I have always been an avid reader and learner, and always wanted to learn programming, for a very long time. For some strange reason, I used to be a quitter. I tried to learn programming for five years, but every time, I would quit halfway. And each new year resolution was, I will learn to code one day. Back then, I worked as a freelance academic writer, and made decent money in my country, based on our living standard. Every year, I would also stack up enough "guala" to start a new company, and would start, but never had the grit to keep going when you hit that first wall as an entrepreneur.
In basic terms, entrepreneurship sucks. Anyone who glamorizes entrepreneurship doesn't know jack about shit, if you catch my drift. When they say it aint for the faint of heart, they truly mean it. So, yeah. Back story. I started a bike sharing company with four of my friends, but I was an alcoholic and drug addict, and realized that I had to be sober to succeed in business. So after a year of keeping the business afloat, I checked into rehab, and my business partners failed at the business, and ended selling my bikes. Which I had actually paid for in full...
Then I started a web app that would be kind of similar to upwork, but the premise was taking people from the online meet ups to physical service delivery. In short, the app was founded during the glamorous years of the gig economy. Right, the app would connect people who needed skilled laborers, such as handymen based on their proximity to the user's location, allowing them to deliver the services in person. You would say it was kind of an advanced version of Craigslist for the Kenyan market. But guess what, the development of this project took too long, I think it was like 9 months, that I bailed before we could even beta test this thing.
Then I decided to start a grocery store where we would deliver groceries to people, right about the period when Covid happened. I had gravely underestimated how hard it would be to get people to sign up. I thought printing some fantastic looking brochures and passing them around would do the job, but for 6 months, I only got one online customer. Hands down, I was doing well with the business compared to other people, but man did it require a lot of effort. I had to go pick fresh produce in the market every day. I had created an outstanding grocery, but then one day, I lost the excitement to keep going on and closed it.
Then I went through the most traumatic experience of my life. I became reclusive for 3 years. Well, 2 and a half years give or take, trying to heal from this hell. I used to work online, so I would go for months without ever speaking to someone. But this period would shape me into someone very different. Right about the time I was healing, my online gig just went bust. I went from making $2,000 a month, which is a lot of money in my country to about 8 months of crickets. Not a single dollar for eight freaking months.
This time around I was thinking, I am not quitting, I will just wait it out, and the good money-making months will be just around the corner. In the meantime, I dived into my hobbies. I had some money stacked away so I had the pleasure to dive deeper into understanding how to edit videos, coz I want to make content some day. That journey then led me to get into 3D animation, as a way to make my videos stand out. Then when researching about the kind of computer needed for 3D animation, since my iMac core i7, which I thought was a beast wasn't really cutting it. In this period I started learning about the value of GPUs and came across NVidia and their talks about the future of AI.
I dabbled and tried using Chat GPT and was blown away by how much AI had improved since I last kept tabs with its progress. While trying to prompt Chat GPT to write a script that would allow me to automatically generate a city for Blender, the 3D editor I was using, I realized that I needed to learn programming because ChatGPT's output wasn't exactly what I wanted, but was close. I thought understanding programming would help me prompt it better. And this time, I stuck it out and learned how to code, in C, then in python, thanks to Harvard's CS50 program. But funny thing, by this time, my savings had runout and I needed to start making money pronto. And my writing gig wasn't going to come back as I had hoped, since I would barely make even $50 bucks a month.
Now, enter the phase I have been in for the past 7 or so months. I tried building websites for people, but people don't really want websites in my country. I made digital restaurant menus that you would scan for three clients. And finally, I build a POS system and realized that most people are interested in it, but don't have the money to invest in one. $100 bucks is a lot of money to most people in my country. But I am building this POS thingy, that I am now selling to people. But every day, I feel like this might be the last day coz I never have enough money even for rent. I pay about $50 in rent, and I can barely make rent on time. Like barely.... That was money I spent on a bad weekend a few months ago.
Also, I am a newbie programmer, so most of my POS system was part of a tutorial than ended impromptu, driving me to finish the other half on my own, with a lot of help from Chat GPT, ofcourse. In basic terms, I am trying to get my fifth startup off the ground. And like programming, this has to stick. I feel like I have imposter syndrome everyday, I code every day. I still rely on tutorials heavily, but I am learning so many things that every now and then, I will create something that wasn't in the tutorial or spice it up, but I am yet to create an entire software from scratch, which is my goal for this month btw. But the moral of the story is, keep going.
Fuck it, God will reward you somehow, you just have to roll with the punches and keep going. I might be struggling financially, but waking up to code and sell tech apps that actually help businesses every day feels like 20% happiness, but the other 80% is excruciating pain, shit, anxiety, and uncertainty that sucks like hell. But based on the pareto principle, the 20% happiness makes it freaking worth it, coz I am having a blast building this thing which I have no idea if it will work out, despite the unending tons of crap, shit, and dung I have to endure before the business can take off. But I gotta pay my dues. Right? To earn some stripes, I need to stick out this shit. Fifth time's a freaking charm. Excuse my typos, I just needed to vent, and will keep doing so until I have something that can help 20,000 business owners. Salut!