At the beginning of 2023, the pandemic that should have ended much sooner was finally declared over. The year started badly for many of us, but we made it through.
It has been exactly 161 days since my last blog post. The biggest thing that happened in that time was the birth of my son, Ian, which cut my free time in half. That is not much of an excuse, though. Work got busier, and I kept taking on more.
With one week left in 2023, I want to look back at the year before I turn toward 2024.
In One Sentence
In my second year as a founder, I kept switching between engineer, designer, and CEO. I met many interesting people, and the company moved forward.
Twitter and My Personal Brand
Screenshot of my Typefully statistics
My Twitter account, still represented by the blue bird back then, had only 3,000 followers in January 2023. As I spent the year building my own brand and the company's, that number grew to 20,000. It rose and fell along the way, partly because of bot followers, especially Bitcoin accounts. It has now settled at around 20,000.
In 2023, I:
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Posted 1,260 tweets
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Received 27.08 million impressions
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Received 122,000 profile visits
I also tried reposting other people's work and rushing to share the latest AI news for quick traffic and followers. The week after Apple announced Vision Pro, I reposted a short animation of someone walking through San Francisco wearing the headset（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), and it received 500,000 views. Afterward, I thought about what I was posting and realized that I neither wanted nor enjoyed doing this. It made me anxious about publishing and turned Twitter into another job. If I carried on, I knew I would eventually lose my enthusiasm for it.
After finishing my personal website in June, I began offering AMA and one-on-one consulting sessions. In six months, they earned me ¥10,215 and gave me the chance to answer questions for many people. I hope the conversations helped.
I plan to keep going and would like to reach 30,000 followers in 2024. But a follower count does not measure "success" or how "impressive" someone is. I do not need to take it too seriously. Almost any adult-content account could crush that number without breaking a sweat...
Social Life and Friends
Meeting people matters a lot to me. Whether you are an indie developer, a founder, or work elsewhere in the industry, it is worth going out, hearing how other people think, and encountering ideas beyond your own. In 2023, I met far more new friends than I expected. I am grateful for that.
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At the end of April, I went to Hangzhou to visit friends from Twitter. I met Mysterious App founder 61（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Yuque co-founder CaiCai（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Lakr（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Zhiqiang（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Shen Qingchuan（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Zhizi（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Shiyi Innei（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Hwang, WangJie（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), liulinboyi（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), the founder of AFFiNE, and many other people there;
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In July, I invited open-source frontend magician Anthony Fu（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab) onto my podcast, TechniCality（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), and fulfilled a dream 🎉;
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In early September, I organized two Zolplay Developer Meetups（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab). I made friends from all over and met Randy（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Luo Lei（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Ding Yi（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), Thomas Yao（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), and more people than I can name here. I could feel how much everyone wanted to meet in person. Eighty people came to each event 🤯;
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On my birthday, November 20, I met Jiachi（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), a core maintainer of Next.js, and we talked at length about Next.js and Vercel. Later, over dinner, Terry（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab) and Will surprised me with a cake and celebrated my birthday with me（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab) 🥹;
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At the end of November, Terry（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab) and I went to Beijing for MiraclePlus Demo Day. I met Zolplay's loveliest PR, @MiaBleem（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), who treated me to Peking duck; met YoMo founder C.C（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab); ate beef hot pot and talked design with Zuo Zizhen（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab); toured Microsoft's Beijing office and talked indie development with Kai（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab); had coffee and talked development with @Hzao（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab); ate lamb hot pot and talked development with @uuoapp, Zeabur co-founder @CoooolXyh（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), @buaaxhm（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), and @zzzgydi（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab); and explored Tsinghua University with Brandon Chen（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab). The trip had one bittersweet note: if Hao-ge were still alive, I would have wanted to meet him in person 😭;
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In December, I met Huaguoshan Dasheng（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab) and Luo Lei（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab). We gathered at a small restaurant and talked about everything, then went to see Dasheng's camper van. I envy the freedom to travel and visit friends in different places;
The Company's Growth
Zolplay（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab) welcomed several wonderful new people in 2023. I was very happy about that because finding the right candidates has always been the hardest part of building the company. I have been lucky, and I am grateful to everyone who took a chance on Zolplay.
