2018 was easily the best year of my life. So many good things happened. So many unexpected things happened.
But 2018 was also a very different kind of year for me.
I spent a lot of time and focus on my career and my startups - and less on things like going out and watching Netflix shows.
I think I sort of got my life on track - financially, career, focus and most importantly, my happiness.
This year, I think I finally found something I truly love - creating products.
It was also a great year because of all of the traction I had. I built a successful indie business, I quit my job, and I became a digital nomad.
I also launched the biggest project of my life (24 hour startup) and inspired thousands of people.
I wanted to write something nice (and complete) to close out the year - a true recap of my first year doing indie startups!
This post is inspired by an old
Pieter Levels blog post, where he looks back on his year through his old tweets. I think it’s a really nice way to put together a blog post. That blog post is also very special to me because it’s how I discovered his story and became inspired to follow a similar path.
Fresh off of a startup disaster
Going back to late 2017, I had just experienced a complete startup failure. Two friends and I started a company, got a YC interview, and ultimately failed HARD.
https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/941753612207878144I was so excited and determined to make that startup work, and when it fell apart, it kind of fucked me up.
Along with other things, I needed a change in life and I decided to leave San Francisco and move to New York City.
I can start a business by myself?
Although I was enjoying being in a new city with a new job, I was still longing to start my own business - but this time I had no co-founders or friends that were interested in something like that.
To kick off the website, I wrote my
first blog post about why I was starting it:
In that blog post, I wrote about my main personal goal: to one day be able to work for myself comfortably anywhere in the world.
I also wrote:
I'm not sure when that will be (I have a full-time job right now), but the only way I can make that happen is by trying ideas, starting new things, and keeping an eye out for the right opportunity.
Looking back, I think I just wanted to create something - just get something simple off the ground and make some sort of progress.
At the time, I had nothing in terms of my own assets... All the work I had done in my career was for other companies, other bosses - trading money for my time.
I was also in a decent amount of credit card and student loan debt.
I made my first dollar!
A couple months into starting the blog I made $3 off Amazon affiliate program! I remember being so excited about this.
I worked on it every day after work and on many weekends. I was learning so much and I was loving it.
My first big break
After two months, I finally had legitimate traffic on my site! This was my first break - I had finally found an effective platform to share my interviews going forward.
My first Product Hunt launch
About a month later I finally launched on Product Hunt.
I spent an insane amount of time prepping for that launch. It was the culmination of 3-4 months of work - and I did a lot to prepare. I was very nervous about it being successful.
I was on cloud nine! I started dancing around the room with Travis Scott blasting. This is easily one of the greatest moments of my life. I didn’t even reach #1 for the day - I think I was like #5 or #6 - but I was so happy about that.
That is one of the greatest feelings in the world and it’s better than any kind of money.
My first haters
I even started getting “haters” on Reddit.
https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/963632015340916736Back then, this really affected me! I was so self-conscious… I used to reply to every negative comment and construct long, thought out arguments with trolls on Reddit. That was such a waste of time!
But through that, I learned that if you have haters it means you’re probably doing something right because people are noticing you!
Hitting the front page of Hacker News
Then I got another massive break.
Similar to my first time hitting the front page of Reddit, this also happened unexpectedly.
It was 9 AM and I was about to go to work. I had a new article and I thought “Fuck it. Let’s try posting this to Hacker News…”
Five minutes later I was hitting the front page, and I was hitting it hard. My article held the #1 spot for an entire day and drove 40k people to my website.
https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/966321113243451392I had to go to work while it was happening and I couldn’t focus on anything else. I was also so worried that my coworkers would find out about my side project (they browse HN)
This was an absolute game changer for me.
Starter Story was being exposed to so many people in the tech world. I had CEOs emailing me and one of them even wanted to acquire my website.
Around that time, I found
WIP - a community that really changed everything for me.
I got to join a chat and work alongside people that were just like me - focused on shipping and building indie businesses.
In WIP, I was in a constant behind the scenes watching indie hackers have success. It felt like every day someone was hitting #1 on Product Hunt or hitting the front page of Hacker News. I got so much support from that community - it was like a startup cheat code!
I also started making “internet friends” from WIP - and was able to build up an amazing network of people I know from around the world.
I really owe a lot to WIP - I wouldn’t be anywhere without it.
Struggling for focus and productivity
A few months after the launch, I started to struggle.
