On October 24, 2024, I decided to learn about AI agents. I didn't plan to start a company. I just wanted to solve a problem I'd been ignoring for years: consistently posting to social media without it distracting me from actual work.
Less than a month later, I was sitting at a notary's office in Saarbrücken, signing the papers to register a company called "Makerprism UG (haftungsbeschränkt)".
This is the story of how that happened.
The Graveyard of Side Projects
I should back up. This isn't my first attempt at building something.
In 2014, I started building a database website for people who sew. It was ambitious - a semantic database of fabrics and patterns, forums, project galleries, the works. Besides being a new mom, I was building it on the side, and I was using Python.
I never finished this project. The codebase became a mess I couldn't untangle. I gave up.
That failure sent me on a multi-year search for a better way to write software. I explored Elm, Haskell, PureScript, Rust, TypeScript. I eventually landed on OCaml - it's similar to Haskell but simpler, and I'd learned Standard ML in my first year of university. I knew it was a language with a type system well-suited for building and maintaining complex projects. I even got a freelance job writing OCaml, which helped me get comfortable with it.
In 2020, I did return to the sewing project one more time - this time with Rust and SvelteKit/TypeScript. But I quickly saw the same pattern: I was too slow to ever finish the feature scope I had in mind.
So when I say "this time is different," I know what I'm comparing it to.
The October Moment
What changed was AI.
A good friend had been showing me what they were building with coding agents like Claude. The productivity gains seem real. Feature prototypes that would have taken me days are done in half an hour.
I had a specific problem: I help run social media for a company, and I have my own accounts on X, LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Mastodon. Posting the same content to four platforms is tedious. Rewriting it to fit each platform is worse. And promoting blog posts? When I post links, I always struggle with deciding what to write.
So I started building a tool to help. Not as a product - just for myself. Something that could take a blog post and turn it into platform-appropriate social content.
Within weeks, I had something that worked. Not particularly elegant, but useful.
"Oh Well, Let's Just Start a Company"
Here's where it gets unexpected.
To integrate with some social platforms properly - Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok - you need business and application verification. These APIs don't take individual developers seriously. It helps to be a company listed in an official register.
I could have seen this as a roadblock. Instead, I thought: I've always kind of wanted to have a real company. Not freelancing, where I sell my time. Something where I create value that exists beyond the hours I put in. Something that might eventually feed more people than just myself.
So I said: oh well, let's do this.
I debated where to incorporate. The US has its advantages. Estonia makes it easy. But I live in Germany, I live in Saarbrücken, and I decided the credibility of a German company was worth the paperwork.
On November 17, I sat at the notary and founded Makerprism UG.
Why a UG?
For those unfamiliar with German company law: a UG (Unternehmergesellschaft) is sometimes called a "mini-GmbH." A regular GmbH requires €25,000 in share capital. A UG can start with as little as €1.
If I'd had €25,000 lying around, I would have gone straight to GmbH. But realistically, this business doesn't need a big investment. It needs time, focus, and iteration. And an UG offers the same notion of limited liability as a GmbH, anyways.
What I'm Actually Building
The tool I started building for myself became FeedMansion - an AI ghostwriter that turns your blog posts and other RSS content into social media content.
You connect your RSS feed. When you publish something new, FeedMansion drafts posts/threads for each platform. You review them, tweak if needed, and approve. It posts on your schedule.
The key thing: it should sound like you, not like ChatGPT. And you stay in control.
We're launching in January 2026.
What's Different This Time
Three things make me believe this won't end up in the side project graveyard:
The scope is small. FeedMansion does one thing. It's not a comprehensive platform with forums and databases and infinite features. It's a tool that solves a specific problem.
The tools are better. AI coding assistants have genuinely changed what a single developer can build and maintain. I'm not drowning in complexity the way I did with Python in 2014.
There's a forcing function. I've registered a company. There's a product launching in January. People at my coworking space ask me how it's going. This isn't a hobby anymore.
The Uncomfortable Part
I've never run a company before.
I've been freelancing for years, but that's different. This is putting a product out into the world for strangers to use. It's building something that needs to work even when I'm not looking at it. It's taking money from people in exchange for a promise that this tool will keep existing.
That's new. And honestly, a little scary.
But I'm not doing it completely alone. The people at Halle 4, a coworking space in Saarbrücken, have been incredibly encouraging. I worked there almost daily in August and September, and while I've since moved to an apartment nearby with a fiber connection, I still check in regularly - to meet people, use the meeting rooms, and get inspired. There's something about being surrounded by other people doing their own thing. It makes the whole endeavor feel less crazy.
What I Care About
I don't care about Makerprism being famous. I don't care about press coverage or titles.
What I care about: being cash-flow positive, making a genuine difference for the people who use our tools, and eventually creating a place where good people want to work.
That's it. That's the whole vision.
If this works, I'll write more about what I learn along the way. If it doesn't, well - at least this time I'll know I actually tried.
Makerprism is a bootstrapped software company based in Saarbrücken, Germany. Our first product, FeedMansion, launches in January 2026.