Why Ferndesk?
Before Ferndesk, I co-founded a company called Senja. We built it over three and a half years. It grew to over $1M in annual revenue. By most measures, it was a success.
I left anyway.
Not because Senja was failing. It wasn't. I left because I wanted to prove to myself that I could build something on my own. I wanted to wake up every day and feel proud of what I was creating. I wanted to build my own team, make my own decisions, and live life on my own terms.
At Senja, I often felt stuck. Decisions that should have taken hours took days. I loved my co-founder, but I didn't want to spend three weeks mulling over something when I could just try it and learn. I wanted full control, even if that meant the road would likely be harder.
So I started Ferndesk. Solo. From Nigeria.
What Drives Me
I'll be honest with you: part of what drives me is the need to prove I made the right call.
Leaving something successful to start from zero again, that weighs on you... especially when dozens of loved ones and strangers are telling you you're screwing things up.
Every day Ferndesk isn't where I know it could be, I feel it. Every competitor win stings. That chip on my shoulder is fuel. It gets me out of bed. It makes me push when things are hard.
But I've learned something painful over the past few months: that kind of fuel burns hot, and it burns you too.
I've struggled with workaholism. I've had weeks where I worked until 5am, collapsed into bad habits, and felt like I was falling short in every way that mattered. I've had stretches where nothing brought me joy except the work, and even the work stopped feeling good. I know what it's like to have everything you wanted and still feel empty.
I'm telling you this because I don't want to pretend. Building a company is hard. Building yourself into the kind of person who can sustain it is harder.
What I Want Ferndesk to Be
I think of Ferndesk as a family bakery, not a mega chain.
Ferndesk will likely never be the best knowledge-base platform. Not because we can't build something incredible, but because the market is so big that it will never be objectively true.
That doesn't mean, though, that we can't build the best knowledge base for a few thousand people.
I want us to build something small and beautiful. Something customers genuinely love. Something we can be proud of, not because it's the biggest, but because it's ours and it's good.
Believe it or not, work is not the most important thing. I want Ferndesk to be life-changing for the people who work here. Not just in terms of money or career growth, but in how we live. I want us to do meaningful work, then go home and have lives we actually enjoy.
That's why we have boundaries. That's why we protect our time. That's why I'm building this the way I am.
The Road Ahead
We're still early. We're bootstrapped. We don't have the resources of big companies. What we have is discipline, consistency, and each other.
Some days will be hard. Some weeks will feel like we're not moving fast enough. That's normal. The game isn't won in any single sprint. It's won by showing up, week after week, and compounding small progress over time.
I don't have all the answers. I'm still figuring out how to be the kind of founder and person I want to be. But I know what I'm building toward: a company that makes something people love, that treats its team well, and that proves you can do things your own way.
That's Ferndesk. I'm glad you're here.
ā Wilson Wilson