My One Year Bootstrapping Journey<br>Command Palette<br>Search for a command to run...

TTim Davis

Reformed tech line manager turned solopreneur.

Part of seriesBitflinger TV Development

div>p:first-child]:mt-0 [&>div>p:first-child]:pt-0 min-w-0 wrap-break-word [&_a]:break-all **:max-w-full"><br>Note: this post is part of a series: Bitflinger TV Development.

One Year Ago

June 14th, 2025: I was on an airplane, flying to Georgia to visit family. I'd been told over and over for the previous six months that mid-level managers were about to be decimated at Amazon. The problem was, the definition of a middle manager was fairly broad at Amazon. Which layer would see the cuts? Senior managers? Directors? VPs? I wasn't worried at first. I was a line manager and I loved my job. Or at least that's what I told myself at the time.

Somewhere around the week that I was traveling to Georgia, I realized something about the narrative on the upcoming middle-manager bloodbath: the middle-managers were in charge of handling the layoffs. Andy Jassy wasn't going to hand pick every layoff at Amazon. Suddenly, my 9 year job at Amazon felt tenuous at best. I started to realize that my time there was coming to an end, and I was fairly convinced that the industry was going to contract by 10% to 30%, in terms of job availability. So, while I was stuck on that flight, I revisited an idea that I had back in 2011.

Business ideas are all about solving problems for customers. I had a problem, and I was confident that most of the first world had the same problem. Back in 2011, I spiked up a rough Android app and put it on the Play Store for a few days, only to pull it when I decided that some big tech company would wipe me out if I tried to pursue the app in any real way. In my mind it was inevitable. But, years passed, and while the big tech companies took a stab at the problem, all of their solutions were coated in the oily residue of advertisements and data brokerage. I was the product, not the customer.

So, on that flight, I started sketching out high level diagrams of what I would build if I had the time and resources to do so. It would have to be "serverless". I couldn't afford to run hosts 24/7 until I had enough revenue to justify it. But, that also meant that cold start time had to be as low as possible. I needed a portable framework for developing the frontend so that I could have native apps for each platform. I started thinking about feasibility.

Money

The key feasibility question was money. Would I try to get funding? Could I bootstrap it? I'd been setting aside about half my total compensation each year for retirement/emergencies. The world had just changed. I didn't need to hire anyone. I could conceivably fund, design, build, and market my app with only the help of the various large language models. I was convinced that we were about to see a Cambrian explosion of independent developers and I wanted to get in ahead of the curve.

At the time, I wasn't convinced that I would take on the project. It was just an idea, noodling in the back of my mind whenever I wasn't busy with something else. But, the more I thought about it, the more convinced that I was that I needed to do something. I was suddenly confident that I was on the chopping block.

It took about 6 months, but my fear eventually turned into reality. A flood of layoffs, for colleagues who had been at Amazon longer than 7 years, filled my LinkedIn feed starting in November, 2025. The reason that so many tenured Amazon employees were being shown the door seemed obvious, but would become blatant on February 6th, when Andy Jassy shared Amazon's $200B AI investment plan. I joined them in February of 2026. I was sent an email notifying me of my layoff by the very notification system that I had helped build.

Because of my time at Amazon, I received a fairly sizable separation package. Between that and my savings, I made a decision. It was time to go all in on building my own software company and I was going to bootstrap it without investment.

What's Next?

I intend to use this publication to tell you about the ups and downs of my journey. I'm one year in now and I'm more convinced than ever that we're heading into another market crash that will wipe out demand for developers right at the moment that AI becomes transformative in the industry. Does that mean less software? No. It just means that you and I get to create that software on our own. The barrier to entry to building your own software company is at an all time low.

Get your severance; go build something amazing.

In the next few weeks, I intend to continue writing articles about my journey as a solopreneur. Here's a rough idea of the topics:

Phase 1 — Launcher Prototype (Jul 2025)

Phase 2 — Backend & Infrastructure (Aug 2025)

Phase 3 — Rebrand & Real Infrastructure/Auth (Sep 2025)

Phase 4 — TV UI System & Media Features (Oct 2025)

Phase 5 — Layered Architecture & Riverpod (Nov 2025 – Feb 2026)

Phase 6 —...