Lighthouse on the coast

SOLO FOUNDER · BUILDER · WRITER . ~/index.md

Be the light.
Ignite the path.

I write about what I'm building, what I'm learning, and the numbers behind all of it.

Prayer, coffee, code. In that order.

Field Notes
Role Solo Founder · Builder · Writer
Mornings Prayer, coffee, code
Live projects 9
Writing 100 Days
Brian Mangum
Brian Mangum

What I'm building

~/building right now

live

Ascend Systems

An AI consulting company.

live

Wolf

A paper-money trading bot.

live

The bot team

Grok Bot agents that do the daily work. Brian decides and publishes.

Blog

~/blog
All writing

Newsletter

Builder updates, delivered.

I write when I have something worth saying. Revenue reports, lessons, and the numbers behind every product. No spam.

Subscribe on Substack

Projects

~/projects

PARKEDPlanCompass, TX DPS Alerts, Camping Native, Best US National Parks, Best Waterfalls.

RETIREDSendMyLove.

Projects

Reading

~/reading

16 books, honest reviews. If I list it here, it shaped how I build, lead, or think.

"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." James Clear
Reading

About

~/about/README.md
Brian Mangum
Solo Founder · Builder · Writer

Prayer, coffee, code. In that order.

I'm Brian. Mid-40s father, husband, and builder. I run a one-man software company called Lighthouse 27 LLC. I've shipped ten products in the last three months and I'm still figuring out how to tell people about them.

My mornings start the same way. Prayer, coffee, code. Usually by 5:30. Most days the prayer is just "use me today." I've noticed the sessions where I pray first tend to produce the cleanest work. Draw your own conclusions.

I spent two decades in tech consulting, built a business, sold it, and then burned through a season of trying to figure out what comes next. The answer turned out to be sobriety, faith, and building again. Different this time, though. Smaller. Quieter. More honest.

I build with Astro, Cloudflare, and Claude Code. My entire infrastructure costs about six dollars a month. I'm running eight databases, ten deployed sites, and two products that accept real payments. The revenue is small. The learning is enormous.

I have a graveyard of half-finished projects from my twenties and thirties. The pattern was always the same: excitement, effort, silence, surrender. What's different this time is the compounding. And maybe the maturity to recognize that the silence between launches is where the real character gets built.

When I'm not building, I'm rucking at dawn, leading 9th-grade boys at church, or dreaming about thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. I read Marcus Aurelius and James Clear and scripture, usually in the same week. I keep a file called progress.txt in every project. Future me thanks present me every time.

What You'll Find Here

Four pillars

Builder updates

What I shipped, what broke, what surprised me.

Honest numbers

Real revenue, real traffic, real timelines.

The stack

How I build with Astro, