The Founder's Journal #0

What is the founder's journal?

The founder's journal is the place where I'll be sharing Hookdeck's monthly progress from the wins to our learnings.

Why write a monthly blog?

I have two goals for the founder's journal. The first objective is to remind ourselves of the journey and the progress. The second reason is to show that building Hookdeck goes beyond the tech. It's also about the humans behind it.

The journey starts at the end of 2019. It's the holidays, a time to enjoy and relax but Alex can't stop talking about his issues related to webhooks. Over the next month, the topic keeps coming back over and over until he realizes how much he is genuinely frustrated dealing with webhook errors. Just like that, the idea of Hookdeck is born. What's the best way for a developer to avoid dealing with webhooks?

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We fast forward another month. I interviewed dozens of developers, Alex settles on how and what the MVP will look like. We start working on Hookdeck during our spare time and after work hours. It slowly goes from a few hours a week to a few days per week. As Hookdeck is steadily moving forward, we start thinking about what we want Hookdeck to be, what will it not be.

The bottom line of our discussions was:

• Hookdeck will focus on helping developers save time dealing with webhook issues.
• Hookdeck doesn't have to follow the classic startup route.

Alex and I have been involved in Montreal's startup scene. We've seen our fair share of success stories but we've also seen the flip side of the coin. How the entrepreneurial culture tends to put an unnecessary amount of stress on entrepreneurs.

We wanted to move away from the pre-built route of entrepreneurship. Develop our own formula where happiness and well-being are considered a crucial factor in our success. Find a way to build and grow Hookdeck as well as go climbing when it's sunny!

Looking forward to our first journal post,

Ebttran