This is the first post from Northlight Digital, so I should probably explain what this is.
Northlight Digital is a one-person software studio based in New York. I started it because I wanted to build products on my own terms. No pitch decks, no fundraising, no growth targets set by someone else. Just software that I think should exist, built at a pace that lets me get it right.
I spent the last several years working at larger companies, and the thing that always frustrated me was how long it took to ship anything. Not because the people were slow, but because the process was. By the time something made it through reviews, approvals, and prioritization meetings, the original idea had been sanded down into something nobody was excited about anymore.
So this is the opposite of that. One person, one product at a time, shipped when it is ready.
Why a studio?
I could have just started building an app without all of this. But I like the idea of a studio as a container. It gives me a place to put things. If the first product does well, great. If it does not, I will build something else. The studio stays either way.
The name comes from the idea of working early, before the rest of the day starts. Most of my best work happens in the first few hours after sunrise. Northlight felt right for that.
What is coming
The first product is already in progress. It is a morning briefing app called dawncast. I will write more about it soon, but the short version is: I wanted a single place to get caught up on news, weather, my calendar, and market data every morning, without opening five different apps. So I am building that.
This journal is where I will write about the process. Technical decisions, design choices, things that went wrong, things I learned. Mostly for myself, but maybe useful to other people building things on their own.
That is it for now. Time to get back to work.