Two years ago, as Covid began its journey across Western Europe, I started my own by launching a blockchain startup that would sell Escrow and Collateral Management services. At the time, I had very little technical know-how. I started my career in Application Support in the City of London but had moved to the business side, becoming a Project Manager and Consultant. I tentatively moved forward, using freelancers to start building my vision.

It was an absolute disaster, of course.

I spent six horrible months trying to make it happen on a shoestring. My contractors were predictably poor, disengaged, had fluffed up their skillset and let me down terribly. Towards the end of 2020, I realised that the only way forward was to get skilled in development.

I went the usual route that people take: hundreds of hours of Udemy and YouTube tutorials. I felt like I was learning, typing away and making computer things happen. But of course, I didn’t solve a single actual problem. Eventually, after somewhere like 300hrs of such activities, things began to stick in my mind. I learned Solidity, Javascript and a little Python. I moved on to DevOps, where I learned at AWS and practised my coding skills.

Now, in early 2022, I’m taking on my biggest challenge: creating an NFT platform from scratch. I recently became aware of the idea of #buildinpublic. It seems the best way for me to dispel my latent impostor syndrome. So, this blog will detail my attempts to build this NFT app and realise my potential to become a genuine full-stack developer.