My role as a founder-CTO: year 8

Summary

2025. What a year it has been. If a normal year as a startup founder already feels like four or five regular years, this one felt closer to a full decade. The pace of change in our industry has been wild. The concept of vibe coding is not even a year old. Apple was forced, for the first time, to allow external payment links in the US. Apps became easier to build than ever. Kids now want to become developers to drive lambos. There are courses promising millions if you learn to build apps, turning app development into what drop shipping was a few years ago. We were forced to quickly adapt and expand our definition of developer. We went from helping developers make more money, to helping apps make more money, and eventually to helping vibe coders make more money. And in the middle of all of that, RevenueCat almost got acquired. So please join me in another end of year reflection. Another year of learning how to build what we hope will become a generational company. The elephant in the room In last year’s blog post, I left out an important detail. In fact, it could have been the last post of this series. Towards the end of 2024, we received a serious offer to acquire RevenueCat. This is the kind of thing that, as a founder, you dream about. You imagine it happening one day, but you never truly believe it will. Until it does. A large company that we deeply respected wanted to join forces with us. It was incredibly validating. The little toy my co-founder Jacob and I started years ago had grown into something people genuinely wanted. Not a VC inflated number on a slide, but a real, meaningful liquidity event. To say that the weeks that followed were emotional and stressful would be an understatement. When the offer came, we were not in the best mindset. We were tired. Jacob had just broken his ankle and was dealing with both the physical pain and the mental toll of recovery. Everything felt heavier than usual. Some days I would wake up convinced we should do it. Other day...