2 weeks into January, and I've already thrown out my 2021 plans
Why I decided not to join Pathline as a co-founder and instead go all in on becoming a no-code expert.
Welcome to That Dude Denis, a newsletter about a dude who left the Bay Area and moved to Paris. The idea is to share my experiences as openly and transparently as possible as I try to become an entrepreneur, in the hopes that something may help you in some way. If you’re in Big Tech, startup-land, or just interested in entrepreneurship, this stuff’s for you.
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That Dude Denis is back, and for the second time this year already! 🤯
I know, it hasn’t yet been two full weeks since you last heard from me, but I wanted to write this post and share it with you while the thoughts and feelings were still fresh in my mind. Like fresh food and fresh air, feelings and thoughts should be enjoyed fresh as well.
I made a huge decision this past week. At least it feels that way right now, and I’m still coming to terms with it. So this post isn’t just for you - it’s also helping me process my decision by forcing me to organize and express my thoughts coherently. After 2-3 months of thinking that I’d be leaving Possible Future (PF) at the beginning of the year to co-found Pathline, I’ve decided in the end that it’s not at all the right decision for me.
In the following paragraphs: why I made that decision, what I’ll be doing instead, and why you shouldn’t unsubscribe to That Dude Denis just yet. 😏
First, let’s talk about Pathline.
I first joined the PF team working on the project back in September 2020. After having spent 8 months building out the startup studio with Clément (I talked about him in my previous post), I was super excited to finally have the chance to work on a real project, something tangible, with real market potential and ambition. A PF team had already spent a month validating the idea, and the plan now was for me to join the team for the next phase of the project: the development of the minimum viable product, or MVP for short. Over the course of the next few months, the goal was to define and develop a functioning product and service, and to deliver it to our first paying customer. The idea was to also find external founders at some point to come and take over the reigns.
A couple of months into the project, I started to think to myself, hey, maybe this could be a golden opportunity to embark on my first entrepreneurial adventure! 🧐 It seemed to check all the important boxes: I believed in the project vision and its value proposition, it had the full support of PF behind it, and I had been 100% involved in the project for a while already.
And so I volunteered myself, despite my limited interest in the human resources space itself. A glaring red flag in retrospect, but at the time, I thought that the most valuable experience for me would be to start an actual company, and Pathline just happened to be the opportunity in front of me at that moment. My thought process at the time: sure, maybe I’m not that passionate about the subject, but that could get better with time, right? I’ll just put my head down and it’ll all be worth it in the end because:
It’ll be a great learning opportunity to build and launch something
I’ll be a real-life founder
Worst case, Pathline fails and I’ll end up with a failure under my belt. Even a failure wouldn’t be that bad, given how positively the startup universe considers past failures.
But during the months of November and December, a feeling of uneasiness slowly grew inside of me as uncertainty and doubt about my decision crept in. Deep down, I knew that I wasn’t being completely honest with myself. But I ignored it, forcing myself to focus on the day to day tasks at hand and telling myself that I had made the right decision, that it was the best way to get the experience that I wanted. By the time Christmas Eve came around, I was clearly struggling, with my levels of energy and motivation dwindling more and more each day. The holiday break couldn’t come soon enough, and I vowed to not work on or think about Pathline at all during the break.
What caused the epiphany?
In short, spending most of my holiday break working on something else. 😅 Yep, you heard that right, I worked over holiday break.
But that’s the important thing, it didn’t feel at all like work. Because we were stuck in Paris over the ten day break, KT and I decided to spend the last few days of 2020 doing a bit of life planning, and I ended up creating a pretty slick tool that some of you may enjoy playing around with - we used it to get a better handle on our dream life and how much income we need to be earning in order to make it all happen, but it’s a versatile little tool and you can use it however you want. I spent hours and hours of my precious vacation time doing all the research and pulling it all together (6 days in total!), but it was time that I wanted to put into the project, that I was excited to spend solving problems and making the product better.
Once I returned back to the office and started working again on Pathline, it was impossible to ignore the stark difference between the excitement, enthusiasm, and motivation I felt when working on the Dream Life Planner and the lack thereof when returning to work on Pathline.
I finally had to face the fact that I’m simply not passionate about the project, despite how much I love the team and how much I still believe in its future. After only 3 months working on it, I’ve already had days where it’s difficult to motivate myself. I wake up and struggle to get out of bed, dragging my feet around the apartment, my mind wandering towards other stuff like this blog or other side projects when I should be laser focused and chomping at the bit to work on Pathline. That’s not a good sign, given that as a cofounder, I should be ready and willing to put my blood, sweat, and tears into the project for at least the next 3-5 years.
I thought that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, founding a startup in a space that I’m not passionate about, but in the end, it really is a big deal. For one, I personally would have had a horrible year, completely independent of how successful Pathline ended up being. Pathline would have completely taken over the other parts of my life, and I would have resented giving up so much for something that doesn’t motivate me each and every day. It’s also not fair to my co-founder either - he deserves a lot more than what I can give him. He deserves a sparring partner who brings the same level of motivation and passion to the project - someone who, like him, is willing to do whatever it takes to make Pathline into a successful company.
