Switching careers from having a full-time job to going fully independent after transforming multiple side projects into six-figure revenue. In March 2024, I decided to leave WeTransfer after 7,5 years, fully focusing on SwiftLee, RocketSim, and courses. The journey starts by introducing my first course, From Side Project to Going Indie, which is now available on going-indie.com.
It’s bittersweet: I’m leaving behind an amazing company and team that feels like family, but I’m also making a dream come true. What has been my hobby in my spare time has become my main job, and that’s truly amazing.
Farewell to 7.5 Years of Incredible Achievements at WeTransfer
In March 2017, I joined WeTransfer as a Senior iOS Engineer & Team Lead. I became part of a small team to start developing WeTransfer’s first in-house built app: Collect. Joining a team of senior engineers after mostly working alone at an agency has transformed my career and challenged me to rapidly increase my knowledge. It’s not a coincidence that I started blogging weekly around this time.
Collect became an app used by millions, featured many times in the App Store, and still belongs to the most popular productivity apps. A few years later, the team expanded, and we started developing the official WeTransfer app for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. As a Staff iOS Engineer, my role has been focused on transforming an existing Collect codebase into a multiplatform WeTransfer-SDK while keeping the team productive and happy as much as possible.
Many of the articles you’ve read on this blog have been inspired by the work I did at WeTransfer:
- Diagnostics to fix crashes and bugs
- Increasing App Ratings by using SKStoreReviewController
- All concurrency-related articles
Especially the latter have been truly inspired by my daily work. One of the last things I did was prepare our shared WeTransfer-SDK for Swift 6, requiring me to dive deep into the world of Swift Concurrency.
When Side Projects can no longer be Side Projects
In my spare time, I enjoy working on several side projects. I started this blog in 2015 but only continued writing seriously after joining WeTransfer to build up a personal knowledge base to level up my knowledge for the new team I joined.
My developer tool, RocketSim, also started when I joined WeTransfer. I built it completely in my spare time but added several useful tools that would help my full-time job. We had to test a lot of deep links in Collect, so I decided to build a deep links tester: V1 of RocketSim in 2019. This journey continued over the years, resulting in a now-Apple-recommended Essential Developer Tool for App Developers.
Writing an article once per week combined with a newsletter was all doable in my spare time, but RocketSim became more and more popular, and the untapped potential felt like a missed opportunity. Meanwhile, my audience grew rapidly from 1K to 60K followers on Twitter/X, 19.5K newsletter subscribers today, and over 140K monthly visits to my blog. Making the most out of this simply became unmanageable next to a full-time job. And that’s not all: I also became a dad of two sons and still had friends and an interest in sports (obviously, ha!). Long story short: Side Projects could no longer be Side Projects.
Moving to a 4-day work week
In January 2023, I decided to work four days at WeTransfer and one day every week on my side projects. This allowed me to fully focus on WeTransfer while still fulfilling the potential of RocketSim and SwiftLee. While I already dreamed of going indie, it was simply not realistic enough. Financials at that time scheduled my time of going indie in 2026 if the same growth continued. At the same time, I was happy at WeTransfer and had no reason to take any risks by going independent. The four-day workweek became a perfect interim solution.
What I did not know is that the one day per week rapidly increased what I could do with RocketSim and SwiftLee. The growth I had before accelerated:
- My Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) grew from $80 in January 2022 to $1126 in January 2023
- January 2024, my MRR reached $4512
The impact of a single day per week on MRR growth was insane!
Combined with the income from RocketSim Team Licenses, SwiftLee Sponsorships, and several other side gigs, I could suddenly make a big decision:
Going fully independent
In March 2024, I decided to leave WeTransfer and become fully independent. The work I’ve done for my side projects resulted in a no-risk transition: six-figure revenue was more than enough to replace my salary, especially considering the expected growth as a result of working full-time on SwiftLee and RocketSim that would follow.
It felt like the right moment to make the decision. While I was still happy at WeTransfer, with an amazing team and a product roadmap ahead, I felt like I was not entirely fulfilling my creativity and potential. Going fully independent feels like joining the Champions League of Creativity, fully challenging my skills to make the most out of products that I’ve built independently. I simply have to give this a go, and I’m fully confident that it will bring me to the next level in my career.
Introducing my first course: From Side Project to Going Indie
To kickstart my Indie journey, I decided to fulfill part of the potential: creating courses. I’ve got an amazing audience that follows my work for years and I dreamed of pushing even more knowledge by offering courses. While articles are a great way of learning, they didn’t allow me to teach everything I know. The most popular question I’ve always been asked over the past years:
How do you manage all these side projects while having a full-time job?
It’s exactly that question that led me to create my first course, From Side Project to Going Indie, which is available now at going-indie.com.
In this course, I’ll share all the lessons I learned from turning multiple side projects into six-figure revenue. You’ll get:
- Lifetime access to 30+ Individual video lessons, bonus resources, and future updates
- Guest lectures from Indie Friends, including Jordi Bruin and Hidde van der Ploeg
- Exclusive discounts on tools that save you time and kickstart your journey
- Access to a community of Indie Developers (launching later this fall)
To get you excited, here’s a little preview:
Are you ready to make your side project a success?
Want to quit the 9-to-5 routine and endless meeting days to go independent?
Perfect! You’ve made it to the right course: going-indie.com
The road ahead: What’s next?
While I’m not new to video editing, recording audio, and teaching via video, SwiftLee Courses is on a professional level that I’m taking seriously. Throughout the course, you’ll notice video, audio, and lighting quality improvements as I’m actively leveling up my recording skills. After completing all course modules, I’ll focus on coding courses, with the first one focusing on Swift Concurrency (expected early 2025).
I’m also excited to share that RocketSim is now a team of three! Two friends joined me in making the most out of RocketSim Insights, for which we aim to release big updates in Q4 this year.
But most of all, it will be a continuation. I’ve already been able to develop huge features for RocketSim that I couldn’t build without full-time focus (Simulator Network Monitoring, for example), and I will continue doing so. While the roadmap is not set in stone, you can expect features like a Network Link Conditioner without inferring macOS networking and support for iPhone Mirroring soon.
Finally: Thank you!
I want to finish by thanking all of you for your tremendous support. You developers drive the growth of SwiftLee and RocketSim, and I feel honored by all the support I’ve received so far. In return, I’m extremely excited to provide you with even more content and increased productivity via SwiftLee and my developer tool, RocketSim.