I’ve spent much of my working life building companies, websites, products and ideas. Some became successful businesses. Some became useful little products. Some disappeared quietly into the great digital graveyard of projects that seemed absolutely brilliant at 2am.
I’ve learned something from all of them.
These days, I’m less interested in building a conventional career and much more interested in building an interesting life.
I live in Brazil with my wife and daughter, work largely from home, and divide my time between technology, business, creative projects, family and whatever rabbit hole happens to have captured my imagination that week.
That might mean writing an app, designing a new website, experimenting with AI, building something in 3D, configuring an unnecessarily sophisticated home network, travelling somewhere beautiful, or disappearing into a Nintendo game after everyone has gone to bed.
I like making things.
More importantly, I like learning how things work.
From entrepreneur to independent builder
For a long time, most of my energy went into building businesses.
That experience taught me an enormous amount about entrepreneurship: the excitement of starting with nothing, the slightly terrifying responsibility of employing people, the importance of cash flow, the unpredictability of growth, and the strange reality that success rarely looks quite like you imagined it would from the starting line.
Today, I’m fortunate enough to have a little more freedom over how I spend my time.
Rather than immediately jumping into another traditional company, I’ve become increasingly interested in being an independent builder.
I create products because I think they should exist.
I experiment because I’m curious.
And I’m increasingly comfortable with the idea that not every project has to become the next enormous company to have been worth building.
Of course, if one accidentally becomes enormous, I won’t complain.
What I’m building
Most of my projects sit somewhere at the intersection of technology, creativity and the internet.
I’m particularly fascinated by AI and the way it is changing what a single person can create.
Not long ago, building a polished software product could require designers, developers, infrastructure engineers, copywriters and a significant budget.
Today, one determined person with the right tools can move from idea to working product at an astonishing speed.
That change feels enormous.
And I want to be right in the middle of it.
One of the projects I’m currently developing is Calmly Kids, a storytelling app built around personalised bedtime stories and what we call Magic Narration: technology that can transform a story into something much more personal for a child.
I also run 3DNames, which grew from my interest in 3D design, Blender and personalised digital artwork, and I continue experimenting with projects involving photography, web applications, local AI, automation and interactive 3D experiences.
Through Vista Studios, I also occasionally build websites and digital projects for people whose work I find interesting.
My development stack changes constantly, because the tools change constantly. These days you’ll find me somewhere amongst Next.js, React, TypeScript, Expo, Cloudflare, Supabase, Three.js, Blender and an increasingly large collection of AI tools.
I am absolutely one of those people who will spend three hours automating something that previously took five minutes.
But the next time it takes four seconds.
So technically, I win.
Technology should feel a little bit magical
I’ve always been drawn to technology, but the part that interests me most isn’t the technology itself.
It’s what it lets people experience.
A beautifully engineered system that nobody enjoys using doesn’t excite me nearly as much as something simple that makes somebody smile.
That philosophy influences almost everything I build.
I care about the tiny details.
How something moves.
How a button feels.
What happens while something is loading.
Whether an interface makes sense without somebody explaining it.
Whether technology quietly disappears into the experience rather than constantly reminding you how clever it is.
The best technology, to me, still contains a little magic.
Becoming a dad changed the equation
The biggest change in my life wasn’t technological or financial.
It was becoming a father.
My daughter, Luna, completely recalibrated how I think about time.
Before having a child, it is remarkably easy to assume there will always be more of it.
More weekends.
More summers.
More opportunities to travel.
More chances to do the things you keep postponing.
Children provide a rather beautiful correction to that assumption.
They change incredibly quickly, and suddenly time becomes something you notice.
That has shaped many of the choices I make today.
I want to build ambitious things.
I want to continue starting companies and experimenting with ideas.
But I also want to be there for breakfast.
I want the school runs.
I want spontaneous afternoons together.
I want long trips where we explore somewhere new as a family.
I don’t want to wake up one day having built an impressive business only to discover that I outsourced the most important years of my life to it.
Success, for me, increasingly means having control over my time.
A British life in Brazil
I’m British, but these days home is Goiânia, in central Brazil.
Living abroad has given me an interesting relationship with both places.
Britain still feels deeply familiar to me, but Brazil has become the backdrop to our everyday family life.
It is warm, chaotic, colourful and occasionally completely baffling.
I love it.
Living between cultures also changes your perspective. Things you once considered completely normal suddenly become choices rather than defaults.
That applies to work.
Education.
Family life.
Money.
Where you live.
How much stuff you need.
And what a successful life is actually supposed to look like.
I think questioning those defaults is healthy.
I’m interested in almost everything
This website is deliberately a personal blog rather than a tightly defined "personal brand".
There will be technology here.
There will be business.
There will probably be AI, software development, 3D graphics, photography, travel, investing, home automation, parenting, gadgets and occasional lengthy explanations of things no reasonable person asked about.
That is exactly how I want it.
The internet became far more interesting when people created strange little corners of it based on their own interests rather than worrying about algorithms, niches and content strategies.
I miss some of that.
So this is my corner.
A place to document what I’m building, what I’m learning, what I’m thinking about, where we’re travelling and occasionally what went spectacularly wrong.
Some posts may be carefully considered essays.
Others may simply be: I discovered something cool today and you should see it.
Both belong here.
What I’m trying to optimise for
At this stage of my life, I’m trying to optimise for a handful of things:
Curiosity. I never want to stop being a beginner.
Freedom. The ability to choose what I work on, where I work and who I spend my time with.
Creativity. Making things is one of the activities that makes me happiest.
Family. Not as something squeezed around work, but as one of the things work exists to support.
Adventure. Travel, experiences and occasionally saying yes to things without knowing exactly how they will turn out.
Meaningful work. I still want to build ambitious things. I just want to be more thoughtful about why I’m building them.
And perhaps most importantly:
Time.
Because almost everything else can eventually be replaced.
Time cannot.
So, what is this website?
Part journal.
Part laboratory.
Part portfolio.
Part digital attic.
It is where I document the things I’m building and the things I don’t want to forget.
If something here gives you an idea, solves a problem, makes you curious, or sends you down an interesting rabbit hole of your own, then it has done its job.
And if you’re another founder, developer, designer, parent, traveller, obsessive tinkerer or person trying to create a slightly unconventional life…
Hello.
We’ll probably have plenty to talk about.
Joe Gilmore Entrepreneur. Developer. Designer. Dad. Currently building, learning and occasionally breaking things in Brazil.