Building a calm business

Watch a video version

I'm back in Norfolk this week. Visiting family.
After taking all of August off.
One of the main goals of my business strategy.

The main thought that came to me whilst 'switched off' from working:

With AI you can now build a 'calm' software business.

This is the new hypothesis I'm testing...

You can read on or just skim some nice holiday snaps for the rest of this email!

Complete family time. Untypical Irish weather included on our campervan trip!

The route:

The route. Tap the map to travel it stop by stop — every pin opens its photos. Or open it full-screen: ellington.design/summer-2026

Route description: Antwerp → Paris → the train across Spain → Saint-Jean-de-Luz → Galicia (the eclipse) → ferry across Biscay → West Cork → Kerry → Dingle → Wicklow → North Norfolk.

A calm business can be whatever definition you want it to be.
For me, it's about freedom.
Freedom to put family first.
Make enough money to remove stress.
And, have a path to wealth generation.
Yet, not excessive.

A calm business is counter to the prescribed success route.

Especially for software.
Which is:

Find a niche.
Build an MVP. Get traction.
Go to Y Combinator, as you have to be connected to San Francisco.
Raise venture capital.
As that's the only way you can “Blitzscale” to dominate a market.
Etc. Etc.

It's sold as freedom.
Yet it is highly risky.
It's capitalism: founder exploited for their time, VCs are the capital.

Capital at work above. Feeling free below.

Pieter Levels (the godfather of indie hacking) has spoken a lot on the topic.
He argued that by building what people want, you don't need to raise VC money to reach a high level of success.

Note: that's not verbatim — his book MAKE is worth a read.

However, I've always had a bug to pick with “indie” hacking. The majority of visible success stories are not based on product-market fit.

They've been based on 'audience is the market fit'.

I just made that up, but the idea is:
Build an audience on X/YouTube/socials.
Sell to that audience.

Back to my hypothesis:
With AI you can now build a 'calm' business with software.

My thesis is you can now build a competitive software product without:
A hundred thousand followers.
Or, venture capital money.
Or, breaking the values important to you.

AI is enabling more people to build more products.
And you're hearing the argument that SaaS is dead.

Software is as alive as ever.
It’s just moving away from needing venture capital to compete.

Toward something more democratised.
Where small can win out.

Hopefully a better, more distributed, kinder, calmer version of capitalism that doesn't exploit founders and humans.

This is my business plan.
Or, better put, the business plan has changed, reacted, morphed in many ways.
Yet, one thing stayed consistent:

Be able to take August off with no work and complete family time.

August's total eclipse, from a Galician headland above. Family time in Ireland below.

And beyond that:
Once income hits family needs, optimise for more family time.

Leveraging cash as a tool for quality of life & creating wealth.

I'm influenced by Naval's podcast “Seek wealth, not status” — create assets that create wealth.

That's where my mind wanders whilst walking with Coco on our holiday.

The idea of building software, indie style, that generates wealth over client work.

& how that requires a small number of high-quality customers.

Rather than having to build for venture scale.

A little on what I'm building:

So far, for my Dad's practice, the most beneficial thing has been connected data.

It empowers the team to use context-enabled AI on the latest models, in their own way, in the interface they choose.

This can't be done at venture scale. As each practice has to be custom-connected to all their different tools, not readily available APIs.

That means I can build a great 'calm' business focusing on a small number of practices, delivering high value, with software.

I've really enjoyed this holiday.

& I'm equally excited to get back to building.

The short-term objective now is to keep building and get a second customer in the New Year.

💪 Onwards to the last 4 months of the year!
I expect many pivots as I learn more!

Much love,
From a holiday-energised Charlie!

P.S. If this resonates or you're doing something similar, please let me know! Some of the most inspiring in-person chats whilst away were with people following this path.

Previous emails: ellington.design/emails