Dynamite Circle

Making my return to @DynamiteCircle in Mexico City this year. It's been too long!

I’m leaving Senja. 3.5 years ago, I wrote Senja’s first line of code. I’d just finished high school, and was thinking deeply about what it was I wanted to do with the next chapter of my life. I learned about Indie Hacking after seeing folks like @tdinh_me, @levelsio, @yongfook and @tibo_maker building in public here on X. I knew instantly that that was what I wanted to do. So I wrote the code, happy to ship a fun side-project. If you told me that 3.5 years ago that we’d be at $800K ARR today, I’d have laughed. But we did it. @helloitsolly DM’d me on X a month after I launched. He had big ideas for Senja, and knew if we worked together, we could take Senja from being a hobby project to being an actual business. It’s been a LONG journey since then. We poured our blood, sweat, and tears into Senja. We stayed broke for a year, burned out a dozen times and almost quit every quarter. But we pushed through and our bet paid off. We built arguably the best product in our space, and our product is used millions of times every week. We’re finally able to pay ourselves decently, and we work a lot less. This has been life-changing and incredibly rewarding. I don’t regret a second of it. But it’s clear to me that my time here has come to an end. Over the last 9 months or so, I’ve really struggled to find a working rhythm. We’d work for a week and feel great, then I’d be completely bummed out the next. The last few months have been very start-stop, and we haven’t been able to move anywhere as quickly as we used to. I’ve tried to get back on track. Coaching, long breaks, going down to a 4-day work week, taking proper care of myself etc etc. But none of it’s worked. It started to become clear to me that this isn’t a temporary dip. I’ve accomplished what I wanted to with Senja. I’ve built something I’m proud of, and I have the financial freedom to show for it. But now it’s clear to me that I need a change. My instinct is, I’ll get significantly more personal growth away from Senja. There’s still so much I want to build, new working dynamics I want to try, and skills I want to learn. I don’t think I can achieve this with the creativity and freedom I want while working here. We considered selling. But Olly and I aren’t convinced that this is the right time. The business is still growing, and there’s still A LOT we haven’t tried. So I’ve decided to step down instead, and sell my shares to Olly while keeping a small stake. We’re still working out the details, but both of us are trying to be as fair as possible to ourselves and the business. So what’s next? In the short term I’ll keep cooking at @SenjaHQ. We have a few mind-blowing things in the works 👀 And later, I’m going to take the skills I’ve gained over the last 3 years, and use them to ship something amazing… something that better aligns with my current values. I’m not 100% sure what that is yet, but I’m happy to start all over and take a bet on myself. Thanks for reading this far, and huge thanks to everyone who’s been following along since day #1. Thank you @helloitsolly and @rotimi_best. Senja would not be where it is today without you. ✌️