Founder & Chief Everything
Wherein I introduce myself, and express my intentions regarding this startup blog.
Hi, my name is Benji Smith, and I’m the founder of Shaxpir.
I’m also the product owner, software architect, UX designer, full-stack engineer, growth hacker, social media manager, customer support agent, and computational linguist.
Yesterday, I launched a new product. It was a pretty good day!
Yes, this a bootstrapping young pre-seed startup, and I’m the person who does literally everything! I’ve been running this company for more than two years — with no co-founders, employees, accelerators, or investors — so I’m a bit of an oddity in startup-founder land.
But please take my word for it: Contrary to popular opinion, being a solo founder can actually be intensely satisfying. If you’re a creative, ambitious, empathetic person with a true passion for doing your life’s work, and if you have a deeply-rooted optimism for humanity, then the life of the solo-founder can be very gratifying indeed.
Of course, there are bumps in the road, but that’s always true anyhow, so don’t let it get you down. Chin up :)
Here in Solo Founder Magazine, I want to tell you everything about my startup experience: designing a product, raising capital, searching for collaborators, scaling the company, building social software, talking to users, pitching to investors, and generally trying to become a better person.
But the thing I’m most excited about is making tools (and toys!) for creative people, working on their craft. There’s something doubly-satisfying about stretching your creativity to design the best kinds of creative tools for your fellow artisans, and then making the craftsmanship of creative tools into a craft of its own.
So I’m going to spend a lot of my time in this blog talking about a subject that doesn’t get much attention: the design and engineering of tools (and toys!) for creative folk.
Whether you’re a solo-founder or an aspiring entrepreneur, a software engineer or UX designer, an author working on your first book or a seasoned novelist — or maybe even a curious investor — I hope you’ll be interested in following along. This is going to be fun!
