Welcome to Lowercase Labs: My Journey as a Solo Developer

Welcome to the lowercase labs channel. This is my corner of the internet where I'll be sharing my journey as a solo developer. In a casual, unfiltered way, I'll be documenting the things I build—the wins, the losses, and all the lessons learned along the way.

The "Why": Making My Day Job Optional

So, why am I doing this? The ultimate goal is to build a company capable of sustaining me and my family. Don't get me wrong, I'm lucky enough to have what I consider one of the best jobs in the world, but I want to make it optional. I want to be in a position where I go to work because I want to, not because I have to. That’s the freedom I’m building towards.

My Background: A Lifetime in Code

If you're going to follow along, you should probably know a bit about me. I'm 41 years old and I started coding when I was about 15. For more than half my life, I've been a professional developer, working primarily on the web. My toolkit has evolved over the years from PHP and Ruby on Rails to my current professional stack of TypeScript, Rust, and C#.

My experience isn't just in writing code; it's in the entire ecosystem around it. I handle hosting, domains, CDNs, DNS, and setting up CI/CD pipelines with tools like Kubernetes. I’m equipped to build pretty much anything I need from the ground up, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.

My Approach: A One-Man Company in the Age of AI

For my company's first projects, I'm focusing on mobile apps using Flutter. I went through a whole process of exploring different cross-platform and native options before landing on it, and I'll share my detailed reasoning in a future video. (Spoiler: Flutter is not dead).

A key part of my strategy is leveraging AI to scale. I believe it's vastly underestimated how much a single person can accomplish with AI's help. You don't necessarily need a big team anymore. My plan is to use AI to learn new skills on the fly and accelerate my development process.

When it comes to design, my philosophy is "good enough." I’m not aiming for pixel-perfect designs that designers fawn over. In fact, there's evidence suggesting that simpler, less-polished designs can sometimes perform even better. What I refuse to compromise on, however, is the User Experience (UX). A product that is intuitive, easy to use, and solves a real need is the ultimate goal. That's where I'll be focusing my energy.

What to Expect

Expect a very casual format here. I don't plan on spending a ton of time on heavy editing. The content will be raw and, yes, there will probably be some rambling. My goal is to share the journey authentically.

And just to be clear: I'm not selling any courses. I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm just sharing my experience and what I learn for free.

What's Next?

I have a few videos planned to dive deeper into specific topics. One will be about the financial goals I've set for the company.

Another, more immediate story I want to share is how I thought I'd hit my first major milestone—making the company break even—only to have AdMob pull the rug out from under me. I'll break down what I think happened, what I learned from it, and how I'm moving forward. Look out for that video.