π TL;DR
This year has been a lot. In my endeavour to document as much of what's gone on as possible this post is quite long, written as always primarily for myself but open to anyone interested, so feel free to skip around using the table of contents.
If that feels like too much effort, here's an overview of the year:
- π Visited 26 cities (+ lots of nature) across 11 countries
- π«‘ Left Lex to pursue new opportunities
- π€°π» (My wife) got pregnant!
- π οΈ Built (to varying degrees) 4 products:
- βπ» Wrote a blog post that topped Hacker News, getting over 40,000 views, 215 upvotes and 171 comments
- πΌ Took a short 5 week contract at the end of the year and landed a 6 month role starting in Jan
π The turn of the year
2024 was one full of work and travel, a combination that worked surprisingly well, so much so that it ended with me having over a weeks worth of holiday to spare.
I'd saved a decent chunk of holiday for our round the world trip that began in late August, with the goal of working a little less than normal each week as we explored what each part of the world had to offer.
I did end up working a little less, roughly 4.5 days a week instead of 5, but the natural urgency to get work done so we could go out and explore combined with the motivational boost from fresh experiences made that elusive work-life balance feel surprisingly attainable, despite a packed schedule.
2025 marked the mid-point of the trip, starting with new years surviving the Australian summer heat in truly unprepared British style by Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Much like the end of 2024, there was a lot packed into the first third of this year, as the second half of our "pre-kids tour" continued unabated.
That productivity boost continued into the new year too, peaking at the end of our trip in April as we looked to put our foot on the gas at Lex and ship all the in-flight features we had in the works.
π Travel
In 2025 I was away from home for half of the year, taking in a couple dozen cities across 11 countries.
π¦πΊ Northern Sydney & Melbourne (January)
Having spent Christmas and New Years at my sisters in Sydney we headed a couple hours north to spend time with some of my wife's extended family.
From there we headed to Melbourne to stay with a friend of mine, meeting his new wife and friends.
π³πΏ "Campervanning" through New Zealand (February)
From Melbourne we flew into Christchurch, spending a few days in the city, getting some work in and seeing a friend.
We then picked up what was to be our accommodation for the next 5 weeks, an old Toyota Estima converted into the most basic of campers, with a simple mattress and storage underneath providing us with both the wheels for the road and roof over our head for the night.
We meandered through the South Island, with Queenstown and WΔnaka being highlights, along with the relatively quiet Milford Sound, where we were greeted by a pod of dolphins swimming alongside us as we took in the spectacular views of the surrounding peaks.
In the north western corner Nelson and the nearby coastline of Abel Tasman National Park were well worth a visit too.
The North Island also had it's charm, from the volcanic activity in Rotorua to the beautiful clear Blue Springs outside of PutΔruru and the hot springs in Hot Water Beach.
Overall the biggest challenge was keeping the laptop powered and finding enough wifi to get through the day, with libraries providing a haven for both when cafe's fell short.
π¨π± Chile (March)
South America was the pen-ultimate continent on my list to visit (with only Antartica remaining) and had long been on the bucket list. Thankfully Santiago was a direct flight from Auckland, so we started the next leg of our journey there.
We spent a few days in the city, climbing up Santa Lucia Hill and wandering through street-art laden streets, before navigating the challenge of driving a manual through a capital city on the "wrong" side of the road as we headed out west to one of the most stunning apartments we've ever stayed at.
Perched on the edge of the cliff overlooking the South Pacific Ocean we woke with birds of prey swooping past our window as the waves lapped in on the panoramic views of the sea behind.
It was a tad more expensive than our usual stay but well worth the extra indulgence, it'll live long in the memory.
After the coast we headed inland, staying a few days in the misty wine region before heading further east into the mountains.
From there we took a bus through the winding roads of the Andes and into Mendoza.
π¦π· Argentina (March)
In Mendoza there were two priorities, copious amounts of meat and wine. Both were achieved with aplomb.
On one day we took a free wine tour a local family run winery put on, understanding about 10% of what was going on due to the language barrier but feeling very welcome and meeting the head honcho, who happily signed a bottle we bought as a gift.
On another we rented a bike and cycled around the region stopping off to have a glass and enjoy the views. Thankfully it was only at the end that I got a flat tire and the bike rental company swung by to take us back.
From Mendoza we took a cheap flight over to Buenos Aires, somewhere I'd long wanted to visit. We enjoyed more steak, buying some to cook at home that was unreasonably good, as well as trying what one list ranked the #1 steakhouse in the world. It was very good, though I'm more of a dirty steak guy than the posh stuff.
