It's been a little over a year since I started my programming journey. Truthfully, I've always been very close to tech—I was swapping Windows with Linux distros fro when I was 16.
Back in June 2024
I was finally ready to build my first SaaS, having quit my last ever corporate job. I didn't know any programming though, but I had a very clear vision of what the product was going to be (FirstBidr).
I hacked together a bunch of automations in n8n, spun up a Wordpress site and got to work. The entire backend was built in n8n (I strongly recommend not doing this), complete with APIs for user dashboard, database integration and Stripe payments management.
Unfortunately, just three weeks after launch, I was forced to shut it down because Upwork killed an endpoint that was critical to my app.
I cringe when I look back at how insanely complicated the whole thing was. But the service worked, and users loved it. However, it took my far too long to build it, 100s of hours crammed into a 6 week sprint.
I decided I would be much better off learning how to actually program.
October 2024
An idea landed in my lap while I was working with anitya, helping them set up their HubSpot.
Conncord was born.
And this time, I actually knew the basics of programming. I spun up a super basic Flask server and a NextJs app to build the MVP. I knew nothing of frontend design, so I used NextUI (now HeroUI). The app looked like crap, but hey, it worked.
November 7th is when this Conncord went live on the HubSpot marketplace—huge moment!
I knew nothing of how to host the damn app on the internet. I had played around with Docker (using Portainer) before, so I figured I should use that. My deployment pipeline looked like this:
Push commit to Github --> Build a x86 compatible docker image on my M1 Macbook Air --> Push image to ghcr --> pull image into Portainer --> deploy image
*shudders*
Very soon, I figured out how to host the frontend on Vercel and actually learned how to use docker for CI/CD.
Conncord went through a major rewrite in December that year—Shadcn for UI and moved my flask backend to NodeJs.
April 2025
Conncord had been stable for months now, just a few updates and feature additions here and there. At this point, my major focus was SnitchFeed.
The MVP was ready to go—I had become comfortable with a bunch of web technologies at this point which helped me pick up a ton of momentum:
- Typescript
- NextJs
- React
- AuthJs
- Drizzle
- Postgres
- Self hosting
- VM management
- Networking
September 2025
This month marked the adoption of some of the more advanced things web devs find themselves doing:
- Messaging queues
- LangchainJs
- Building SDKs (for ServiceTrade, GroundHogg)
- Debugging open source projects (like Plunk, Karakeep)
- Managing multiple virtual machines (SnitchFeed is fully self-hosted via docker, backend of Conncord is self-hosted)
Today - November 2025
Right now, I'm working on setting up OpenTelemetry for all my apps and services so I can keep a close eye on errors and bottlenecks—all to improve the UX and quality of service my SaaS apps, and RevOps automation services apps provide.
I might not be the toughest engineering challenge, but damn do I feel good about implementing these updates.
What helped me the most
Today, I feel a whole lot more competent and very comfortable when it comes to web dev. This journey has not only made me a better developer, but it has unlocked some crazy fun projects for my RevOps consulting service.
In my opinion, the center of all this has been systems thinking.
Once you can break down a problem into individual systems, understand how they all interact with each other, and the levers you can pull, finding a way forward towards your goal becomes trivial.
That is all. This was more a reflective exercise than an editorial one. I had fun writing it, hope you did too reading!