I kept my software running for 22 years while travelling the world. Ask me how.

Hi everyone. I am Hisashi, a developer from Japan.

In 2004 I built atsoho.com, a freelance marketplace, and I have run it on my own ever since. It has around 300,000 members and it charges zero commission. It serves Japanese users, so you have almost certainly never heard of it. I write the code, keep the servers up, answer the support mail and send the invoices.

Then I spent about ten years travelling and working from wherever I happened to be. I got as far as the Arctic. A few years ago the urge to build came back, stronger than before, and I started shipping again: several web platforms and a set of Mac apps. One of them came out of a small disaster. Sidekick, the browser I had paid for and used every day, shut down, so I wrote my own replacement. This is the first time I am putting any of it in front of an English speaking audience.

I have never believed that you need capital and a large team to build something the world actually uses. For 22 years I have bet the other way: that one person can build software that genuinely helps people, and keep it alive for decades. I am still betting.

So I am curious: are you here mainly to find tools that help you, or because you want to build something of your own? If it is the second one, ask me anything. Twenty two years of keeping software alive with no team and no funding leaves you with plenty to say about pricing, servers and support.