willcole on Nostr: When you’re locked in building something, you often times miss what’s going on ...
When you’re locked in building something, you often times miss what’s going on around you. Focus is paramount, and paying attention to what other people are doing and building has never helped me in my pursuit of it. My long time best friend, and recent business partner, Parker Lewis and I left Unchained late last year, and spent several months investigating the world of bitcoin products/services we’ve been missing. It’s been a joy to play with everyone’s products I missed over the past 3 years. I changed my primary lightning wallet ( Mutiny Wallet (npub1mut…23vg) rules), found Nostr ( damus (npub18m7…q955) rules), sent more lightning transactions in 6 months than I had ever before then (zaps rule), and helped some politicians take bitcoin donations (RFK rules). Also I had my third baby and Parker wrote what I expect to be one of the most influential bitcoin books. It’s been a rewarding change of pace.
During this time Parker and I never stopped looking for ways to add value in the form of a new product or company. We were able to visit and get inspired at Bitcoin Park for both their mining summit and later bitcoin for businesses weekend ( bitkite (npub1atn…h4x3) and ODELL (npub1qny…95gx) rule), do our normal thing at the Bitcoin Commons in Austin, but most importantly, have long drawn out conversations with each other. While there were several things we explored (I visited 4 coal power plants in Wyoming, and came closer than you would think), we had to focus on one.
The problem we landed on seems too simple: I have a product/event/campaign, I have a bitcoin wallet, and I want people to pay me for my product/event/campaign. We tried many things, but nothing fit our exact wants.
I have a wallet. I want bitcoin to go to an address associated with that wallet. I don’t particularly want a new wallet, and I certainly don’t want a payment processor to take even temporary control over the funds.
I have a wallet, but I don’t want to run a server. It is fantastic that I can if I want to, but for my personal purposes, I didn’t really want that overhead. I wonder if others will feel similarly.
I want people to pay me in bitcoin. I’m not too concerned with exchanging that bitcoin for dollars. If I want or need to, there are a lot of options to do so (River, Strike, Unchained rule). So I don’t need my payment processor to do that for me.
I want people to pay me in bitcoin, but I don’t want to set up an entire webstore to do so. I need something simpler, but I don’t want to keep Signaling addresses around.
It did turn out we had a friend who had worked out of PlebLab and the Bitcoin Commons in Austin, Tx that was building something similar, if only we had the same vision for how it would evolve. That was John Magill at zaprite (npub1cwn…raju) , and we did indeed share the same vision.
I’m very excited to be working with John and Parker on Zaprite, and hope y’all will check us out next week during Bit Block Boom for the MVP launch of our e-commerce solution to pair up with the already robust invoicing product.
And now that I’ve almost entirely recreated our blog post - please go check it out! https://blog.zaprite.com/joining-zaprite/
During this time Parker and I never stopped looking for ways to add value in the form of a new product or company. We were able to visit and get inspired at Bitcoin Park for both their mining summit and later bitcoin for businesses weekend ( bitkite (npub1atn…h4x3) and ODELL (npub1qny…95gx) rule), do our normal thing at the Bitcoin Commons in Austin, but most importantly, have long drawn out conversations with each other. While there were several things we explored (I visited 4 coal power plants in Wyoming, and came closer than you would think), we had to focus on one.
The problem we landed on seems too simple: I have a product/event/campaign, I have a bitcoin wallet, and I want people to pay me for my product/event/campaign. We tried many things, but nothing fit our exact wants.
I have a wallet. I want bitcoin to go to an address associated with that wallet. I don’t particularly want a new wallet, and I certainly don’t want a payment processor to take even temporary control over the funds.
I have a wallet, but I don’t want to run a server. It is fantastic that I can if I want to, but for my personal purposes, I didn’t really want that overhead. I wonder if others will feel similarly.
I want people to pay me in bitcoin. I’m not too concerned with exchanging that bitcoin for dollars. If I want or need to, there are a lot of options to do so (River, Strike, Unchained rule). So I don’t need my payment processor to do that for me.
I want people to pay me in bitcoin, but I don’t want to set up an entire webstore to do so. I need something simpler, but I don’t want to keep Signaling addresses around.
It did turn out we had a friend who had worked out of PlebLab and the Bitcoin Commons in Austin, Tx that was building something similar, if only we had the same vision for how it would evolve. That was John Magill at zaprite (npub1cwn…raju) , and we did indeed share the same vision.
I’m very excited to be working with John and Parker on Zaprite, and hope y’all will check us out next week during Bit Block Boom for the MVP launch of our e-commerce solution to pair up with the already robust invoicing product.
And now that I’ve almost entirely recreated our blog post - please go check it out! https://blog.zaprite.com/joining-zaprite/