Founder journal
Build notes from the work.
I’m John Potess. I build DiveJourney and Kitecraft, and this is the public notebook: what shipped, what broke, what I’m learning, and the operating systems behind the work.
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Posts
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December in Review
Vietnam homecoming + Bangkok base locked. DiveJourney: distribution push. PhaseDrift: from dogfooding to public app. 2026: Lock In.
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November in Review
Packed month of travel but managed to get a solid amount shipped across products.
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New Horizons - One-Year Solo Build Runway
Why I left agency life for a one-year runway to build, travel slow, and see what I can make of it.
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Fave Three Books of 2021
In no order, and not necessarily published in 2021. ALSO, If you’re not familiar with Goodreads and you like to read, you’ve made a grave mistake. But don’t worry you can correct it. Goodreads is pretty amazing. You can...
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Discomfort is a Compass for Your Best Life
I have a good friend, David, that always has the most interesting stories. His journeys are filled with chance encounters, near misses, and unexpected complications, and are always full of a cast of characters that...
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2020: The Phoenix Rises
The year started out - like most years do - January 1st with a massive hangover. December 31st had been had been one for the books. I was in Lisbon and had gone out with some buddies and another nomad group the night...
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2020: A Year of Growth: Navigating Life and Learning Along the Way
Rediscovering my authentic self
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2019: Difficult Transitions
A year of transitions
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Product Launch #3: The Podcast Creative
The Podcast Creative (CLOSED) The Podcast Creative is a subscription-based, productized-service for podcast post-production (wow there's a lot of hyphenation in that sentence). The idea being that clients can just focus...
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Product Launch #1: GitContacts
First Product Release - [GitContacts](https://gitcontacts.com/ref=johnpotess) This is the first of my 3 product launches in 2019 and excited to mark it off the list! Just a few days ago I wrote the post detailing why...
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Product Launch #2: Positive Tech Jobs
[Positive Tech Jobs](https://positivetechjobs.com/?ref=johnpotess) is a job listing site specifically for technology positions at companies and nonprofits focused on making a positive impact on the world. ## The Problem...
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3 Products in 3 Months
As you may know, this challenge is 100% not my own idea. It’s been attempted by plenty of others, originally created by levels.io who has been a major inspiration. It seems like a useful and inspiring system to get you...
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From Pancakes to Products
Pancake Moguls My first taste of entrepreneurship was at age five selling green pancakes in front of our house. We lived in Pontianak, Indonesia, and street vendors were pretty common near our home. My sister, Alex, and...