Codiga, the beginning

Julien

Aug 9, 2023

This is the first blog post on a series about building Codiga. There are the other blog posts:

Context

I am an immigrant. Born in France, my parents worked for the government, voted socialist, and often criticized companies and entrepreneurs for their greed. I will spare you the Christmas family conversations. We were middle class. Not rich, but my family had enough to buy me and my brother a computer when I was 10 and made me an overweight geek. My parents are divorced, and when I got 18, my mother pushed me to study and leave the house. I did not want to go to work, so I studied as much as I could and eventually got a PhD.

Like almost all French people, I hated the United States. The French media criticizes the US constantly for its cultural and economic imperialism. But the same media forgets to tell you they did and still do way worse in other parts of the world. I guess this is what you do once you lose your economic and cultural supremacy.

In 2018, I traveled to the USA for my PhD. I was invited to visit Carnegie Mellon University. I quickly learned how wrong the European vision of the USA was. From this day forward, I never stopped loving this country with its best and worst parts.

Since this trip, my only goal in life has been to immigrate to the USA. I got my PhD in 30 months while teaching at another engineering school and saving every euro I had to prepare for my arrival in the USA. And got a job at the European Space Agency, which put me closer to my objective. I kept saving every euro I earned to prepare for a good landing on the other side of the Atlantic. I was constantly seeking employment in the USA.

One day, in 2012, when I was 29, I got offered a job in the USA. I arrived in October 2012 with one baggage and $50,000 in my savings account. Life was good. I had never been so happy.

I realized my dream at 29.

Let’s get this party started right

It’s 2018 and I am 35. I had the opportunity to realize some of my wildest dreams and have many opportunities. I got a Ph.D. in computer sciences. I worked at the European Space Agency. I moved to the US and became a citizen. I worked for one of the best universities (e.g., Carnegie Mellon University) and at famous tech companies (Amazon Web Services and Twitter). I have been loved. And hurt.

In short: I lived.

There was still something that bugged me regularly. A voice in the back of my head that was telling me my life wouldn’t be complete without building my own company. I always wanted to have control over my destiny. I have always dreamed about this idea. Even when I was ten, I wanted to work and start a business.

It was August 2018. I was working as a staff software engineer at Twitter. I was living in a great house in California with a partner I deeply loved. We had a dog that was a ton of fun and that is still in my memories to this day. It was clear that the next step in my life would be to get married and keep enjoying a good life.

The idea of building a company was bugging me every single day. My partner was not very receptive to the idea of starting a business and was rather interested in long weekends gateway with our dog. I already had a full-time job, and I needed to work late at night and on weekends to build a company on the side. It quickly led to a mismatch of expectations between us and within a few months, we separated.

It was December 2018. I was deeply heartbroken, but I was also full of hope. I will start this new adventure I have always wanted to do. I wanted to prove to myself I could do it. At the time, I thought that building a company will be a matter of months and that I could resume my personal life once I am done (looking back, this is very naive).

From December 2018 to April 2023, I went to build Codiga and exit it. More particularly, from December 2018 to January 2021, I bootstrapped the company and developed the product. And from January 2021 to April 2023, I developed the business and worked full-time on it, which led to an exit after 2 years. It was a wild ride. I had to enjoy the ups and the downs. I made a ton of mistakes. The majority of my decisions were mistakes. But some of the good decisions I made were the right ones.

The upcoming series of blog posts is not specifically about my startup story. Many people have told their startup stories (and had more success than me). This series is a collection of learnings and recommendations to help you build your startup, especially if you are just getting started.