One goal was to catch at least one game whilst we were in South America, and I set about searching to see if Boca Juniors had any matches on whilst we were there. They didn't, which surprised me, until I realised it was an international break. But to our great fortune we'd managed to time our stay in the Argentinian capital with Argentina taking on Brazil in a world cup qualifier.
Messi was unavailable, though thankfully I'd seen him play at Barcelona before, but we booked a couple resale tickets and a few days later a man pulled up in a car near our Airbnb, handed over the tickets and whizzed off.
En route to the game I searched twitter for team news but only came across clips of fans being brutally attacked with batons, blood everywhere as Messi & co watched on in disbelief, which in my great wisdom I kept to myself until after the game.
Upon arrival once we'd finally found the right entrance we entered the stadium and duly realised our tickets were unreserved, and that the stand was entirely full with 5 rows of people stood at the back, granting less than 10% of the pitch in view.
Many had taken it upon themselves to rectify the issue, with fans clambering up the gates and onto the stand above, being helped in true South American style by the nearest steward.
Soon after another steward came over and put a stop to the migration, so we thought we'd missed our chance, but thankfully ten minutes later the gate was briefly prized open and we hurriedly fled through into the next section, where we managed to stand at the back and watch the game with a superb view.
Argentina (the current world champions) showed they aren't a one man team and duly demolished Brazil 4-1, making the whole experience one that will live long in the memory.
πΊπΎ Uruguay (April)
The next stop was a short ferry across to Colonia del Sacramento, where the cobbled streets, old shops and beautiful sunsets captured our hearts.
Uruguay is one of the richest countries in South America and one many come to for their holidays, so we headed east across the coast with relatively high expectations.
Those expectations left us a little underwhelmed though, with the rest of the coast feeling unremarkable. We'd happily return to Colonia del Sacramento if we find ourselves in Buenos Aires again, but would probably head inland to a ranch next time around.
π΅πΎ Paraguay (April)
Having started the trip in Victoria Falls we knew we wanted to head north to Iguazu Falls, and decided to catch a flight out to the nearby Paraguayan capital of AsunciΓ³n without much expectation or research.
Upon landing we grabbed an Uber and were greeted by a taxi driver with style, as we weaved through the tree laden city serenaded by Frank Sinatra. Naturally Frank, Chet Baker and co provided the perfect soundtrack to the rest of the work week.
The prices were cheaper here than Argentina/Uruguay so we stayed in a nice area and ate at decent restaurants, which paired with our low expectations made for one of the highlights of the trip. Well worth a visit if you're in that part of the world.
π§π· Brazil (April)
From Asunción we took a six hour bus through to Foz do Iguaçu, staying on the Brazilian side. Iguazu Falls is 60% wider than Victoria but only about 70% of the height, running across the intersection of Argentina, Brazil & Paraguay, so each are impressive in their own right.
One day we spent the afternoon walking the longer Brazilian side, followed by a an early morning bus back across the border to Argentina for a sunrise viewing which was pretty spectacular.
Having ticked off the second of the worlds major waterfalls we caught a flight across to Rio, first staying with a lovely middle-aged couple, enjoying panoramic views out our window across the city including the wonderful Christ the Redeemer.
We'd been warned about the decline of Rio and increased crime rates so kept our guard and avoided being out long after dark, but when you've driven the length of South Africa it felt relatively tame in comparison.
As normal we prioritised good food, taking in a local Feijoada being a highlight. We hit the normal tourist traps, heading up to see Christ the Redeemer up close, getting the cable car up Sugarloaf Mountain and joining locals and tourists alike to take in the sunset on the rocky ridge between the famous Copacabana and lesser known Ipanema beaches.
From Rio we flew over to SΓ£o Paulo which had a nice feel in some areas but couldn't compete with the stunning beauty of Rio.
πΊπΈ Los Angeles (May)
The final stop on the trip was a week in LA with Nathan & Sammy for the third Lex camp. Nathan & Sonia were great hosts, cooking up wonderful food and showing us a side to LA I hadn't seen in my only previous 3 day visit back in 2016. I surprisingly found myself thinking I could easily spend a couple years out in this part of the world, the nature, weather and food combining for a wonderful lifestyle.
πͺπΈ Palma, Spain (June)
Upon arrival back in London there was a lot to discuss and think through, whether to double down at Lex for the next season or move onto something new.
