So this post just went live on Linkedin... Let's see where all this goes.
Easter used to mean my son, Finn, being home for spring break, spring snow melting off the Alps, the whole family in the same house. That was the last Easter. April 2023.
He died that weekend. He was 20.
I'm posting this on LinkedIn rather than Facebook or Insta because something is starting today, and it's how I am transforming my professional life. Because that's been a disaster since he died.
After Finn died, I stopped working. Not slowed down — stopped. I let a thriving 7 figure software agency completely die on the vine. Spent most of what I had built over 20 years just surviving. I basically lost everything, and I've been trying to figure out how to resume some type of professional life that gives me meaning. I haven't been able to do that, despite the hefty Swiss bills piling in monthly.
I didn't start coming out of the fog until January 2024, and when I did, I tried to go back to the person I was before. The one who existed when my life was complete.
That person is gone.
What's here instead is someone who has spent three years figuring out what he actually wants to do, and today I'm committing to it publicly for the first time.
I'm going all-in on AI ops for startup founders. Twenty years of software entrepreneurship, run through everything I've learned building AI-first since 2023. The founders I work with aren't people who can't figure this out. They're people who know they won't. The ops list that's been sitting there for six weeks. The systems that would take one focused person two days to build but never get touched. I take the list, I clear it, they breathe again.
Why this? Because it funds the real mission. The Finn Wardman World Explorer Fund — youth adventure grants of up to $10,000 in his name, for young people who want to go explore the world the way he did.
Today I'm starting from zero on @poweredbyfinn across X and Threads.
Zero followers. Zero revenue. 365 days of building in public — how I use AI, how I run the business, how I deal with the days when grief comes back at full volume and I still have to show up. The whole thing, openly.
Even as I am reading this now, I am absolutely terrified. What if I fail? What if this goes nowhere, or I stop. What if no one cares?
It doesn't matter. I'm doing it for Finn and myself to find real professional purpose in life.
I'll post here occasionally, for people who actually want to follow the build. The daily work lives at @poweredbyfinn.
Right now I have capacity for 2-3 founders. If you're drowning in ops, drop one sentence in the comments: what's the single thing on your list that you haven't touched in over a month? I'll work on it until it's done, then do the next one.
Everyone else goes on a waitlist.