Diary of building software startup from scratch
Oh, hello. I didn't see you there. Did you ever wonder what it takes to build and launch a software product from scratch? Not a high-level summary. Not a short essay that describes a year of development. Detailed, day to day activities. A captain's log. Mistakes and pivots. Technology choices. Marketing activities. Design considerations. You might know me as the creator of SumatraPDF. I'm starting a new software product from scratch and I decided to make it an experiment of building in public. I hope to inspire others to build more software by de-mystifying the process of creation. I'm on…
Diary of building software startup from scratch launched on June 22, 2022 with 17 votes, #906 of 3,005 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.
In plain words
A developer documents the daily process of building a new software product from conception onward. The diary covers specific decisions, technical choices, design work, marketing efforts, and mistakes encountered rather than high-level summaries. Aimed at aspiring software creators interested in understanding the real details of product development, this public building experiment demystifies what it actually takes to launch software from scratch.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Oh, hello. I didn't see you there. Did you ever wonder what it takes to build and launch a software product from scratch? Not a high-level summary. Not a short essay that describes a year of development. Detailed, day to day activities. A captain's log. Mistakes and pivots. Technology choices. Marketing activities.…
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