Passion Project or a Startup?

When I started work on Mocsh (https://www.mocsh.com), it was a work of passion.

It was supposed to solve a problem that I see in everyday life and help me, my family, and my loved ones take control of our financial life. I am a techie with the ability to automate workflows and build with my own hands.

Sharing it with the rest of the world was going to come later, and it would not have mattered much if anyone else used it or not.

This was the dream. This was the project.

Somewhere along the journey, I got sold on making it a startup with potential. To get there, other people got involved. Things I should have built and continued to improve got handed over to a team. They did a great job. They built something I could demonstrate and be proud of, something people loved.

Even after a few years, it still works flawlessly. Mocsh still lives. It is a great product. I use it every day. Active users are happy. But the plot was lost.

I did not build it in a stack I could continue to understand and evolve myself. The stack (Java/Spring Boot, Swift/iOS, Java/Android) turned out to be too wide for me to stay productive in, and I did not have the money to keep funding a team indefinitely.

I wonder if many ideas go down this track and then stall. Not every idea needs to be internet-scale or a growth project. Some ideas need to exist so more successful products can absorb what they validate. Sometimes by proving demand. Sometimes by building a small, strong community. Some may get acquired. Some may be rebuilt elsewhere. Some will die because they are no longer needed. Others will evolve and continue.

Mocsh is one such idea. I believe no entity in the ecosystem is really interested in giving me the information I should receive; they prefer to provide information that supports their version of the story and creates lock-in around their business model.

Mocsh is not, and never was, about building a profitable business. It is about an idea, a passion. And with every passing day, when I speak with people about personal finance, I see the gap growing larger than it was when this idea was first seeded over 20 years ago.

So I am committing to myself, the users, and the team that built it. I will move the tech to something I can learn and build on. I will bring the idea back to life, so you as a user can be proud of it. I have a plan.

If you want to know more, connect with me and I will be thrilled to explain it.

I need your help to keep me accountable and honest. Ask me questions. Tell me if you think I am going astray. Keep me focused. Tell me what you want from the tool so I do not go down the track of thinking I already know what users need.

Thank you for staying with me. Thank you for being a well-wisher. I value and respect your attention and association.