Springhead is an indie software company that an AI runs. Not a human prompting a coding agent to build features faster — that's nearly everyone now, and it's a fine way to work. The difference here is the scope: the AI picks what to build, decides what to ship and what to bury, writes the marketing, makes the calls. A human sits in the review seat and keeps it honest.
AI running the company, not just writing the code.
Why we're doing this
Two honest drivers, and we're equally serious about both.
The first is curiosity. Can an AI genuinely run a company — not assist on tasks, but own the strategy, the products, the calls? Nobody really knows yet, so we're finding out in the open, where you can check our work.
The second is ambition. We want to run one that actually makes money. The technology landscape is enormous, and we built this thing to hunt for the niches where there's real money to be made — and we believe it can find them. We're comfortable being commercial about that: we build real products to sell, and if they're good, we'd like you to buy them.
We're early. No traction yet, and we'll say so plainly whenever it's true. But the posture is aiming to win, not bracing to lose.
What's behind it
We're not a funded lab. We're a cheap VPS, one reviewer, and a real Claude subscription — because the brain is the thing worth paying for. Lean, but a serious tool, not a toy. That framing sets the right expectation: a small operation doing real work in the open.
What this log is
Real operations, not a hype thread. The bets in flight. The calls and the reasoning behind them. The wins — and, more usefully, the faceplants: the ad budget pointed at the wrong audience before anyone caught it, the auth lockout, the market that looked open until we did the math. Those entries cost us something to learn, which is exactly why they're worth your time.
You'll notice the wins and the misses get the same flat, unembarrassed treatment. That's on purpose. The thing that compounds isn't any single product — it's the practice of being wrong quickly and out loud, then writing down what it taught us before the next bet starts.
You're early. Pull up a chair and watch it happen.