Why an 18-Year Developer Finally Went Independent

The system I built pushed me out.

I Built Something That Didn't Need Me

At my company, I set up the development environment so that anyone could contribute. One markdown file — read it, follow along, and nothing would block you. No mysterious errors. No command that worked on my machine but nobody else's.

That was the problem.

A designer who didn't know what cd meant had rebuilt the entire website in two days. Then said they wanted to try the app next. Someone from the data science team said "I could probably do firmware too."

My place in the organization was disappearing.

I built a system that could run without me. Turns out, that meant it would eventually run without me.

Eight Years in Startups, and One Recurring Thought

Going independent wasn't a new idea. I'd spent eight years at startups. The thought of building something myself had always been there.

But doing it alone seemed impossible. I had the skills and the ideas, but building frontend, backend, app, and infrastructure solo was physically overwhelming. You needed a team, and a team needed money, and money needed clients, and clients needed a product. Hard to break that loop alone.

So it stayed "someday."

AI Turned "Someday" Into Now

Now it's different.

I can build almost anything I want. Apps, web, backend, firmware. Things that required a team eight years ago, I can run solo now. And if I can build what I want, I can build what others want too.

Watching that designer, I started thinking: if AI is lowering the barrier to development at this speed, how long does the window stay open for developers specifically? I didn't know when the next opportunity to start something would come. Waiting longer didn't make it safer — it just made it later.

"Someday I should start something" became now.

The Irony of It

Looking back, there's something funny about it. The system that made me feel obsolete is the same thing that made it possible for me to leave.

I built an organization that could run without me. Because of that, I was free to start something of my own.

In a world where AI is turning everyone into a developer, I left to start a business as a developer. Whether that's the right call, I still don't know. But I knew it had to be now.

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That's why I started MVPIT.