When Stumbling Into Product Development Leads to Finding Your Purpose
I'll start by saying: I didn't set out to build a new product.
Three months ago I was just another change management consultant with a Substack I posted to, a curiosity about emerging technologies, and no idea of where that curiosity would take me.
I want to be clear about that. Because the version of this story that makes me sound like I had a plan, like I saw a gap in the market and went after it methodically, isn't true. What's true is I am restless. I've been good at my jobs for years but I didn't feel lit up by it anymore. The last time I felt genuinely on fire about something was when I was developing a DEI leadership series at City Year. The work was building an engaging series that changed how people experienced themselves, thought about the world and operated in it. Change Management work can feel like that. Alas, it hasn't been feeling like that for a while.
So I started tinkering...
It started because I got curious about three emerging technologies converging at once: artificial intelligence, blockchain, and quantum computing. I wanted to understand where these advancements were heading before they arrived. So I built a learning app in Claude. I called it the Evolution App with a companion digital lab called Hypertech. They were clunky to say the least. A set of pre-built prompts and follow-up questions, powered by an AI API that I plugged in myself. But it worked. I could sit down, ask the questions I actually had, and get answers that didn't feel like a Wikipedia article. I could explore and learn concepts on my terms, in my way but with guidance. It felt like having a tutor.
That was supposed to be the whole thing. A personal learning tool. Done.
Then somewhere between building Evolution and Hypertech I started wanting a real lab environment to experiment with more. That is when I stumbled across the Raspberry Pi.
The Pi is a single-board computer about the size of a deck of cards. It costs $80. You can run a full Linux operating system on it, serve web applications, host databases, and, the part that got me, run AI models locally. On hardware that fits in your hand. Without a subscription. Without your data leaving your home.
I bought one. I set it up. I deployed my Evolution and Hypertech webapps to it. And then my brain caught fire.
I don't know how else to describe it. Looking at what was running on that little board, my own apps, on my own hardware, on my own network, I felt something shift. I wasn't just a user anymore. I was running something. I was building something. I had a server. A real one. Mine.
I started adding things. I set up Tailscale, which is a tool that lets you create a private secure network across your devices, so I could shell into the Pi from my laptop at work as if I were sitting at home. I downloaded AI models that run entirely on the Pi, no API calls, no data leaving the device, and updated the webapps to let me toggle between a cloud AI and a local one running on my own hardware. I built a Vault: an encrypted storage layer for the data and context my apps use.
None of this was on a roadmap. There was no roadmap.
What I was doing was following curiosity. And every time I followed it one step further, the next step became visible.
That's when the concept arrived. Not as a business plan or a product spec, just as a feeling. If I could build this for myself, using AI tools to do the parts I didn't know how to do yet, then this wasn't a toy. It was a template. A system. Something that could be built once, handed to someone else, and give them the same feeling it gave me.
I like to think of myself as a transformation architect. Over my career I've studied how people and organizations change, what creates the conditions for real growth, and what gets in the way. The thing I know is that transformation happens when access meets mastery. Not when someone is handed a manual. Not when they sign up for a new subscription. Not when they're told what to do or how to do it. Instead change happens when they can actually do the thing, in an environment built with their success in mind.
The open source communities that made all of this possible, the homelab builders, the local AI developers, the open hardware makers, have been building the pieces for years. They built the stack my Pi runs on. Literally, I owe them everything. But none of them built it for someone like me. They built it for people who already knew what they were doing.
I am the proof that the barrier isn't what people think it is.
I have no computer science background. I started two online coding courses and haven't finished one. What I have is curiosity, a willingness to follow it somewhere inconvenient, and access to AI tools that can translate between what I want and what the machine understands.
Three months after that first Raspberry Pi, here's where I am: I have a home server called Earthseed running a custom operating system called Lazana, with an AI agent called Aida managing the whole stack. I have a second device, a handheld computing terminal I call the Cyberdeck running the same OS, with its own local AI, connected to Earthseed over a private encrypted network. I have a website running off my own hardware, served to the public through infrastructure I built. I have a disk image of the whole system so I can flash it to new hardware in minutes.
The philosophy is Octavia Butler's Earthseed: God is change. Shape God.
The point of writing this down isn't to sell you something. I'm not ready for that. The point is to document what happens when a person with no engineering background follows a question far enough. What you find on the other side isn't a product. It's a new relationship with your own capability.
That's what this series is about.
Next: What I actually built, and what it feels like to use.
Also published at Middle Path Lab.