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2025-12-12 Substack 1

The Solo Founder

There are paths you can only walk alone Not because you are lonely But because silence is the only place Where you can hear your own footstep

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The Solo Founder

A Story Of Building, Failing, Dreaming

Indie hacker simply means solo founder.
A person who builds alone.
A person who carries both the idea and the weight of it.

In a previous essay I wrote that if someone asks what I do and they truly want an honest answer, I would say that I am an indie. I have never liked being defined by the term Indie Hacker because the word hacker carries too many misconceptions in the minds of non technical people. They assume that if you work in IT you must know how to hack Facebook or fix a washing machine or some other strange fantasy they imagine.

I am simply a programmer.
Someone who helps the world operate through code.
So an indie hacker, to me, is just a solo startup or sometimes only a solo coder on a journey toward becoming a solo founder. That is exactly who I am after ten years of writing code and five years of turning strings into systems quietly running somewhere inside the Internet.

Dreams Carried From Failure To Failure

When a startup fails, you start again. Often alone.

Recently I have been building KitWork and received many conflicting opinions. Strangely, I feel happy about it. Because KitWork is a dream to me. A blossom in my mind. A personal vision of technological independence that I built with my own hands. That is why I always keep my tagline as Dreamy Indie stack Developer. It reminds me where my dream lives.

The Price Of A One Person Journey

Not everyone has the strength to walk this road.

When you have nothing, money and status and titles become weapons. People belittle you. Mock you. Sometimes they even humiliate you without hesitation. Yet in those dark moments something quiet begins to shine. A small light similar to the moon glowing on an empty road when not a single street lamp remains.

Sometimes the poorest moments are when the mind feels the purest.

Once you walk past the mockery, you begin to see the real shapes of people. The warm and the cold. A spring rain falling on a foolish wanderer. Yet that same rain taught me that a developer does not need to write poorly. Programming does not need to be complicated. Technology does not need to be emotionless or forbidden to dream. And I have always tried to bring these things together.

Beginning And Opening The Mind

Nothing is impossible in this world.
There is only what you do not do.

Success is fine. Failure is fine. What matters is that you begin. That you act. Or at least open your mind to the world. Do not be the birds inside a cage mocking the frog at the bottom of the well while worshipping the circle of a wheel as the only shape of creativity.

A Small Perspective On Mind, Dharma, And Technology

What is emptiness. What is selflessness. What is impermanence.

When we are born, we see the world through the eyes of the body. As we grow and understand more, we begin to see through the lens of the mind. The world appears through whatever lives inside that lens.

Spring rain still allows flowers to bloom. Spring snow makes the petals even brighter. When the mind breaks through its own boundaries, we start to understand that everything is born from it.

Returning To Tam Ky

When I returned to my hometown Tam Ky, I had nothing except my hands and reality. I wandered through quiet streets thinking about technology and startups and the reason I keep going. Whose voice is heard when people judge a person by money and status and position.

Dreamlike flowers or wild rain are both only perceptions. A coin has two faces and so do people. Everything has its shape. There is no true nothingness. So what is the mind. Is it nothing. If it is nothing, why does it influence everything. Or is it a place where the path of the heart meets the logic of the head.

My journey as an indie is a search for a humble heart. If the heart is the mind, then it is a humble mind. And if the mind is emptiness, perhaps humility is also a kind of emptiness. Questions kept flowing through me.

There are days when writing code helps me understand the Dharma. And there are days when understanding the Dharma helps me write better code.

Where does Gen AI come from. Does it have a mind. If not, what controls it at the core. If humans and machines both have a core, where does the human core begin. These are the questions I carry every day.

The Indie Path

A solo founder like me is not searching for fame or status. I want to answer the questions in my heart by experimenting and learning and facing myself. I search for a peaceful dream in a world full of noise.

I love Buddhism though I do not know any full scripture. I love the simplicity of it. A simplicity I understand through the word Minh, meaning insight. Insight born from wisdom and awakening. Is that different from the Eureka moment in programming.

My wife knits yarn. I knit concepts. Sometimes I tell her she is coding in her own way.

Programming And Startups As A Piece Of Music

Am I building a startup alone or simply being romantic with life. I remember a song I once heard:

Please keep lying to me
Let me believe you love me too
I might still find a little joy
When the winter rain arrives
Farewell wandering days

These hands still hope
This heart still trembles
I love you with all the fated suffering
No complaints and no blame
Let me love for a lifetime

And in that romance I have woven programming and entrepreneurship into the everyday world. A song. A picture. A sudden rain. A tiny moment in life.

I search for simplicity within all these things. And I am grateful to those who taught me that. Steve Jobs. Leonardo da Vinci. And Golang.

There are roads without signposts.
But if you know why you are walking, you will not be lost.

Notes

More About Me

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