This week I am on my Christmas vacation and it is also my last week as CTO of Ziik. On Monday, I am an independent contractor, consultant and SaaS builder with my new company, Vicklr.
Am I insane?
I don't think so.
For the past five years, I have worked on the Ziik application- a SaaS product for internal company communications - starting as the lone developer to become partner and head of technology and development in a growing company. I have seen Ziik grow from a Drupal prototype into a fully fledged Vue application with a Laravel API and mobile apps supporting hundreds of companies with thousands of users.
It has been quite a journey.
2020 was a weird year. Lots of uncertainty when it comes to customers - many are in retail, restaurants and hospitality so many were hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic with lacking customers and government restrictions. Also internally we had changes, going fully remote in March, having virtual company and customer meetings. But we thrived. Development did not suffer and I found myself loving working from home.
2020 was also the year where I saw an increasing desire to work on my own developments. Where I call the shots and focus my efforts where I want them to be focused.
Don't get me wrong, I like my partners in management and the colleagues, but Ziik is now in a state where there is less exploration and more maintaining momentum. Most likely, more people will join the project and I would see an increasing workload in management and less in development. However, I really like development, I like solving problems and hammer out solutions into a solid foundation. It is time for someone else to take the lead at Ziik and for me to take the lead for myself.
I have a head full of ideas that need to be explored. Some will probably not lead anywhere. Some will fail. Hopefully at least one will stick and give me the satisfaction of well architectured code that runs well and solves problems for actual customers.
My first project will be a Laravel Livewire project that I am really excited to dig into.
It is going to get interesting, real soon.
