an idea small enough that I felt I could build it on nights and weekends.

At last, I've built the smallest thing I could think of that still have value and I'm giving it a go! https://www.narratrail.com

For me it was a long long journey just accepting that marketing is crucial. That came after many a failure and finding the time to look at why this was.

I've been a developer professionally since 2011. These are some of the events that led me to make the switch:

• In 2018 I got a contract offer from a former client of a consulting company I worked for. I used this contract to incorporate (stackfive.io).

• In 2019 my good friend Jordan, who was also contracting for the same client, joined Stack Five officially. At this point, we were still both full-stack devs contracting full-time.

• We dreamed of scaling Stack Five into a team of passionate people. We had a few good leads and we were gearing up to take off by the end of 2019.

• 2020 happened.

• After losing all our leads and our existing contracts (our client ended up withholding payments from all vendors for 7 months). We floundered for a bit.

• We launched viyo.io and reactlibraries.com in 2020. That kept us busy and it was a lot of fun. It was also a great way for us to learn how to launch products.

• Around May or June 2020 I made a decision to stop coding. I came to the realization that someone had to tell people about us and what we could do. So I shifted to business development.

• I had no idea what this meant. So I just talked to people. Just randomly at first and then I added some systemization afterward.

• Not sure how still, but we started getting leads by late June/early July. Things also changed int he market

• Eventually we had 9 or 10 smallish dev or design projects. Our original client also came back (and paid us :)).

• I decided to do a hybrid of half coding and half managing. I hired contractors to help out with our projects. It was roughly 4-6 (can't remember exactly how many).

• I vowed to stop coding at some point because it was the only way we could scale.

• I didn't.

• Late 2020 into early 2021 was insane. There were 2 months where I worked 60-80h per week and barely saw my 3 young kids. Never doing that again.

• Part-time contractors were tough to manage and scale. In Feb 2021 we hired our first full-time developer.

• By the end of 2021 we hired 2 more full-time full-stack devs and were a team of 5.

• I continued to code on projects (but with more manageable hours) until Oct 2021

• Now I don't code :)

Sorry, this was a lot longer than I anticipated. Hopefully, it gives you a little bit of insight into my journey from developer to founder. It was a mix of a mentality shift, taking practical steps to ensure my business kept running profitably, and continuing to make small steps towards the end goal.

If you're interested in hearing more or just want to chat, I'm always happy to jump on a call (geoff@stackfive.io) or talk thru DMs on Twitter (@geoffchan23).

When I got fired for working on a personal project. Working on personal projects always made me happy. I chose happiness over trying to do the work just for the sake of it.

For me it was the moment when I actually started coding my idea and showed it to some people and they got the value the tool was providing.