One of my flatmates had a gap between jobs and wanted a getaway, so we booked cheap flights over for a couple nights on the Spanish island of Palma, hoping the change of scenery could bring some clarity.
We had a decent time, sticking to the city so not seeing all the island had to offer, but having some time to unwind after a hectic 9 months.
πΊπΈ New York (June)
6 weeks after getting back to London, Nathan found himself in NYC, where Sammy lives, so I took the opportunity to head across the pond for an impromptu Lex camp 4.
Sammy (ably assisted by Nathan who lived in NYC for a while pre-covid) acted as the perfect tour guides, taking in a wonderful variety of food and drink whilst we discussed what the future of Lex could look like.
π¨π¦ Vancouver (December)
My brother and his family have lived out in Vancouver for almost 15 years, and I'd visited a few times but never for Christmas.
This year I managed to convince the parents to spend Christmas out there, so my wife and I jetted over at the start of the month to spend some quality time with my bro, working on my own bits whilst he worked on his.
They moved across from the city to Vancouver Island a few years ago, so we spent most of our time there, but he had a company retreat in mid-December so we headed back to the city for a week as Lorna hadn't been to Canada before.
We cycled Stanley Park, walked around Granville Island, ate Poutine, visited many breweries, but the highlight was our first ever ice hockey match watching the Canucks lose out to the Buffalo Sabres. The technical skill and elegance of how the players glide across the surface combined with the macho [brutality] of the big hits made for a really fun evening out.
π΄σ §σ ’σ ³σ £σ ΄σ Ώ Edinburgh (December)
The final stop of the year was back across to the UK for the new years period with my wife's family in Edinburgh. We come here a few times a year so it's a bit of a home from home, but took the last opportunity we have pre-kids to do a proper Edinburgh new years going along Princes Street for Hogmanay as the imposing castle shot fireworks into the nights sky before Auld Langs Syne rang out.
β³ Times of change
A big change during the year was in what work looks like.
At the start of the year, my day to day was a combination of some Windsurf IDE based agentic coding along with a decent amount of coding by hand:
In both cases I was deeply involved in every line of code changed, whether the keypresses were mine or simply reviewed.
But by the last quarter things had changed dramatically. I initially tried Claude Code in the early summer, but found visibility into the actual code changes (something I naturally care about) hard to come by, and the whole process felt a bit disjointed.
After leaving Lex I had some spare time. Ben Tossell, a long time twitter friend, joined Factory and hooked me up with early access.
Factory's UX seemed a step change ahead of Claude Code, and required quite a bit less hand holding, so I took a day to quickly hack together a new project I'd wanted to replace one I'd built with a friend a decade ago.
It was only when Nathan badgered me to finally give Conductor a go, in combination with the release Claude Opus 4.5 that things really kicked into gear.
Since then my productivity (read: Claude's) has multiplied whilst keeping the bar high on both the code and product fronts in ways I wouldn't have thought possible this time last year.
It's a dizzy concoction of exciting and scary. At times the engineer in me mourns for the days where I was coding everything by hand, whilst at others the product builder finds myself hooked by how much progress can be made in such a short time.
Spending too long thinking about where it ends up and what it means for my livelihood can feel overwhelming, so I spend most of my time making sure I'm staying up to date and being as productive as can be.
But when I do take time to step back, now a decade into my career, it's the first time I've felt that I might be over halfway gone. What will I be doing in 10 years time? It might be in tech, but it may well not be.
π£οΈ Leaving Lex & the journey ahead
It's a clichΓ© but life is a journey, and comparing yours with others is futile. What can look like going backwards from the outside can be the best form of progress, whilst the appearance of success could be papering over serious cracks.
I started out building my own products almost 17 years ago and have had periods of intense growth, periods of slow growth, and periods where I've purposefully stepped away to prioritise other areas of life.
The past couple of years have been two of the best professionally, working with people I respect on a problem I'm intrinsically motivated to solve with about as much autonomy as could be hoped at an early stage startup.
That said, as the long trip ended and we returned home to London I started taking stock of what the next season could look like. Nathan and I had some chats about where Lex was going and what I was looking for moving forwards, and in the end it felt best all round to look ahead to what's next.
I'm massively grateful for the time we had to work together and what we built, but equally excited about what's to come.
π·π»ββοΈ The urge to build
The best way to learn how startups are built is to get inside one and do the work. Watching from the outside they can seem like magic machines, intimidating in their vision and execution, something that requires relentless genius that only a few can offer.
