The side project that was never a plan B

Bespoke client work

When I started out as an entrepreneur, I earned my keep with clients—sites and custom applications.

Every month I had to find something new: a project to close, a deal to unblock, an invoice to send.

It was honest work. But it left very little room to breathe.

Something always simmering

Behind the scenes, something was always simmering. A small project of my own. I used it internally. I improved it between clients. Nobody asked for it; nobody paid for it. But I believed in it.

It was my side project—not a plan B, but a deliberate diversification, guided by a long-term view of where Anglo-Saxon markets were heading.

When the cloud still scared people

This was still the era when the cloud made people nervous—when clients would say: “Can we install everything on-prem? Nothing on the internet, please 😅”

The project wasn’t ready for the market. Technically it was; culturally it wasn’t. It was too early.

If I had had to live off it, if I had bet everything on it from day one… I would probably have quit. It would never have become anything.

Years without pressure

Instead I worked on it for years, in waves. No pressure. Evenings and some weekends.

Eventually that little project—that MVP—started to see light at the end of the tunnel as the market moved. I doubled down. I invested.

It became a real company—100% bootstrapped—built with patience, work, and vision.

A SaaS business that still grows at a strong pace year after year. And after a lot of work, I chose to sell—to draw a line, make room for what’s next—with gratitude.

What I learned

If there’s one lesson from this story, it’s this:

Meaningful outcomes take patience. You have to think in years, not quarters. You build today—even when nobody is watching yet.

Time to market matters. But without a long-term vision, it risks being nothing more than luck.