I was pretty unmotivated. I didn’t have any good personal systems in place for productivity. It became a struggle to put out any interviews and I often did the absolute bare minimum.
It was also a really tough time in my family. My dad had an unexpected heart attack and nearly died. I flew home for a few weeks to handle that.
This really affected me - especially because the heart attack was due to genetically high cholesterol - something that will affect me for the rest of my life.
I decided to quit smoking for the rest of my life (was addicted to JUUL) and started exercising every day (which I will talk about a bit later in the post).
Discovering the power of open startups
I continued to use Reddit to propel Starter Story. There have been many ups and downs, but it always seems to come back and work itself out...
Maybe I don’t have a co-founder because of my style of working... I don’t know - but it’s really refreshing to see other people have massive success as a solo founder.
Revenue is going up
Meanwhile, my monthly revenue is very slowly going up. Every month, it was a couple hundred bucks. I started getting more and more excited to share my reports each month.
I loved showing people that I was making progress, growing my audience, and keeping myself accountable! That’s one thing that’s great about open startups - you are motivated to show up every month with some nice updates!
https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/993223817337167878I started solving focus & productivity
I think I became more motivated because I started working on things that I actually wanted to work on.
https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/1002602757113679874I ported over Starter Story to Ruby on Rails (which I know way better) and started shipping tons of features. It was nice to have a balance between content and features. I also started automating a ton of the monotonous stuff that comes with running a blog.
At this time, I started waking up early in the morning before work to work on features that would ultimately save me so much time in the long run. I was waking up at 5:30 AM and putting in 3 hours - it was a very productive time.
For example, I automated all of the social media including generating the images. I absolutely love this kind of stuff.
One thing that wasn’t super great during 2018 - my health.
After my dad’s heart attack I realized I really needed to make a change.
Not only did I become more productive, but I grew to absolutely love running in New York City. It is the most unbelievable place to run.
There’s nothing better than running on the West Side on a hot day.
Meeting Casey Neistat
I can’t think of many other celebrities that I’d rather meet. I was so starstruck.
Getting the biggest check of my life
It was around this time I got an email from Andrew Bialecki, the CEO of
Klaviyo:
We got to talking, and a few months later, I asked them if they would sponsor the Starter Story newsletter.
They offered to sponsor the newsletter for an entire year! And paid for it upfront.
I was in absolute shock.
I didn’t actually believe it was real until the money hit my bank account - and when it did I had to leave work and go on a walk. I might have cried a little.
But in all seriousness, getting Klaviyo as a sponsor was a massive milestone - it allowed me to focus on building the site rather than chasing sponsors every month.
I was on a run in New York City and I randomly came up with a crazy idea… I wanted to launch a startup in 24 hours.
Over 10,000 people tuned in that weekend to watch me build and launch a startup on Twitch.
I even got props from one of my idols… Pieter Levels!
Then I quit my job
Two days after my 24-hour startup, I went to my manager and quit my job.
It sounds so corny, but it just felt like that was the moment. I realized I needed to go full time on my own stuff.
I started a trend
All of a sudden, everyone started streaming stuff - I was getting tagged on Twitter as the “streaming startup” guy...
After I quit my job, I immediately left New York City and moved home into my mom’s place to prepare to go digital nomad.
I was all of a sudden working on my own stuff - 100% of the time - I had never had this feeling before.
I got to wake up in the morning and work on whatever I wanted. This was (and is) such an awesome feeling.
I finally got out of credit card debt!
I could only think of one crazier idea than launching a startup in 24 hours - and that would be organizing an event allowing hundreds of people to do it as well.
It was also a lot of pressure. For those 3-4 weeks - I worked the hardest I ever have in my life.
I even got a crazy shoutout from my indie startup idol, none other than Pieter Levels.
And that brings me to today! A few weeks ago, I flew to Thailand to start my digital nomad journey - traveling the world and working on my startups.
2018 was such an amazing year, through many ups and downs, but I’m especially thankful for all of the people that have helped me throughout this journey - even in the smallest ways.
Ready for 2019
I’m realizing that my journey is just beginning.
Although I’ve had some nice success, I want to 10x it. I want 2019 and the next few years to be even bigger. I’m ready to go all in, work hard, build and launch tons of stuff - and most importantly find my way!
I’m so excited. Thank you for reading.
Update: A couple people mentioned they were trying to reach me over text, my American number doesn’t work anymore! Hit me up on Instagram or you can iMessage me at [email protected] :)