This year, I’m deliberately shipping what some people might call “toy apps”, seemingly silly little web tools, experiments, and fun side projects that appear to be going nowhere.
But there’s a method to the madness.
I’ve always believed that you can’t learn to drive a car while it’s in park. You have to get behind the wheel and move — take it out on the road, figure out how it steers, maybe even get lost for a bit. That’s how real learning happens. Sometimes the drive itself is the destination. You’re out there to stay curious, to play, to explore the limits of the machine and yourself. That’s the same energy I’m bringing into building software and playing with all the new tools/services in 2025.
So when you see me ship something and think, “Why the hell did he build that?” — there’s probably a deeper reason. Maybe it’s a technical skill I wanted to test. Maybe it’s an intuition I needed to pressure-test. Maybe it’s just me scratching an itch. And yeah, sometimes it’s about learning what doesn’t work as a way of testing the edges of what is (reasonably) possible. Like losing control of your car in a snowy parking lot, its just as important to know what it can’t do as what it can do.
We’re living in a moment where the ground is shifting beneath our feet every day. The collision of culture and technology right now is staggering. If you’re not stepping back regularly and thinking, “hmmm…now what does all this mean with respect to my job/life/system/stack” — you’re either not paying attention, or you’re willfully ignoring what’s happening.
And in moments like this, the people who get behind the wheel and drive — no matter how rough or awkward the ride — are the ones who end up understanding the vehicle.
My Goal for 2025
My goal this year is simple: ship one app a month. In January, I launched Hitch, a dating augmentation app with a full landing page and admin panel. February brought a couple of under-the-radar B2B tools (custom for each client). March was ColorBug, a playful AI-powered coloring page generator.
None of these apps are world-changing. That’s not the point. I’m not trying to be the next Zuckerberg — I’m taking a more Pieter Levels-esque approach: ship fast, learn fast, stay nimble. Most of these projects are built in React with most of my quick and dirt admin dashboards in Python. At times I’ll even use both Python and Typescript on the same backend (ColorBug). All are making use of some AI tool, product or service that I’m genuinely curious about, and I am learning from.
By the end of this year, I’ll have 12 functioning apps under my belt (and countless apps that never saw the light of day) — each one a lesson in rapid prototyping, embedded intelligence, and creative execution. That’s the real prize: mastery through motion.
Looking Ahead
I don’t know exactly what the future of AI or software looks like. Nobody does and those who pretend they do are either running/working at SOTA labs, hang out with Yann LeCun or are full of shit. But I do know the future is going to look radically different from the past. And in that future, being someone who builds, who can wield these tools efficiency and knows how to execute at the speed of thought, is going to matter more than ever.
I love building. I love creating. I love fixing. And I want to keep doing that at a scale I once thought was impossible. We’re entering into a time where Agency + Taste will matter more than we ever previously thought possible.
So I’ll keep shipping. I’ll keep driving. I’ll stay playful. I’ll stay curious. And if you’re on a similar path — I hope you’re having fun too. Reach out if you want to ever chat about this stuff!
Let’s build weird stuff and see where it takes us.
Stay curious my friends.