By Andrew Leonenko
Two hundred and fifty years ago today, a group of people signed a document that was, stripped of the ceremony, a resignation letter. They were done working under terms set by someone an ocean away. They would rather own the risk than rent the outcome.
I think about that more than is probably normal for someone who runs a small software studio. Because "independent" is the first word in how we describe ourselves, and it is easy to say and expensive to mean.
What the word actually costs
Most companies that call themselves independent have quietly signed the same terms the colonists walked away from. An investor's growth curve. An ad network's incentives. A platform's algorithm. You can own your equity and still not own your product, because the thing setting your direction is sitting outside the building.
We took the harder version on purpose. No agency work paying the bills. No roadmap handed down from a board. No revenue model that rewards us for keeping you on the screen one more minute. That last one is the expensive part, and it is the whole point.
Here is the tell: FaithWise makes more sense the less time you spend in it. A person who opens it, reads a psalm, prays for two minutes, and closes it feeling steadier is exactly the person we built it for. Dreamtide's entire job is to put you to sleep and then get out of the way. Neither of those products survives ten minutes inside a company that lives on engagement. We can build them the right way because no one outside the building gets to overrule that.
Principles outlast tools
There is something fitting about the 250th landing in the year everyone is rebuilding their software around AI. The tools are moving faster than they have in my whole career. The principles under them have not moved at all.
Build something genuinely useful. Respect the person on the other side of the screen. Own your work so you can actually stand behind it. Those ideas were old when the ink was still wet in 1776. They will be fine in 2276.
Thank you
To everyone praying with FaithWise each morning, waiting on Dreamtide, breaking our early builds, and sending the blunt feedback that makes the products better: thank you. A studio this small runs almost entirely on trust, and you have been generous with it.
Rest today if you can. We will be back at the bench tomorrow, building the next 250.