Hello there! I'm Marvin! 👋🏼

You might be wondering why the first post of this personal newsletter is titled "Jump ball" rather than something more conventional like "Kickoff". The reason is simple - I'm a former basketball player. The term "jump ball" resonates with me more as it signifies the start of a basketball game, akin to this newsletter marking the start of sharing my journey.

But which journey am I referring to?

I’m talking about the journey of becoming a digital solopreneur! So, if you're interested, subscribe! If no one is, then at the very least, I’ll have a journal 😂.

I think it's worth starting with a brief introduction about myself and what led me to embark on this adventure. Reflecting on this post has also allowed me to contemplate some of the significant moments and decisions that have shaped my career thus far. This first post will be then quite different from the ones that will follow.

The early years

I’m living in Florence, Italy with my wife and 10-year-old daughter.

My career started soon after my bachelor's degree in CS as a Software Engineer in August 2013 when I was 23. A lot happened in those months:

• I got married in December 2012,

• my daughter was born in May 2013,

• and I got my degree in July 2013.

Everything happened quite quickly, and it was not easy. We were alternating between my parents' house and my wife's parents' house with a newborn, without having our own home yet. Additionally, for the first few months of parenthood, neither of us had a job. After a year of working, we moved to our own house, but it was not easy financially.

A friend of mine, Fabio Fognani, once told me about someone in need of a developer. Without much expectation, I decided to give it a try, which led to my first job as a Software Engineer. The job was at a startup in the video advertising industry, Viralize, now part of ShowHeroes Group. As the first non-founder engineer, I primarily worked on the backend.

This role offered me the chance to work on many interesting projects, including learning Python and working on highly distributed, performant systems. I even re-implemented the entire data analytics pipeline from scratch. The founding team was highly knowledgeable, and my technical skills and growth were significantly influenced by this experience, especially by the CTO, Maurizio Sambati. He's the one I should thank (or perhaps blame 🤣) for my continued use of Emacs.

Overall, landing this job was a stroke of luck. It allowed me to work alongside great people and engineers like Lorenzo Cinque, and Gaetano Guerriero. And interestingly little did I know that I would end up working with Gaetano again in the future.

During these initial years of my career, I was able to fully concentrate on my professional development. This was largely due to the tremendous support of my wife, who took on the day-to-day responsibilities of caring for our daughter. She granted me the mental space and time necessary to focus on my work and hone my skills. ❤️

After more than four years in the same job, I started looking for new challenges. I briefly worked as a consultant for a startup in the US that was working on face recognition. Things didn’t go as planned, but it was my first time working from home and I really liked the freedom!

However, I quickly discovered that landing a remote job was easier said than done. As the opportunities grew, so did the competition. I sent out numerous applications, mostly to startups, before finally securing my first full-time remote position.

Going fully-remote and international

What follows is another major moment in my career.

I’ll be honest, I was disappointed when I first got the job offer. I had applied for a Senior position but was offered a Mid-level role instead. Despite that, I really wanted to try out working for a fully remote company and the pay was much better, about 30% more. So, I decided to go for it.

Soon, I understood why they considered me for a Mid-level. The company was filled with incredibly talented people. It was an amazing place to work: the environment and my colleagues were fantastic, and the job was thrilling with lots to learn. Unfortunately, just a year later, the company faced what many startups go through: it shut down.

Before the official shutdown, our CEO, Eiso Kant, opened his network to minimize the impact of the shutdown on us. Thanks to his help, I landed interviews and received job offers from Snyk and CircleCI. In the meantime, I even made it through the initial stages with Datadog.

But then, something unexpected happened. Eiso was starting a new company and asked me to join as the Engineering leader. I would be leading some of the engineers from source{d} who were also coming on board.

At Snyk, I would have been an individual contributor, but at Athenian, I would have a leadership role. The pay at Athenian would be the same as it was at source{d}, but Snyk was offering me almost double! 🤯

It wasn’t an easy decision.

Over the years, I really came to value the work culture Eiso encouraged: there was transparency in communication and about what was happening in the company, clear collaboration through open-minded and direct feedback, and a sense of ownership and pride in our teamwork. That’s why I decided to go with Eiso’s offer.

