Why I created Cleanest AI

The history

Having both a Dad and Stepdad who ran their own businesses, being a business owner has always appealed to me, but I wasn't sure why until recently. Back in 2017 when I lived in Brisbane, I made my first move towards this goal and quit my job as a Software Engineer to network ruthlessly and find some co-founders. At the time I didn't have the confidence to do it on my own so finding other people to work with was important to me. After going to many Google Startup Weekends, Hackathons and Meetups I ended up being contacted on LinkedIn to co-found a small claims startup.

This startup had funding of $100k AUD from one investor and that was used to pay for things like designs, entry to Xerocon ($5k), my salary of $42k etc. Before that I was contracting for $650 AUD a day so it was a huge income hit, but I aquired 10% equity and my hope was an increase in salary and theoretically I'd get big payout after selling the company years later.

Like most startup's this went the way of the Dodo. We couldn't find a market fit and I had a lot to learn technically. After a year we ran out of funding and I went back to a full-time job. 4 years on; the company was sold and I received $4k for the equity earned.

Since then I've been working as a full-time employee after getting put off the Startup world completely by the stress of that year. Working 70-hour weeks and having the dreams of a founder on my shoulders was not fun.

What I learnt

I love the quote “Every failure is just a learnt lesson” and this is how I feel about my time in the startup world so far. I learnt a lot about it including:

• It's critical to find a product fit and solve a problem users are having. Not doing this is the number 1 reason most startups fail.
• Release an MVP as quickly as possible. Be ruthless about cutting features so you can verify what the market wants.
• Choose the tech wisely. In more than 90% of cases you can start with a monolith, there's so many ways to cut development time using great tech such as Vercel, Next Auth or Supabase.
• Building with investors has downsides! I understand the appeal of accelerating the product. However, they can get too much control and their motivation is not always aligned with the company's. Also, redundancies have been common due to investor's cutting costs.
• The more people involved in the business the more complex it becomes. Everyone has their own wants and needs and in my experience people can be ruthless about getting what they want.
• You've got to be passionate about the problem you're solving. When times are tough you need to be able to push through.

Soloprenuership

In the last 2 years the drive of running my own business/app has returned. With all the experience I've gained so far leading me to do it solo. I never would've thought of doing it solo back in 2017. However there are some awesome educational resources out there that showed me the light. The benefits of being a solopreneur include:

• You're creating assets rather than trading your time for money directly. Everything I do towards Cleanest AI will make money while I sleep and set me up to build more products in the future. For example, people who create a large following on Twitter after making their first product like levels.io and Marc Lou can use their large following to release more products with massive exposure.
• You get to work on what you want to work on. No more working on someone else's dream (having said that I'm just working on what I think will make money, my passion is around the process)
• You get to keep all the profits. No equity and greed bullshit.
• You're buying time back, build an army of bots to automate everything!
• You get to work where you want to work. No more commuting.
• No more pressure from other people. Personally I always have a low level of anxiety about what other people in my team and my boss might think about me.

Lifestyle and peers

When I lived in Brisbane, I had no need to push myself for anything other than a full-time job. It was the easiest city to live in the world. You could earn a great salary, have a great life with sunny weather and the property was cheap relatively speaking (now property prices have sky-rocketed not so much, but that's another conversation).

In the UK things are different. You can have a great lifestyle, Europe and North America are easily accessible and we have a stable economy (in the long term not these hiccups we've been having in the last few years). However to have a decent lifestyle living in the South East you need money.

Also since I left the UK a lot of my family and friends have become crazy wealthy. This has given me motiviation for 2 reasons; it makes the possibility of making money very real and my competitive streak makes me want to keep up.

Redundancies and trust

It's June 2024 and after a post-covid, crazy hiring spree, what's gone up has been coming down with vengeance. Redundancies have been prolific in 2023 and 2024 in the tech industry. This has given me motivation to do my own thing. If you work for someone else you don't have input in decisions and you are relying on other people to run a business that affect you.

Whilst redundancy can be emotional turmoil (if you didn't volunteer for it), the upside is it can buy you time. I've used my recent redundancy to create an app of my own at the same time as looking for a new job, I was put on gardening leave which is fortunate. So in the last 6 weeks, I've had the luxury of time and decided to really focus on building Cleanest AI and apply for jobs at the same time.

The rise of AI

I couldn't write a blog in 2024 without mentioning AI. As a millennial growing up with films like Terminator, I am slightly paranoid about AI taking my job in the long term. I know Zoomers are way more comfortable with AI and feel more they can work with it. I still feel that by creating my own app I can leverage AI to my advantage more than being concerned about it taking my job.

Conclusion

Writing a blog and trying to share it with as many people as possible doesn't come naturally to me as an introverted developer. However, this has been quite cathartic writing down my thoughts and being honest about my experiences. I'm excited to be a Solopreneur and I'm excited to have you on this journey with me. I hope you enjoy the content I create and the products I make. Also, to inspire you to take the leap and start your own side-project or business.