That person isn’t me - I realize and accept that now. I wanted so much to officially become a real entrepreneur that I was willing to try it out and hope for the best, but in the end I realized that 1) both the project and I would be better off if I didn’t try to force what clearly isn’t a great fit, and 2) there are other options available to me that are more in line with what I want to learn and do today, and the life I want to have in the future.
It’s all about no-code, bro.
Over the past 2-3 months, I’ve been lurking* on Indiehackers and Twitter, and the result of all that lurking is that I’ve come to see entrepreneurship and my future in a bit of a different light. I’ve been inspired by a wave of creators and innovators who don’t need long development cycles or raise capital to be successful business owners, but who are ninjas at finding niche audiences, identifying their problems, then building and launching products quickly and consistently that deliver solutions.
*What’s a lurker?
“In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of an online community who observes, but does not participate…Lurkers make up a large proportion of all users in online communities. Lurking allows users to learn the conventions of an online community before they participate, improving their socialization when they eventually "de-lurk".”
This movement has been enabled by the rise and explosion of no-code tools and resources over the past few years. I introduced these already in the last post, but no-code tools essentially allow mere muggles (i.e non-coders) to do magical stuff, like create fully functional (and beautiful!) web and mobile applications. The super cool thing about the no-code ecosystem is that a lot of the tools can be connected and joined together (the end result is a product stack), opening the door to a huge array of possible products that can be created without writing a single line of code.
Examples of no-code tools:
From what I’ve seen so far, I truly believe that no-code prototyping and product development is the future - the ability to build, launch, test, and iterate quickly without having to rely on a team of developers is a massive opportunity for not only individuals like myself, but also for companies like Possible Future, to discover and develop new business opportunities. And there’s no time like the present to take advantage and make moves.
My (revised) 2021 master plan
So what’s my new plan for 2021? Simple. To become a no-code expert and build and launch a shit ton of great products and services! 😏 In short, I want to be like that guy, Felix. 👆
This shouldn’t feel like it’s coming from left field, but at a high level, here’s my reasoning:
I love building and creating stuff, but I also need variety and a steady flow of new projects to keep me motivated…so the idea of being able to learn a bunch of new tools, to try a bunch of new things, and to develop and launch a bunch of new products sounds super appealing to me. 🤩
My dream life in 10 years involves 3 month mini-retirements each year. This is only possible if my income sources are semi-automated, semi-passive, and not tied to a standard job requiring many hours of work per week. Given that it may take years of trial and error to find success and build up to the income I want to have, I better get started right away! 🛫
I’m in a unique position right now at PF where I have the amazing opportunity to develop this no-code expertise and build and launch no-code products as my full time job! It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement that benefits PF in a bunch of different ways as well, such as increasing our brand awareness and street cred in the digital space, boosting our capacity to develop more advanced prototypes for our clients, increasing our work productivity and efficiency with custom no-code tools, and creating a new source of recurring revenue. Bottom line? It’s a win-win for both me on a personal level but also for Possible Future from a business standpoint! 🏆
I don’t expect it to be easy, by any means, to create a successful business using no-code tools - just the opposite in fact. After all, I’ve yet to earn my first dollar selling something on the internet (my virtual piggy bank is oh so sad). It’ll require me to first learn the tools and how to use them effectively, then develop the habit of building and launching products frequently and consistently, all the while learning from and engaging with the community of no-code makers by building in public and sharing my experiences.
I already know that some of my projects will be complete failures. I accept that I will likely fall flat on my face many times, suffer some bruises and scratches, and maybe even break a few bones (figuratively speaking). The nice thing about no-code though is that you can fail faster, fall on your face earlier, and spring back up to iterate, pivot, or build something new a lot more quickly than you could with a standard startup.
There’s already a solid plan in the works which I’ll share with you next time, but if things go as planned, 2021 will be the year that both That Dude Denis and Possible Future become forces to be reckoned with in the no-code arena. 🦸♂️
And so, despite my decision to not pursue a founder role at Pathline, it’s not the end of my entrepreneurial journey by any means, but the beginning of a new type of entrepreneurial adventure that I can’t wait to bring you along with me on - so strap in, buckle your seatbelts, and get ready to explore the world of no-code entrepreneurship together with That Dude Denis! 🏎
Thanks to Bart and Faten for editing help, and to Headspace for helping me fall asleep at night. 💤
What’s coming up next?
You guessed it, no-code! 😂 I’ll give you an inside look at the 2021 no-code roadmap for That Dude Denis ⇔ Possible Future, and also some of the stuff I’ve been working on recently.
Again, if there’s something you want to learn more about, please leave a comment or write me. I’ll give you a quick response or maybe even dedicate an issue to it if I think it’ll be helpful to other readers.
Amazed that you’re still reading, but I appreciate it greatly! 🙏 If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe below if you haven’t already.
Hope 2021 is off to a great start!
That Dude Denis
Wow! You’ve just another issue of That Dude Denis, a newsletter about a dude who left the Bay Area and moved to Paris. The idea is to share my experiences as openly and transparently as possible as I try to become an entrepreneur, in the hopes that something may help you in some way. If you haven’t already, consider following me on Twitter and subscribing to get future issues sent directly to your inbox:
I can feel your determination and energy in this writing. Happy for you to find your passion and well thought project to work on. Looking forward to learning about no-code things.
Writing clears one's thinking, great! Looking forward to hearing more about your no-code experience.