The Month I Started Building Again
The first month after leaving my job — rediscovering time, creativity, and the joy of building again.
Hey, I’m Marco 👋
One person. One laptop. Building digital products in public on the road to €1M.
This post is part of Build in Public, a series from One Million Goal where I share everything behind the scenes — from the first line of code to the latest revenue update, with complete transparency.
One month ago, I closed a big chapter of my life.
After years of managing teams, I missed building.
So I quit my job, opened a blank page, and started coding, designing, and dreaming again — this time as a company of one.
What’s on My Desk
From full-time to fractional
This was the first month after officially stepping down as CPTO at Testbusters. I’m still involved — but just some hours a week. Enough to keep the ship steady, but finally with room to breathe, think, and build.
It’s a strange feeling at first. After years of operating in full-speed startup mode, working “fractional” feels almost too quiet. But that silence is exactly what I needed. It gave me space to listen again — to my own curiosity, to new ideas, to what I actually want to build next.
BabyTales: bringing magic back to life
Three years ago, Annalisa and I were digital nomads traveling across Southeast Asia.
While we were in Ninh Binh, Vietnam, we wrote a children’s book — and even tried to turn it into one of the first AI-personalized storybooks (this was November 2022, when almost nobody was doing it yet… the first stable version of Stable Diffusion had just come out a month earlier).
Then life happened: we had a daughter, and I became CPTO at a fast-growing edtech company.
Now that I’ve left my job to pursue entrepreneurship full-time, we’re bringing that project back to life — and taking it to a whole new level.
This month we started rebuilding BabyTales from the ground up. We’re improving the stories, the illustrations, and the overall experience. Soon, parents (and grandparents, uncles, or friends) will be able to preview their personalized storybook before buying, making the experience more emotional and authentic.
It feels good to return to something born out of love, travel, and curiosity — and to see it grow alongside our daughter.
HeyBloom: my AI sidekick for creators
Here’s the shiny new thing: HeyBloom 🌼
If you’ve ever tried growing a personal brand while building full-time, you’ll understand this pain: you want to reply to people on Substack, X, or LinkedIn, but it takes forever — especially when English isn’t your native language.
I was jumping between platforms, pasting comments into ChatGPT, rewriting them, switching tones — total chaos. So I built something to fix that.
HeyBloom helps creators write thoughtful, on-brand replies in seconds — powered by AI, but always in your voice.
Technically, it’s been fun: I built the Chrome extension with Plasmo, used Cursor as my main AI-powered IDE, and let Claude handle a good part of the code generation. You can literally co-build with AI now — and that still blows my mind.
💬 I’m now opening early beta testing!
If you’re a creator, writer, or indie founder who spends time replying to posts and wants to save hours while keeping your authentic tone, I’d love to have you test it.
Drop me a comment if you want to join the early batch.
Stealth project (for now)
There’s one more project on my desk — still under wraps. It’s early, but the idea gives me that gut feeling I always chase — the one that says: “This could be big.”
Metrics snapshot
October 2025
Babytales: €49.90
HeyBloom: €0
No fireworks yet — but this month was about building foundations, not profit.
On the other side, this month, One Million Goal reached 320 subscribers.
It might sound small, but to me it means a lot… 320 people who decided to follow this journey, to believe in the idea that one person (and one laptop) can build something meaningful from scratch.
If you’re one of them… thank you 🙏
You’re part of the very first chapter of this experiment.
Reflections: The Rise of the Super-Builders
The real theme of October wasn’t just “new projects.” It was agency — and how it’s quietly reshaping the way we build, lead, and collaborate.
I’ve been living this shift firsthand.
A few weeks ago, I facilitated three roundtables at the Product Heroes Conference, all centered on this idea: how AI is transforming the way teams operate and individuals take ownership.
The conversations kept circling back to the same point — when people have more autonomy and better tools, the real bottleneck becomes mindset, not technology.
Shortly after that event, I wrote a piece for Product Release Notes with Elena Calvillo, titled “The Rise of the Super-Builders.”
Funny story: that collaboration actually started from a simple comment (improved by HeyBloom 😉) that turned into a deep, thoughtful exchange about how roles in tech are blending.
In that article, I shared something I’ve experienced throughout my own career: how the line between developers and product managers is blurring, and how AI is accelerating that evolution.
We’re entering a new era where small, multidisciplinary teams — or even individuals — can build what once required entire departments.
We’re moving from specialists to super-builders: people who can think strategically, design intuitively, and execute technically.
Developers who understand users and business will become the next generation of product leaders. PMs who don’t build will need to evolve — not to survive, but to stay relevant.
AI won’t replace us; it’s amplifying those who take initiative. It’s collapsing the gap between idea and execution, between thinking and shipping.
And in that process, agency becomes the most valuable skill of all — the ability to move fast, make decisions, and create without waiting for permission.
That’s exactly what this new chapter of my life is about.
Building things again.
Testing ideas fast.
Becoming, in a way, my own “super-builder.”
What I’ve been reading
A few gems that kept me inspired this month:
A Fortune-Teller Told Me – Tiziano Terzani
One of the best books I’ve read in a while. After a fortune-teller warned him not to fly for a year, Terzani decided to travel across Asia by land — rediscovering the beauty of slowness, presence, and spirituality. A powerful reminder that sometimes limits create the most meaningful experiences.
Can’t Hurt Me – David Goggins
A raw lesson in discipline and endurance. Goggins’ story shows how far pure mental toughness can take you — a brutal but energizing read that makes you rethink your own limits.
Agency Is Eating the World – Gian Segato
This is where I first discovered the idea of agency — and how AI amplifies those who act. Written by a friend at Anthropic, it perfectly captures the shift we’re living: individuals now have the tools (and power) once reserved for entire companies.
What’s next
Open early access for HeyBloom
Launch the new BabyTales website
Write more consistently
Keep experimenting — because this is just the beginning of the One Million Goal journey.
Closing thoughts
October wasn’t loud.
It was quiet, intentional, and filled with momentum.
I didn’t “launch” anything big, but I laid the groundwork for what’s coming next — and that’s often the hardest part.
If you’re reading this and building something too, remember: it’s not about speed — it’s about staying in the game.
See you in the next update 👋
Marco
I wonder if agentic browsers will be the main competitors of utilities like HeyBlooms. Imagine an agentic browser powered by Claude Skills. Anyway, I would like to try but it should write in an horrible English just like me :D