We hired six full-time employees in 2023, along with one excellent intern who has since left for Australia.
Running a company, especially as CEO, comes with good days and painful ones. I rarely show the difficult side in public. Most of the responsibility is mine to carry, and few people can understand what that feels like, so I need somewhere else to put those emotions. Rap music, especially NF（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab) and twenty one pilots（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab), has been that place for me. Otherwise, I might really need therapy.
Zolplay still works in a "remote-friendly" and "async-first" way, which gives us much more freedom. This year, we replaced all of our different daily meetings with a single monthly all-hands. I think it has worked well. We also value the time we spend together in person. Every other week we return to the office, and I get another excuse to treat everyone to a meal.
The Developer Meetups showed me how much people enjoyed in-person events and merchandise. I started thinking, brought my colleagues into it, and together we built the Zolplay shop from scratch. I contacted manufacturers to make tote bags, clothing, hats, shipping boxes, stickers, and other items, then rented a warehouse. It taught me what taking a physical product from zero to one involves, and I had a lot of fun. More recently, I have put a lot into a new Zolplay streetwear brand. We want the whole experience to be better, and new products are coming early in 2024 ♥️.
I have seen people say that I "understand marketing." The truth is that I do not, and I have never thought of what I do as "marketing." I am an ordinary person trying to live honestly. I want to be different, refuse to settle, and put some positive energy into the world.
Changes in My Life
My son was born in August. We first hired a maternity nanny, then a regular nanny after the maternity care period ended. The days passed faster than they used to. Even now, being a father sometimes feels unfamiliar.
At the end of November, my wife and I decided that we no longer wanted a nanny caring for the baby. A nanny is not part of the baby's family and could not give him the same careful attention. It felt as though each day was only about getting through it, which was hard for us to accept. The extra pair of hands gave us a little personal time early on, but we still thought this was the better choice for our baby's development.
In December, getting our son to sleep became harder. He still needed feeding during the night and had not been weaned, which was difficult for his mother too. The past few days have been especially rough. Starting a little after 7:00 p.m., my wife and I take turns trying to settle him. He wakes every 20 to 30 minutes, spits up, and screams. It breaks our hearts, but however tired we are, we keep trying every way we can to soothe him back to sleep.
This article took three days to write. We take turns caring for the baby during the day, so I barely touch my computer. I find a little time after he falls asleep at night, go back to my room, and write down a few thoughts. For the past two days, he has been particularly hard to settle. The struggle lasted until after 10:00 p.m. before he finally fell into a deep sleep and I could finish this article.
Gadgets
I bought a lot in 2023. Technology is especially hard to resist.
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Bought an SM7B（在新标签页中打开） (opens in a new tab) microphone
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Bought a Nintendo Switch OLED
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Bought two new-generation HomePods
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Bought a Studio Display
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Bought an iPhone 15 Pro Max
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Bought an Apple Watch Ultra 2
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Bought a 12.9-inch iPad Pro and Apple Pencil
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Bought a Space Black M3 Max MacBook Pro with 128 GB of memory
Looking Toward 2024
Next year, I hope my personal brand and Zolplay can both take another step forward.
Zolplay is working hard on two new projects. I hope we can show them to everyone early in 2024. I think you will like them. I have faith 💪
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First, I will set a few small goals for myself:
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Add more new features to my personal website
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Write more blog posts
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Record and write more development tutorials
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Record new podcast episodes
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Double the company's revenue
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Lead Zolplay in creating more interesting original projects
That is my 2023 review. Thank you for reading, and see you next year 👋