And whilst it's true that some startups are led by mavericks who seem to operate in an entirely different sphere, most successful startups come down to a smart idea well executed at the right time.
They say that out of all attributes the most important for startups is timing. It makes sense too, the market knows what it wants and if it's not looking for what you've got to offer then there's very little you can do about it, regardless of clever the idea is or how well you execute.
That was the case with Lex. Nathan has built his career on being at the right place at the right time. From building the first version of Product Hunt, to being first employee at Substack, to launching Lex just before ChatGPT launched, he's mastered the art of being in the right room at the right time and betting on the right horse.
Getting to work alongside Nathan was one of the biggest draws of working at Lex. Seeing how the sausage is made and how to empower others whilst keeping the ship pointing in the right direction has been a privilege.
Progress is a process, and it can be hard to gauge how far you've come as you take each step on the journey, but I feel a lot more confident in knowing what it takes to build something great.
As I think about what's ahead, I can't help but feel the challenge to build my own thing. To work towards escaping the continual exchange of time <β> money, and create something of value that's my own.
The future feels more uncertain than ever, it's felt like half a decade of progress has passed in the last twelve months. What's required to build a business is evolving in real-time, but as I think about what it takes, it seems to come down to a combination of a few things:
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ β ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ β β β discovering what to build β β β ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ€ β β β having the skills to build it β β β ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ€ β β β getting users to discover it β β β ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ β ββββββββββ staying the course ββββββββββββ
I'm sure this is nothing knew, but I've started referring to this as "the product sandwich", and how long you can stick to the process naturally multiplies the impact of assembling it.
I've got a lot of what it takes to build my own thing, the technical and product skills to build something great, but of the four key areas above, I'm only great at #2, and that's the very skill that's being democratised.
#1 & #3 are two sides of the same coin, forming a long-running conversation between your target users about what they want and what you build.
But alongside the skill of doing the work is the grit required to stay the course.
That doesn't mean stubbornly heading in the same direction, but not giving up when the path is meandering and has lots of twists and turns.
I read Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned at the beginning of the year and it's probably the worst-written book i'd still recommend to almost anyone. I guess that's what you get when a bunch of AI nerds write a book.
The core premise is that much of life is far more like a maze than a straight line, with no obvious step-by-step guide to get to where you want to go. Trying to achieve any non-trivial goal by stubbornly moving towards it can lead us to a local maxima, stuck at the closest point we could find that was heading in the right direction, but with no way to actually get there.
In reality the path to greatness is far more about prioritising short-term discovery over long-term direction. Far better to follow your interests in an uncharted area than to go the way you think you should go because it seems closer to the end goal.
The upside of the message is that we can be a little freer in discovering the path rather than dictating exactly what it should be. Reality is far more discovery than creation, and even the act of creation itself can be seen through the lens of simply following a thread of possibilities.
The downside is that a maze isn't simple, you should expect to go down dead ends and to "waste" some time going one way only to backtrack and go another.
Dead ends and backtracking are no fun, and historically I've struggled to make that journey. Spending a good chunk of time on something to throw most of it away has always been tough to take, normally leading to either continuing to work on the wrong idea or giving up entirely. Thankfully the lesson that discovery matters more than continuing to move in the direction I started heading in is slowly recalibrating my brain.
Naturally continually throwing away the majority of your work every few months won't get you anywhere, and the explore vs exploit mental model frames this well.
We explore to find something worth exploiting, and then explore again out from that base.
I'm excited to continue exploring in the first half of the year whilst contracting and awaiting the little one's arrival, and aim to have something worth exploiting by the summer when I'll have more time, even if I might struggle for brainpower with a lack of sleep.
π¨π»βπΌ Being a proud dad
The biggest news of the year in my world was finding out my wife was pregnant.
Our "pre-kids tour" had ended in May, but for multiple reasons we couldn't start trying immediately, so I wasn't expecting it when my wife surprised me with the good news in September.
What I'm most excited about in parenting is the relationship I'll get to build with our kids. The journey we'll go on, the learning we'll both have and all the adventures ahead.
Kids learn far more from example than what you say, and one area I've spoken a lot about but not done enough on is building my own business.
My primary goal in my career has been increasing freedom, to work on what I want when I want with who I want.
There's multiple ways to achieve that, from building my own business to getting paid well to build others.
But another mental frame I use is "optimise for the least regret", and I know if I don't give building my own business a proper shot I'd regret it, and feel I've set a really poor example for our kids.
Having a kid brings goals like this into focus. I want to be able to talk about how I gave my dreams every shot, and as Mandela says, let "my choices reflect my hopes not my fears".