There was actually another path I considered. Over the years, working at startups sparked my interest in starting my own business. Like many others, the idea of creating something from scratch was really exciting. But with a family to support, the thought of taking such a big leap was pretty daunting, so I kept putting it aside. Plus, while the idea was appealing, I wasn't quite sure what running my own business would really involve. It just didn't feel like the right time yet.

Transitioning into leadership

That decision marked the third pivotal moment in my career.

I was leading a team of five engineers, some of whom were much more experienced than I was. I learned so much from them! Each member was exceptionally skilled, and the healthy competition within our team led to a vibrant exchange of knowledge and a drive to excel individually. For example, inspired by Vadim Markovtsev who had made asyncpg more performant, I experimented with rewriting a Python client for Postgres backed by Rust.

However, transitioning from an individual contributor to a leadership role was challenging. I even wrote a blog post about it. You don’t really train for leadership; you learn it the hard way by doing. Luckily, as our team grew, José Caldeira joined as the VP of Engineering Success. With his background as a VP of Engineering for a company of over 700+ engineers (OutSystems), José was an invaluable mentor. I really appreciated his support and how he was always ready to cheer up the team by randomly playing the guitar in Zoom calls.

As Head of Engineering and a member of the leadership team, I got a closer look at the non-technical sides of our business. I learned about our marketing strategies, how our sales funnel operated, and how we managed customer success. I also had to figure out how to prioritize and organize my time to keep up with everything. Each department was led by amazing people like like Waren Long, Paul Bleicher, Marcelo Novaes, Margarida Garcia, and others from whom I learned a lot!

It was sad when it all came to an end, but let’s go in order.

During this time, another groundbreaking development occurred: the launch of ChatGPT. It was December 2022 when Eiso quickly recognized its potential to change the industry. Although we were juggling several major projects already and lacked the resources to undertake a large initiative to experiment with GPT. We made a strategic decision for me to step down from my role as Head of Engineering to spearhead this new project. This period was rich in learning and fun about prompt engineering, advanced techniques, and trying novel approaches. It was a time when LinkedIn and Twitter were not yet overwhelmed with posts about ChatGPT and related technologies. This experience proved invaluable later on.

Experiencing another startup shutdown

As anticipated, the startup unfortunately had to shut down. I clearly remember when Eiso called me on my cellphone while I was skating with my daughter. He was leaving the company for an amazing opportunity as the co-founder and CTO of Poolside with Jason Warner (ex-CTO of Github). Although I was disappointed because I was really enjoying the project and the cutting-edge technology we were working with, looking back, it led to an interesting turn of events.

The shutdown happened just before the last summer, and I decided to take a short break to think about what to do next. Some of us from the leadership team even began to explore around a few ideas about starting our own venture together, but the timing just wasn’t right.

During that break, I stumbled upon some Twitter profiles that introduced me to the world of bootstrapped startups and solopreneurs, featuring people like Pieter Levels, Marc Lou, and others. I was really impressed by what they were able to achieve alone! If you’re into remote jobs you might know RemoteOK which is generating $50k+ a month.

Before this, my view of startups was limited to those backed by venture capital, which, while exciting, also comes with its own set of challenges.

Indie making first attempt

During that summer, I launched NextCommit, a job board specializing in remote tech positions. The inspiration partly came from platforms like RemoteOK, but I wanted to narrow the focus to tech roles, drawing on my experiences as both a candidate and a hiring manager. The job postings on NextCommit are scraped using GPT, showcasing how my early work at Athenian played a crucial role in its development. I’ve discussed this project in previous posts on Twitter and LinkedIn, and if you subscribe, you’ll hear more about its development and distribution in future updates.

As the summer ended, I realized I wasn’t quite ready to fully commit to my new venture, partly due to financial constraints, I simply didn’t have enough savings. So, I re-entered the job market and soon received an offer from an exciting company, Synthesia, through a person who used to work in Athenian. There I could have continued working with Large Language Models (LLMs) and be part of one of today’s most dynamic startups in the field.

