I entered the startup ecosystem as a non-technical founder. I achieved "success" by being accepted into Techstars as CEO of NGHBR in 2022, and then again as CPO of Vyrtual in 2023.

I put quotations around success because, in the tech ecosystem, funding announcements are celebrated more than actually building a product people want and pay for.

Those two experiences grew my skills exponentially in product, design, recruitment, time management, marketing, and much more.

But what was missing was the ability to build products technically with my own hands.

Before now, I always viewed indie hackers as really good technical founders void of big ideas.

The problem with this perspective is that you cannot even make it to the big ideas without making money.

Indie hackers have perfected the art of building products that can be quickly validated in the market by paying customers.

Starting out as CEO, then shifting focus to CPO, and then using the last 6+ months to become a technical founder has felt like the movie Benjamin Button—where I am doing everything in reverse.

The good news is that I had the awareness to understand how much I was truly missing as the CEO, and I spent all of my time filling in those gaps.

I am now embracing the beginning of my journey as an indie hacker.

When I created the 14xFounder brand, I was thinking with the end in mind. I knew I would eventually get to this point—it was just a matter of how long it would take.

When I was in middle school, I had HTML books and was interested in the technical side even then, over 20 years ago.

However, it never became my #1 priority because back then and up until 2018, that spot belonged to basketball.

This blog symbolizes software development as my #1 priority.

The first step when indie hacking is to start small.

This is a rite of passage for me because it is giving me the exact fundamentals I lacked when I incorporated NGHBR in 2021.

Now my focus is on making my first $1 as an indie hacker instead of trying to build a unicorn from scratch on day one.

NGHBR is still very much alive, but when you are not a technical founder, you end up becoming a bank to fund the vision.

Now that I have closed this loop in the building process, I feel like I have an unfair advantage because my biggest strength is the vision and the macro, and now I have the technical skills to apply that vision directly in the micro.

It also saves a lot of time from recruiting developers and saves a lot of money from paying them.

My goal right now is to build as many small products as it takes until I am able to generate enough revenue to cover living expenses.

Building in public feels very different when you are actually building versus passing on updates from the builders.