This is a recap of how my 2024 year went in terms of career, projects, and personal life. I'm not very consistent with writing these (or writing in general), but when looking back I've never regretted taking stock of my life (yet).

Main events

• Buying a new car.
• Moving to a bigger apartment.
• Housing in-laws for 2-weeks.
• Getting married.
• Earning my first SaaS revenue.
• Planning to start a family.

Buying a new car

This happened quite suddenly after my previous car overheated and became undrivable. Before doing some major repairs on my previous car, I decided it was past due to sell it and buy a newer car. This would eventually lead me to building CarPriceValue , a price tracker for used cars in South Africa, something I'm still working on today.

It's problems like these that are either significantly painful, costly, or frequent enough (hopefully all 3!) to be a promising start to a new software product. Funny enough, this thought was seeded from a YC Startup School talk by Michael Seibel where he uses a "car buying website" as an example of a low-frequency problem 😬. Oops.

Moving to a bigger apartment

I've written about this before, but moving sucks. It's still top of my mind for one of the worst experiences this year.

Unfortunately, even the payoff of having more space (i.e., 1 bedroom vs 3 bedrooms) has been drowned out by the constant noise from the busy road nearby. As I'm writing this, South African taxis are hooting/honking to their hearts content, as they drive by.

Lesson: Don't choose to live next to a busy road, especially not a traffic circle. The noise is unbearable.

Living with 6 extra people plus a baby

A week before my wedding, my (soon to be) in-laws came to live with us in our apartment for 2-weeks. That first week was stressful, but once the wedding stress was behind us then entertaining the in-laws became a breeze.

Surprisingly, the 8-month old baby was the quietest member of the family.

Getting married

This was a major focus for the year. Every second of peace was disturbed by the thought of everything we haven't yet planned for the wedding.

Common advice we'd get is "skip the wedding and just put a deposit down on a house instead". My male-brain found this to be a very attractive idea, but it also felt like skipping a once in a lifetime experience just to save money. We decided to take the experience instead.

Now that I'm married, I would never tell someone to skip the wedding part just to save some money. Deciding to have a wedding is quite personal and receiving that kind of general advice just added to the stress.

Oh and the wedding wasn't perfect (obviously), but I'm happy with how everything turned out and the photos we received were amazing:

Earning my first SaaS revenue

CarPriceValue earned its first paying customer on a R99/$5 per month pricing plan. I woke up one morning to a glorious notification from Paystack:

I was filled with joy and relief that something I built was finally valuable enough for a stranger on the internet to pay for. A moment that I initially thought would come within 6-months of leaving my full-time job, but ended up taking about 3-years (with varying degrees of effort).

To be honest, the fact that it took me this long to make an online sale did dampen my joy a bit, so it was mostly relief that I felt throughout the day. Relief that I wasn't at least deeply defective as a software entrepreneur.

That being said, on the first day of 2025, my 1 paying customer decided to cancel there subscription. At least it wasn't a chargeback, so I can still claim the "first SaaS revenue" win.

I don't feel too bad about this setback because I know that churn is the enemy of SaaS. An exciting new problem for me to get familiar with.

Planning to start a family

My wife and I are both 32 and ready to start a (human) family in 2025. So in preparation, we researched a few medical aid plans and gap-cover benefits that suit our pregnancy wants and needs.

Nothing further to report for now, but I'm sure this decision will rock the very foundation of our existence.

What happens next?

If you're interested in what happens next, I'll email it to you next month.