Articles
Thoughts on building software, shipping products, and what real-world experience teaches that courses cannot.
Why We Don't Chase Every Feature Request We Get
Every feature request is a real person telling you something true about their day. That doesn't mean every request belongs in the product. Here's how we sort the two.
Read article →What a Technical Due Diligence Engagement With Us Actually Looks Like
Most technical due diligence requests come in vague: "can you look at the codebase." Here's what we actually do once someone hires us for one, step by step.
Read article →The Point Where a Side Project Stops Being a Side Project
Nobody tells you when a side project turns into a second job. We missed the point where it happened to us, and only noticed it looking backward.
Read article →Running Six Products With Two People: What Actually Doesn't Scale
The code scales fine. What breaks first when you go from one product to six isn't the infrastructure, it's the two humans who still have to know all of it.
Read article →How We Decide When a Product Is Done Enough to Charge For
Charging for something before it's finished feels dishonest. Waiting until it's finished means never charging for it at all. We had to find the line between those two mistakes on purpose.
Read article →The Feature List We Cut From Every Product Before Launch, and Why
Every product we've shipped launched with a shorter feature list than the one we started with. That's not a compromise we made under time pressure, it's the plan working correctly.
Read article →What We Got Wrong About Estimating How Long a Product Takes to Build
We used to estimate a product the same way you'd estimate a single feature: guess the build, add a buffer, ship. Six products later, the build was never the part we got wrong.
Read article →Why We Default to Boring Technology for New Products
When we start a new product, we don't reach for whatever's newest. We reach for whatever we already know how to keep running at 2am, because two people can't afford novelty on infrastructure.
Read article →Why Quiz Bru Was Our First Product to Ship
Before Sorted Nexus or Qrop, there was Quiz Bru: a simple live quiz tool we picked as our first product on purpose. Here's why we started there, and what it taught us.
Read article →Why Building Our Own Products Makes Us Better Consultants
The technical consulting we offer isn't a separate skill from building our own products. It's the same work, done first for ourselves and then for clients who want the same thing set up properly.
Read article →How Our Experience Shapes What We Build
We don't pick products at random. Every one we've shipped, and the one we're building now, comes from a problem we've actually worked inside of. Here's why that keeps paying off.
Read article →The Conversation That Made Us Stop Waiting to Start
A colleague asked why we hadn't started yet. The honest answer took a while to find, and it wasn't the one either of us expected.
Read article →Why We Keep Shipping Products Even When One Flops
Not every product we've launched found an audience. Here's why we keep putting new ones out anyway, and what we've learned from the ones that didn't land.
Read article →AdSense Approval Is Not a Checklist: What the Guides Don't Tell You
Most articles about getting approved for AdSense make it sound like a formula. Add a privacy page, write some content, wait a week. We're still figuring out what actually works, and it is slower and messier than that.
Read article →Why We Built Sorted Nexus: We Needed It for ShellRick Tech Too
Sorted Nexus started as a tool we needed for our own admin. It turned out almost every small business in South Africa was dealing with the same mess.
Read article →The Roadblocks Were Ours: How We Finally Stopped Waiting and Started Shipping
Every obstacle that seemed to stand between us and launching ShellRick Tech turned out to be something we had built ourselves. Here is how we identified them, dismantled them, and shipped anyway.
Read article →Starting a Business in South Africa Is Harder Than You Think, and Not for the Reasons You Expect
The paperwork is manageable. The tax registrations are annoying but survivable. What actually breaks most new business owners is something nobody talks about in the how-to guides.
Read article →Why We Started ShellRick Tech: Learning Through Real Products
Tutorials teach syntax. Shipping teaches everything else. Here is why my wife and I built a small studio specifically to learn by doing, and what five launched products have taught us that no course ever could.
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