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Hi, I’m Georgy — interface designer & (no-code) developer 👋🏻

Intro


Hey guys, I’m new here! 👋🏻

My name is Georgy — a solopreneur, bootstrapper, interface designer, and (no-code) developer, but I just build sites at the end of the day 😅

Sevan lake, Armenia

What are you working on these days?


I’m currently building an unlimited design/development subscription that I want to 95% automate at some point.



What can the WIP community help you with right now?


To be honest, I want to receive as much feedback as I can, and maybe someone will roast my product/website too, haha 🫠

If I can get a lead somehow, then it’ll be super-duper amazing!



What can you help others with?


I believe I’m quite knowledgeable in the no-code market, so if others need any info regarding the market, then I’ll be glad to share it!

Additionally, I’m a Webflow expert and Figma aficionado, hence I can help folks with website design and development. I’ve built ~20 projects for clients, plus a few sites of mine. Also, I’ve redesigned a browser extension for anime/manga fans — MAL-Sync.



I possess a lot of knowledge regarding gaming and anime, any founders making products in these fields can reach out to me for a help. Furthermore, I’ve studied linguistics (though I dropped out from the uni) and I love languages, so I can help with translation/localization. Since I’m from a second-world (?) country, I can assist and explain the realities of developing countries’ economies and why parity pricing is important.



Basically, ask me anything about what I do and who I am, and I’m sure I’ll be able to help somehow — at least point to a right direction!

Something else you want to share?


TL;DR: My personal story so far — read it if you want to learn more about the struggles indie devs with zero-budget face with.

  This is how Shenzhen looked in February 2020.  

My journey started after I moved back from China (I lived for more than a year in Luoyang and Shenzhen) to my home country in February 2020 due to the outbreak and visa expiration.

  Sometimes I went to a nearby well to fill canisters with water. Village life in a nutshell.

I’ve thought that the outbreak won’t last long, so I just played games, watched movies and anime, and didn’t do much else. Four months later, I realized the outbreak will not end soon, so I thought it was a great moment to start doing what I always wanted to do — design and development. Many solopreneurs, bootstrappers, and other indie makers inspired me. Obviously, one of them (probably the biggest) was ☒.

My first project was a personal website. The design got roasted quite hard, but, hey, it was my first design work!

I just wanted to make cool products, didn’t want to have a huge startup and worry about investments and all other complicated stuff — just me, my products and my customers.

The journey won’t be simple.

Gonna be transparent here: I didn’t have many savings back then, so I lived with my mom. The path was difficult. I had fights with her because I didn’t go to a low-paid job just to find means to support a family somehow. I believed that I’ll reach success relatively soon — ~1 year later, I got my first project, a landing page for about $300, which was quite enough for me at the moment.

Bizarre attempt to make PSVITA behave like a Nintendo Switch.

Zelenograd, Russia

Half a year time skip: I got a fixed payment project, did it and agreed on an hourly basis model, but sold hours as a bundle. Moved to the capital to a fight with my mom because, probably, we were just tired at that point — gladly, we resolved it quite fast.

Moscow, Russia.

I’ve made a bunch of projects for the aforementioned client, got a few others, and… the war between Russia and Ukraine erupted. My main client stopped the projects because his company’s clients left the country — most of them huge international brands such as Coca-Cola. I didn’t have much going on, projects wise.

Asked my uncle to lend me money, so I can buy a new laptop (that I always wanted!) because my old one’s display was broken. It was super nice getting my hands on a device that I could dream using before.

Since I didn’t want to participate in the massacre, I moved to a nearby country where I had relatives — Armenia (I’m half Armenian).

Yerevan, Armenia.

Time skip to these days: I’ve completed about 20 projects, and decided to move to the next step — stop being a mere freelancer and become a full-fledged solopreneur. Finally, the time to make my own product has come.

So I’m building the subscription that I mentioned in the beginning of the post.

I started to work on the project on September 11, 2021 — maybe even earlier. However, real work started only between August–December 2022. Talking about consistency, ay?

Conclusion: was my journey hard so far? Undeniably yes.

This is how I worked during my first week in Armenia — I lived in a hotel owned by my step-brother, who allowed me and my GF to live there while we are looking for an apartment.

But I’ve learned a lot of cool stuff and enjoying what I like even though, to be honest, I don’t have quite enough cash flow to call myself at least a middle class person. Most people would claim that I’m living above the poverty line, LMAO, but that’s fine since I see the potential and opportunities on the horizon.

I just want to reach a ramen positive cash flow and build cool stuff, earning more money and making new friends along the way.

Would I recommend this journey to someone else? No, unless you have enough savings to sustain your lifestyle for at least 6-months — better 1–2 years. If you have a job and want to deep dive into all this indie stuff, then, mate, don’t — keep your job and do stuff in your free time. It might be difficult, quite a lot actually, but hey, at least you can feed yourself and your family.

Quite a scenic view out of the apartment’s window where I live right now.

You might look at me and say that I achieved at least something, and I’m doing pretty good — if so, then wake the F-up. Where did you see it? I’m trying to be as transparent as I can, and I always say things aren’t simple, actually, quite difficult. Do you really want to have the same journey as I did? My current mental state might be in shambles — is that good? Of course not.

So think twice before joining my journey. But if you do it, then let me know — I hope we’ll make a good connection, and I’ll be able to help you somehow 💖

The end. Of this post, not journey.

I’m on Twitter → https://twitter.geor.gy

P.S: I’ve made such a long-long story about myself in hope that it’ll be of use to some newcomers. I consider myself a beginner anyway, so the experience should be helpful somehow.

I’m gonna revisit this post 1 year later and, well, tell the second part — what happened next 🧑🏻‍💻



A bit shy that the post is so long — not sure if it’s fine to make such intro posts on WIP. Let me know if I need to change it! 🫠

welcome! and that's an awesome story ; althought some pics are not visible. Wishing you amazing things to come 💪

Thanks for kind words! I hope this year will be dazzlin’ 😅

Can you please explain what do you mean by “some pics are not visible” — like they didn’t load for you because I see them just fine in the post?

i tried 2 different browsers; about half of your pics are not loading for me. Not sure why

Damn, strange. I’ll contact Marc about the issue.

Looks like you're hotlinking to some images hosted on googleusercontent.com that don't load for us. Possibly, because they hosted behind a login?

Did you copy/paste them from Google Docs or Gmail or something like that? It didn't actually copy/paste the image, but just the URL. Which we cannot access.

If you download the image to your computer first and then add them to your post, they should upload to our servers where they are visible to everyone.

Hey Alejandro, I did update the photos — hope you’ll like ’em 😅

Thank you, and love them ! Thanks for sharing. Really cool story.