earksiinni

Ironically, I solo-built an AI bookkeeper for solopreneurs all of last year on my own dime. Predictably, I ran out of money and had to go back to contracting.

It was incredibly hard for me and I started to lose my mental health. It was a struggle to get any positive or negative validation, to get anyone to pay any kind of attention whatsoever. It was a great luxury for me when an investor actually said "no," most blew smoke up my butt and strung me along. Even my paying users seemed to not really care one way or another.

After I ran out of money and all but abandoned the project, I had an incredible stroke of good luck when an established player in my niche out of nowhere decided to incubate a new version of my app built on their platform. For a minute, I was finally getting real traction as this company's founder started promoting me across their socials: people signing up, giving feedback, folks adding me on LinkedIn, messaging me to set up partnerships.

The deal eventually fell apart and everything went cold again, but for a second I saw how much easier this all is when you have social proof. It was frustrating. Nothing had changed in me or my product other than a famous person backing me. I was the exact same entrepreneur with the exact same offering, but somehow now I was worthy because someone else said so. Well, I guess that's how the world works.

I want to say "hang in there," but honestly for me the whole episode was the straw that broke the camel's back. After 12+ years of working for myself, I'm seriously reconsidering my life choices and whether I still want this. I'm currently focused on contracting and paying down my debt.

I think that I'm coming back, slowly, to the entrepreneurial path, shorn of many of the BS narratives the tech industry tells about startups. The loneliness is very real and I feel every inch of your pain. You are not alone.

If you ever want to share or reach out, feel free to shoot me an email: [email protected]. I'm also trying to write more about my journey at www.ersinakinci.com, although I haven't written yet about the startup failure--too raw still, and frankly, I'm afraid of telling the whole truth.

Comment · 1 year ago

You can pry PragmataPro from my cold dead hands.

Comment · 1 year ago

AI bookkeeping for solopreneurs.

As a freelance web dev who also has an Airbnb side hustle, I got tired of expensive bookkeeping for a few transactions per month. I tried DIY, but my time is worth more than that.

Most importantly, both pros and DIY got subtle things wrong and caused me to miss out on thousands of dollars in deductions and credits.

So I’m making an AI bookkeeping chatbot that will handle all that for me. The aim is full automation while surfacing tax deduction and credit opportunities throughout the year. Like wouldn’t it be awesome to just have the research and tax credit or do home office deductions with zero effort?

At the end of the year, Kumbara puts together a series of financial reports that you plug into your tax software or hand to your CPA.

Working hand-in-hand with CPAs and some platform partners on this. Would love to hear from other solopreneurs or engineers who want to help build the future of financial freedom.