Betting on Himself
Startup Founder of the Day– Ep. 18
Meet the Founder who left his job in tech to focus on his side projects
Today’s Startup Founder of the Day is Arunas Skirius, Founder of Spike and Belltastic
Arunas is a solo founder from Lithuania. After spending nine years living and working in the United Kingdom, he returned home to be closer to his family and a familiar, warm culture.
He has been in love with computers since a young age. He liked the approach of learning about things by breaking them. Needless to say, his parents were less fond of this approach.
Arunas was also a music student for nearly ten years, playing violin, piano and guitar. Although he spent a long time studying music, he knew he couldn’t make a comfortable living from it. So, he set it aside and it now serves as a hobby instead.
Arunas has been developing software professionally for over six years now, which have been some of his best years to date. He has always been a hard worker and eager to climb fast. Just like in his childhood, he still breaks things to learn things. He isn’t afraid to experiment and delve deep into a technology to fully understand it. This has helped Arunas become a Tech Lead in recent years, where he had a lot of responsibilities.
Just like in my childhood, I still break things to learn things
Over the last few years, Arunas felt a growing need to build his own projects and have the freedom to work on what he wanted and believed in. During those few years, he was building knowledge and courage as he worked on multiple side projects.
The problem was — he never had the time to fully commit to the side projects and see them through. So, in May 2022, after accumulating a good amount of money in the bank, he decided to leave his stable job as a tech lead to focus 100% on his own projects.
I decided to leave my stable job as a tech lead, and focus 100% on my own projects.
This was a difficult move, but Arunas believes it was necessary to get out of his comfort zone and to prove to himself that he can make it as an entrepreneur.
It has only been a month since he left his job, but the progress so far has been great. He is learning every day, and can’t wait to see what he is able to build over the next few months!
About Spike
Arunas is currently working on Spike which is a credits-based billing portal for Laravel apps. The idea came from a few of his friends who wanted to create paid APIs, but were having trouble with the billing side.
The existing tools like Spark did not fit their needs either, and he couldn’t find anything else that even came close to what was needed. So, he decided to build it himself.
If I don’t make any sales, I’ll still be happy with it because it’s a product I will use myself!
About Belltastic
Over the last few months, Arunas has also been building Belltastic, a pre-built notifications inbox component for your website. Simply copy and paste the component snippet into your website, and your logged-in users will have an inbox for your notifications!
Belltastic has many new features to come, such as email, SMS and device notifications, developer tools, more customization and more client libraries.
How You Can Help
Spike is launching soon, so get on the waiting list! You will be notified of any beta tests and you’ll receive a big discount as one of the first adopters.
Belltastic is free to use, so sign up now and let Arunas know what you think!
Advice to Fellow Founders
I definitely do not recommend leaving your job unless you have considerable runway saved up. Personally, I saved up for about 24 months before I felt comfortable with the jump. If you can launch a product on the side of your day job without burning out, then do so!
Secondly, please, please, reduce the feature set of your minimum viable product! You should not be building your project for 12 months before the first release. For the MVP, aim for something that you can release in 1–2 months. You want to be getting feedback as soon as you can. If you think that releasing a crappy MVP in 1 month will be disappointing, then think about how disappointing it would be to release a fully-fledged product after 12 months only to find out nobody wants it. Validate, fast. — Arunas Skirius
Congrats to our Startup Founder of the Day, Arunas!
Please support our Founder by sharing his story with your audience.
Be sure to give Arunas a follow on Twitter and read his technical articles on his personal website.
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