2025 Year in Review
2025 was weird. Like really weird. A year of extremes I'd say.
Q1 and Q2 were super dull and dry. I was kind of depressed and not in the right form I guess. Don't know what exactly happened but the motivation just wasn't there. Some days opening the laptop itself felt like a huge task. Didn't ship anything meaningful. Just going through the motions.
Not proud of it but it is what it is. Sometimes you need those slow phases to appreciate the good ones.
Then something clicked in the second half. Built 7 large-scale projects in the last 4 months. Finally felt like myself again. The hunger was back.
Sigma Degens: A Telegram bot that somehow got 600+ active users. Building for Telegram was new for me. Learned a lot. Seeing real people use something you made hits different every time.
RoomcraftAI: 58 users so far. Numbers are small but these are real people finding value in something I built from scratch. That feeling never gets old.
CryptoTally: This one hit a financial roadblock. Building is one thing, sustaining is another. No point continuing unless I have paying customers. Might revisit later when the timing is right. Not every project needs to succeed na.
QuietInbox: No tracking or sign-ups so I genuinely don't know the user count. But it went viral. Got featured on dev.to and a few other places. Sometimes the best products are the ones that respect user privacy so much you can't even measure their success.
Definvoice: 26 active users. This one has a lot of potential. There's so much I can do with it. Will keep adding features throughout 2026.
Pentax Camera Simulator: Mobile app. Fully open source. Built it for the love of it, not for metrics.
Vortex: Went viral again. No sign-ups so user count is unknown but the response was amazing. This project has momentum. Definitely continuing it in 2026.
Work
Shipped ProviderHunt at Reclaim. Always satisfying to see something go from idea to production. Especially when you're building with people you actually care about.
Closing Haveli
This one hurts to write.
We closed Reclaim Haveli. If you've been following along, you know what that place meant to us. It wasn't just an office or a hacker house. It was where the magic happened. Late night coding sessions, random 3 AM airport trips for no reason, debugging over biryani, celebrating small wins like we won the world cup.
Heartbreaking. Really disappointing. You know it's the right decision logically but emotionally it just tears you apart. The memories from that place, the people, the chaos, the growth. Those don't just disappear because the lease ended.
Some chapters close before you're ready na. That's just how it is.
Travel
After Istanbul in 2023 and Singapore/Thailand in 2024, this year was quieter on the travel front. But not completely dry.
Went to Munnar in mid-June. Just a few days in the hills. Sometimes you need to get away and clear your head. The tea estates, the cold weather, the silence. It helped.
Then in July my colleagues came to visit me in Coorg. Took them around, showed them all the local spots. Was fun being the host for once instead of always being the visitor. Good times.
No big international trips this year. But 2026 will be different. The travel bug is coming back strong.
What's Next
The good thing about hitting rock bottom in the first half is you appreciate the climb so much more. Built more in 4 months than some entire years. Shipped at work. Lost a place I loved. Learned that motivation isn't constant. It comes and goes. The key is to build systems that work even when you don't feel like working.
For 2026:
- Keep building Vortex and Definvoice
- Ship more, stress less about metrics
- Maybe revisit CryptoTally if the right opportunity comes
- Travel more
- Take care of myself first
Here's to 2026.
If you read this far, DMs are open. Let's grab chai sometime.
Used LLMs to correct grammar and typos.