GoKawiilEight years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company. Every year, I post an update about how that’s going and what my life is like as an indie founder.
I don’t expect you to go back and read my last seven updates. Here’s all you need to know:
How finances went 🔗︎
People are always most interested in how money works as an indie founder, so I’ll start there. Here’s what my revenue and profit looked like every month this year.
In total, I had $8.2k in profit on $16.3k in revenue. That was my total income for the year, which is obviously not enough to support a family, but my wife also works, and we have savings/investments.
My main source of revenue was my book. I’m writing a book to teach developers to improve their writing. I did a Kickstarter for it in March, which gave me $6k in pre-sales. As I worked on the book, I offered paid early access. In total, 422 readers purchased early access, for which I’m grateful. I also have an old business that makes $100-200/month without me touching it.
My main expenses were computer hardware ($2.1k) and LLMs ($1.9k). I don’t use AI to write, but I use it for a lot of the accessory tasks like fixing rendering/layout issues and improving the website. I also use it for my open-source projects.
Here’s how 2025 compared to previous years:
The years I was running TinyPilot dominate the chart. Still, 2025 was my fourth most profitable year as a founder.
My goal for the year was $50k in profit, so I fell quite short (more on that later).
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