Bootstrapped startups and the shit I learn in therapy

When I was a junior in college I started a company with two of my best friends. We grew it to 10 team members and over $1M in revenue before selling it to GreyNoise Intelligence in June of 2022.

Clients loved me:

"Andrew is a pompous penny pinching hipster with funny socks." -former NSA analyst and client

I spent a year working at GreyNoise, first as the interim product leader and then as a product manager. While there I helped to rebuild their product team, hired an experienced VP of Product, implemented a new pricing model, and managed the development of multiple complex, technical features.

I build companies because I like the autonomy, the creative challenge, and the financial upside. I want to make a good living, leave the world a little better than I found it, and have as much free time as possible to pursue passions outside of work.

Right now my main focus is building chartjuice - we help users easily generate personalized charts at scale for emails, reports, and more. I'm going full IndieHacker and building and marketing everything myself. If you're interested in what we're doing, I'd love to talk to you.

When it comes to free time, I'm typically rock climbing, backpacking, mixing cocktails, working with a local robotics team, or hanging out with my partner and our two cats.

I'm not a morning person.

But I did once spent two nights on an island with no food.

Different island

I love to...

🍳 Cook for friends

πŸ“š Read a good fantasy novel

πŸ§—β€β™‚οΈ Climb (mostly artificial) rocks

πŸ•οΈ Backpack

πŸ“Ί Watch romantic comedies

🍹 Mix classic cocktails

πŸ€– Build robots

😸 Spend time with my cats Po Boy and Stevie

I'm working on...

🧠 My mental health (thanks to lots of therapy)

πŸ“ Writing

🌳 Getting outside more

I am obnoxiously opinionated, but most of my opinions are loosely held. At the moment I passionately believe that...

  • Balance is the key to life.
  • We have a responsibility to lift up those around us.
  • Great management is the only way to build great companies.
  • Agile isn’t the only way to build products (but it is the best way most of the time)
  • Capitalism has a lot of flaws, but is better than any other system we've found yet.
  • People are mostly good and the world is better today than it ever has been.
  • Dark mode is overrated.
  • If you have to use tooltips to guide users through your onboarding process your onboarding sucks.
  • You can never have too many lists.

To learn more of my story, you can find a list of interviews and guest posts here.

Footnote: This site is my personal playground.

I feel more fulfilled when I'm regularly creating and sharing the things I create with people. This site should help me do that.

I have no strategy for it, no marketing plan. I am optimizing for personal fulfillment rather than profits. Although that too, may change in the future. Strategy, marketing and profits can all be fun.

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