This is happening
A first note on building Zebra in public, with the stakes kept deliberately human.
I am building Zebra because I want to keep doing work I care about in an industry I still love.
That sounds smaller than the usual startup story, but it is the honest one. I am not trying to turn this into a unicorn. I am trying to build a focused, durable product that makes enough money to sustain a living, reward the effort, and stay close to the craft.
I think more software should be built this way: by one, two, five people who care about a problem deeply enough to keep wrestling with it. Not giant teams chasing abstract growth, but small teams making genuinely useful products, staying close to the people paying for them, and improving the thing because they actually use their own judgment.
Zebra is about short links, QR codes, domains, spaces, automation, and analytics. But the product is also about the shape of the company around it. I want subscribers to be able to see the work, the direction, the tradeoffs, and the hard parts without everything being polished into launch copy.
So these notes exist for that. They cover progress, product direction, speed bumps, the occasional strong opinion, and the work of trying to make something useful without pretending the goal is world domination.
This is happening. Quietly, seriously, and in public.