A year in review - my first product in 20 years...

After almost 20 years in tech, this has been my first year where I've launched a publicly available product of my own. And boy, is it different than when you're building as part of a bigger organisation, or even shipping on behalf of a startup.

C

Chris Addams

Author

5 min read

What a year of learning. The key is 100% distribution. It's fine having a fantastic product, and I'm pretty confident we do. But when you've got the best product no one's ever heard of, and attention is at a premium getting engagement is hard.

Still, we're solving a relevant problem. A big one. We're helping startups launch much, much faster by taking away 12 months of backend setup work. We provide an "oven ready" system straight out of the box. All you do is add water. Or your data model and the front end, to be more specific. Everything else is handled: infrastructure, databases, search, APIs, workflows, payments, user management, access control, dashboards.

One stack. Enterprise grade. No stitching together seven different services and hoping they talk to each other.

Since launching, over a hundred people chose to build their products on Anythink. Not as an experiment. As their actual backend. I take that as a strong signal we're onto something.

And we didn't just launch and stop, we've added some really cool features in response to customer feedback to make things that little bit smoother.

Instant Edit. Click your data, change it directly like a spreadsheet or in one of the other pre-built views: kanban boards, calendars, maps, charts. Designed so you can add content, change it, and make sense of it quickly.

Team Management. Multiple projects, one platform, no account juggling. Build as many things as you want.

Advanced Workflows. N8n-style, Make.com-style orchestration, but native to Anythink. Automate between your data and the outside world without leaving the platform.

Email Templating. Send transactional and marketing emails without bolting on another service.

Our first SDK. Build your front end faster, proper abstractions, no boilerplate bleeding through.

A free tier. Because the barrier to trying shouldn't be a credit card.

And we announced partnerships with Stripe and DigitalOcean. Because it's through partnerships that we grow and help our customers actually build.

What's next?

Coming very soon (it's in staging) Social login. Because authentication should be easy.

More frontend tooling. The SDK is the start. We're building more ways to actually use what's on the backend without writing boilerplate.

And we're raising next year. Because the demand is real and the opportunity is big and a rising tide raises all boats.

The goal is clear: help startups launch faster, test with lower cost, and scale to become the next enterprises. Whether you're early or you're an enterprise that needs an upgrade, we want to see you succeed.

Start free. Build something. See what it feels like when the backend actually disappears.