βοΈ The dual-wield approach
As mentioned above, a major method of increasing freedom is getting paid well to help build others business, which is the primary track I'm on currently.
I finished up at Lex at the start of September, so had three months before heading out to Vancouver for Christmas. I knew I needed some time to unwind, so I spent six weeks relaxing and dabbling on my own thing. Then after that a five week contract opportunity with Nolana came up, so I spent the last chunk of time in the UK this year working with them.
From next year I've got another contract lined up, this time with GPTZero, who have made super impressive progress in the writing quality space. I'm really excited to see what we can achieve in levelling up the writing experience there before kid #1 arrives in early June.
Alongside that I'll continue making progress on my own stuff, leaning into shipping and marketing whilst I explore which problem space is the one to double down in, with the aim of having clarity and a good foundation to push on by the time the kiddo arrives and the initial contract with GPTZero comes to a close.
By end of year I want to be at least on $1k MRR, which seems pretty achievable if I double down on Flowlane (5 customers x $200/mo would do it), but if I stick solely on abode it could be pretty challenging (142 customers @ $7/mo).
I know I want to have a tool like abode for the long-term, so plan to continue iterating on it, but we'll see whether I focus on that alone or look to build something that has a more obvious path to financial viability.
π’ Stuff I've shipped
In the last few months I've built a few products to varying degrees:
π Flowlane was the first, and one I think has the most potential, but also has the most challenges in terms of getting companies to let AI take the wheel in user onboarding flows. I've only taken this to proof of concept stage and will prioritise user interviews before building anything if I pick this one back up.
Then came π³ here/now, with the first version built in a day as mentioned above, I've since iterated on it a little, splitting out the core to open source it and getting it working in Docker. I knew this was just a fun one and wouldn't ever be a business itself, but you never know what connections you make from stuff like this, and I just wanted to use it.
After this I started work on πͺ΅ log.limo, which is a more obvious need, automating changelogs based on your feed of git commits, freeing product teams up to focus on what they want: shipping product.
This one is in a decent place, almost ready to use on my own bits but needing a bit more to get it over the line. A concern with this is that it's pretty close to the zone of the ever growing AI wave which could consume it, with users potentially hand rolling their own solution.
The last build of the year was for π abode, an app I've wanted to build for a long time and even bought a (different, worse) domain for a couple years back. I've always procrastinated on it as it's B2C, in a competitive market and not super simple to build, but the way AI has made building so much easier drew me back in and I knew I wanted to use it for this post.
A big downside with existing solutions like mymind is the lock-in. With an app like abode/mymind you want to invest in it for years and years to come, ideally until your dying breath, and so if you start building your digital home in one of these apps you're committing to paying them for it in perpetuity, or exporting your data without any way to easily use it.
My intention with abode is to open source it at some point in the new year, under either a Fair Source license or Basecamp's O'Saasy license, so users can either choose to self-host or can pay for the hosted solution knowing they can always eject out anytime later should they want to.
I also wanted a slightly different take product-wise, one that combines both mymind's self-organising library with are.na's social ability to share and collaborate.
The core flow as of now consists of uploading images or pasting article URL's, which then fires off a bunch of analysis / parsing and stores it in your abode. You can then search by tags or by free text, and optionally create "rooms" where you can either manually or automatically share a subset of your abode, for example all photos taken in .
Naturally videos, podcasts, books, films etc. are all things I want to include too and will get added over time.
The app is in invite-only early access but feel free to ping me on twitter if you're keen to give it a shot.
π’ 2025 scorecard
2025 had a lot of adventure (mostly front-loaded in the first half of the year with some at the end), not amazing on the health front whilst travelling but pretty good when back home, work was great even with the change towards the end, business progress was early small steps but more than I've taken since ~2018, and relationships felt healthy and steadily deepening.
- Adventure 9/10
- Health 5/10
- Work 8/10
- Business 7/10
- Relationships 7/10
On the health front the mood was good throughout the year, with only a few blips, but workouts weren't consistent due to moving about so often.
I'm looking forward to only having a few trips next year so I can get my workout routine back in place and have full control of my diet too.
π― 2026 goals
- Be a present husband and father
- Make weekly progress on my own stuff
- Continue exploring whilst contracting
- Exploit at least one idea to $1k MRR by end of year
- Train for and run September half marathon
- Lose Christmas blub and regain some muscle
- Florida work trip + one last getaway pre-kiddo
