2025: Year in Review
I haven’t posted since May 2024, which just happens to be when I joined Pistachio ↗︎ as their first employee: founding software engineer.
It’s been over 1.5 years and a lot has happened. We hired a great engineer, brought on a support/onboarding person, one co-founder left, the engineer left and came back, and we onboarded clients. We’re building a company and a product, one pull request at a time.
Building a company and a product from zero isn’t easy. I won’t glorify the long weekends or holidays I worked through, but hitting milestones and getting each client live is incredibly rewarding. The biggest challenges, in my view, are choosing the right thing to do at the right time and having the right team. We’re getting there, and I’m optimistic. The upside of a small team is that ideas can go from concept to final product quickly, especially with AI help. It’s a totally different feeling from my previous experiences.
I’ve been thinking about different ways to document what I’m doing and what I’m learning, but I’m not sure about format or cadence — and whether anyone would even read it. I know that even if no one reads it, documenting progress would still be worthwhile, but I’ve been focused on keeping Pistachio running. I’ve toyed with the idea of a newsletter (leosletter, get it?), or tweeting #buildinpublic on the old bird site, and I might try something next year. We’ll see.
Hyrox
In May 2023, I started exercising more consistently to lose weight and get stronger. I changed my eating habits and started working out five days a week, becoming more active and healthier. Towards the end of 2024, I discovered F45 after watching my neighbour’s Instagram stories. I decided to try it, and it turned out to be a great change. With their support, I finished 2025 by completing Hyrox.
I’d never competed in a sport before, but after a few hundred dollars and a lot of sweat, I can call myself an athlete now. It was a lot of fun, and I might do it again.