For the last while I’ve spent basically every evening and weekend building something on the side, just to fix a problem that was driving me nuts at my actual job. Nothing dramatic, just a tool for myself. I put it on GitHub mostly so I wouldn’t lose track of my own code.

Then people started actually using it. It slowly grew to over 150k installs and 3k+ stars, and I still can’t fully explain how that happened. Strangers opening pull requests at 2am my time. People emailing me questions like I was running a real company, when it was just me after work with a laptop.

A few months ago a couple of companies reached out about using it in their own products, and at one point someone even offered to buy the whole thing. I said no. Saying that out loud felt insane at the time, but it’s what made me realize I didn’t want an exit, I wanted to actually build it properly.

So today I handed in my notice. As of August 1st I’m not an employee anymore, I’m doing this full time. No investors lined up, no safety net really, just something that grew because it solved a real problem and me finally deciding to bet on it.

Half of me is thinking “you had a stable job, what are you doing,” the other half hasn’t been this sure of anything in years.

Anyone else made this jump from employed to “it’s just me now”? What did the first month actually feel like versus what you expected going in?