However, once again, Eiso was there to support me. He introduced me to Nirav Patel and Jim Zemlin, the CTO and CEO of the Linux Foundation, respectively.

First time in a bigger organization

The Linux Foundation was developing a product similar to Athenian from a technical standpoint, but aimed at a different audience. They believed I would be a perfect fit to lead the engineering side of product development.

By the end of the summer, after several discussions with Nirav and Jim, I joined as the Director of Engineering. It was a big change from what I was used to: larger organization, more structured, slower pace at applying foundation changes, etc.. I was genuinely excited about the role. After all, having contributed to open source projects before, working at the Linux Foundation felt like a huge opportunity!

However, for various reasons, the role didn’t turn out to be what I expected, and after just seven months, I decided to move on from the Linux Foundation as well.

But I’m happy that I had the opportunity to work with some great people like Chaitan Shet and Jordan Clive.

Stuck in bed with a broken Achilles tendon

Remember how I mentioned playing basketball? Well, not all outcomes have been great, or maybe that depends on your perspective. 🤣

The final months at the Linux Foundation were tough. I was struggling to enjoy my role despite my best efforts, and to make matters worse, I was stuck on bed for two months due to a complete rupture of my Achilles tendon while playing basketball.

I underwent surgery and have been attending physiotherapy sessions twice a week. Thankfully, my physical therapist has been fantastic, and three months post-surgery, I was walking easily without crutches or pain. I've even managed a few hikes in recent months!

During this time, my wife took on everything at home for me and our daughter. It was probably even more challenging for her, given all the responsibilities she had to shoulder. I’m deeply grateful to her. ❤️

In a movie, this would be the perfect time for a flashback.

Before joining the Linux Foundation, Eiso had also introduced me to Madeleine Reese, and I received an offer to join Allma, particularly for my work on LLM from my time at Athenian and NextCommit.

Although I chose the Linux Foundation initially, I kept in touch with Madeleine. A few weeks after my injury, she reached out needing some advice for her product and engineering team on topics like embedding vectors and RAG. She appreciated the insights I provided and offered me a part-time role.

If not for my injury, I probably would have declined due to my full plate at the Linux Foundation and life’s usual demands. But, given my situation, I responded, "I think we can make it work. It's not like I have many other things I can do in the coming months. 🤣"

I was excited to dive back into working on LLMs. After leaving the Linux Foundation, I continued with Allma part-time.

Going (almost) all-in

The compensation from my time at the Linux Foundation, along with the initial project at Allma, allowed me to save a bit of money each month. Plus, due to some complexities during the Athenian shutdown (it ended up being acquired by the Linux Foundation itself), I was able to exercise my stock options, which put me in a solid financial position.

I’m also still working part-time for Allma for now.

This marked the beginning of my journey as a wannabe solopreneur. It's both thrilling and daunting. As someone who used to earn a good six-figure salary, the thought of potentially losing my savings isn’t exactly comforting.

Looking ahead, even if I don’t generate any income in the coming months, I have a runway of about 14 months (in a worst-case scenario). But if I haven’t generated enough revenue by the end of the year to sustain my solopreneur journey and my family, it might be a sign that this path isn’t right for me. However, I’d rather try and find out through experience than never try at all.

Reflecting on these past years has been fascinating, and it's made me wonder:

• What if my first job hadn’t introduced me to great engineers like Maurizio? Would my growth have stalled, or would it have dampened my excitement in this field?

• What if I hadn’t joined source{d} and never met Eiso?

• What if I had turned down the opportunity to join Athenian, which led me to work on LLMs and gain more business exposure?

• What if I hadn’t ruptured my Achilles tendon?

• What if I had chosen Synthesia over the Linux Foundation? Would I have been happier there and not on this current path?

• etc.

No matter the answers to these questions, right now, all the stars are aligned to giving this journey a real try!

Ok, we’ve reached the end of this first more personal intro post!

The upcoming posts will cover the development of my first project, NextCommit, and will delve into the learnings, successes, and missteps along the way.

If you’re interested in following my journey, make sure to subscribe or follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn!