Eight years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company. Every year, I post an update about how that’s going and what my life is like as an indie founder.

Previously on… 🔗︎

I don’t expect you to go back and read my last seven updates. Here’s all you need to know:

How finances went 🔗︎

People are always most interested in how money works as an indie founder, so I’ll start there. Here’s what my revenue and profit looked like every month this year.

In total, I had $8.2k in profit on $16.3k in revenue. That was my total income for the year, which is obviously not enough to support a family, but my wife also works, and we have savings/investments.

My main source of revenue was my book. I’m writing a book to teach developers to improve their writing. I did a Kickstarter for it in March, which gave me $6k in pre-sales. As I worked on the book, I offered paid early access. In total, 422 readers purchased early access, for which I’m grateful. I also have an old business that makes $100-200/month without me touching it.

My main expenses were computer hardware ($2.1k) and LLMs ($1.9k). I don’t use AI to write, but I use it for a lot of the accessory tasks like fixing rendering/layout issues and improving the website. I also use it for my open-source projects.

Here’s how 2025 compared to previous years:

The years I was running TinyPilot dominate the chart. Still, 2025 was my fourth most profitable year as a founder.

My goal for the year was $50k in profit, so I fell quite short (more on that later).

So you’re still taking a break? 🔗︎

When I tell other software developers that I’m writing a book, they usually say something like, “Oh, great!”

Then, they pause, a little confused. “To give you time to freelance?” And I have to say, “No, I’m just writing a book. That’s my whole job.”

When I tell friends and family I’m working on a book, they innocently ask, “Oh, so you’re still on paternity leave?”

No! I’m writing a book. It’s a real job!

But if I’m being honest, I understand their confusion. How can writing a book be my job? I’m not a novelist.

When I started the book, I thought I’d be done in six months. I typically write almost a book’s worth of blog posts per year, and that’s just from an hour of writing per day. If I focus on a book, I should be done in 1/8th the time!

It turns out that even when all I have to do is write, I can still only write for about an hour per day. After that, I feel drained, and my writing degrades rapidly.

I also can’t just write a book. I also need to find people to read the book, so I’ve been writing blog posts and sharing chapter excerpts. I normally write 5-10 blog posts per year, but I ended up writing far more in the past year than I ever have before:

I also started editing blog posts for other developers. That helped me discover other developers’ writing pain points and what advice they found effective. I worked with seven clients, including Tyler Cipriani on a post that reached #1 on Hacker News.

And then there’s just a bunch of administrative tasks around writing and selling a book like setting up mailing lists, dealing with Stripe, debugging PDF/epub rendering issues, etc.

Finding alignment with my business 🔗︎

This has been my favorite year of being a founder since I went off on my own eight years ago. There are a few factors, but the biggest is that I found a business that aligns with me.

When I first started as a founder, I didn’t think the particulars of a business mattered. I just pursued any opportunity I saw, even if it was a market I didn’t care about. I’d still get to write software, so wouldn’t that make me happy?

It turns out bootstrapped founders don’t spend much time writing code. Especially at the beginning, I have to find customers and talk to them, which is hard when I don’t particularly care about the market beyond the technical challenge of building something.

Over several years, I found that there are five criteria that determine how much I enjoy a business:

1. I enjoy the domain and relate to the customers
2. It leverages my skills
3. It earns money
4. It facilitates work-life balance
5. It aligns interests between me and my users

As a concrete example, one of my first businesses was called Is It Keto. It was a simple website that explained whether certain foods fit the keto diet.

Here’s how Is It Keto scored on my rubric:

Now, let me compare Is It Keto to writing my book:

The book doesn’t check all my boxes perfectly, but it aligns better with my five criteria than any business I’ve created before.

Do I still love it? 🔗︎

At the end of my first year as a founder, I wrote:

As someone who has always valued independence, I love being a solo developer. It makes a world of difference to wake up whenever I want and make my own choices about how to spend my entire day.

…

My friends with children tell me that kids won’t complicate this at all.

When I wrote that in 2019, I was in my early thirties, single, and living alone.

A few weeks after writing that post, I met someone. We moved in together at the end of that year, married a few years later, and had our first child in 2024. Now, there are lots of people in our house, as my wife and I work from home, and members of our extended family come over every weekday to help with childcare.

Despite all of those changes, my life is still how I described it seven years ago.

Okay, things aren’t exactly the same. My toddler decides when I wake up, and it’s not always the time his independence-loving father would choose. But I still feel the joy of spending my workdays on whatever I choose.

I joked back in 2019 about how kids would complicate my life as an indie founder, but it’s actually less complicated than I expected. My workdays mostly look the same. Except they’re more fun because anytime I want, I can take a break from work to go play with my son.

After several years of just “enjoying” life as a bootstrapped founder, I’m happy to say that I love it again. I still want to do it forever.

Lessons learned 🔗︎

Writing a book takes longer than I expected 🔗︎

I originally thought I’d finish the book in six months, but I’m 13 months in and still have about 20% left.

From reading about other developers’ experience writing books, underestimating time seems to be the norm. Teiva Harsanyi thought he’d be done in eight months, but it actually took him almost two years. Austin Henley started writing a book in 2023 and it dragged on for about two years before he got tired of working with his publisher and canceled his book deal.

I enjoy my work when it feels aligned with me 🔗︎

As much as I love writing code, programming itself isn’t enough to make me enjoy my work. I need to find a business that matches my interests, values, and skills.

I can be a bootstrapped founder and a parent 🔗︎

Before I became a parent, I worried that I wouldn’t have the flexibility to be a founder. In the first few months after my son arrived, I worried that parenting would take up so much time that I couldn’t work at all, much less run my own business.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to find a comfortable balance where I spend my workdays as a founder while still being the parent I want to be.

Grading last year’s goals 🔗︎

Last year, I set three high-level goals that I wanted to achieve during the year. Here’s how I did against those goals:

Earn $50k in profit 🔗︎

• Result: I earned $8.2k in profit.
• Grade: D

I wasn’t confident I’d earn $50k from the book, but I thought I’d have time while writing to launch side businesses. I also expected to complete the book in just six months, giving me even more time for new business ideas in the second half of the year.

Instead, I spent the full year on the book. It made $11.8k, which I’m proud of as pre-sales for a first-time author, but it’s less than I hoped to earn this year.

Publish a course or book 🔗︎

• Result: I’m about 80% done with my book.
• Grade: C

Okay, okay! I didn’t finish the book! Enough of your cruel judgment, Michael from a year ago.

Learn a new programming language 🔗︎

• Result: I experimented with Gleam but didn’t reach competence
• Grade: D

I played around with Gleam and appreciated some aspects of it, but I never got deep enough to feel productive in the language.

I learn best when I can find a project that takes advantage of a new technology, but I couldn’t think of anything where Gleam had a compelling edge over languages I know well like Go or Python.

Goals for next year 🔗︎

Earn five book citations 🔗︎

I’d like to find at least five examples of readers who cite my book as a resource that helped them achieve something tangible (e.g., grow their blog readership, get a promotion).

Earn $75k in profit 🔗︎

I earned $8.2k this year, so I just have to do 9x as well next year. But honestly, I think this is doable if I can keep finding new readers for the book and try a few business ideas.

Create a profitable software business 🔗︎

I’ve enjoyed a year of writing, but I’d like to do more software development, as that’s still what I find most exciting.

All annual reviews

Cover image by Piotr Letachowicz.