A timeline of events.
December 2014
My wife and I started budgeting and manually tracking our expenses in GoodBudget.
Sometime in 2016
By this time we have seen the tremendous value in the insights that we receive from our spending data. We have used that information to fine tune and optimize our spending.
Microsoft released Flow and I started automating some of our budgeting.
Summer 2017
By now we are starting to get tired of adding our expenses manually. This is starting to suck.
I buy Tasker and automate some more
March 2018
Our second daughter is born. Expenses hit the roof and we are tired, sleepless and just can't be bothered anymore. We give up on our long-standing expense tracking method.
May 2019
We missed a payment or two because we are no longer on top of our shit. We want to start tracking our expenses again.
I scour the internet for a solution that works with our banks.
I find none.
There has to be a better way.
Summer 2019
I find out about PSD2 and Open Banking. This is really exciting!
Oh but wait. I need to set up a company, get a certificate, apply and pay to access my data via an API? So much for Open banking.
October 2019
I have an idea that might work. I test it, it works!
I automate our household expense tracking.
November 2019
I decide to try and turn this into a product.
I try recruiting co-founders. They don't say no but they don't say "hell yeah" either.
December 2019
I start learning about the startup world and how things function, while continuing to work on the back-end.
I'm still not sure what the MVP will be. My heart tells me to make the full product, but my head tells me to reign it in. So far heart's winning.
I start looking for funding options. I'm slightly turned off by all the talk of exit and unicorns. I devour a lot of content from YCombinator, Greek VCs, Indian VCs, 1Mby1M, etc.
January 2019
I read up on bootstrapping, Zebras and alternative forms of funding.
I realize I need to stop focusing on funding. I need to start now. I also got influenced by Nomadlist, Buffer, Basecamp, GrooveHQ and Derek Sivers.
I really like the "Open Startup" concept, and I decide to document my startup journey, just like I tried to document my around the world journey in 2011.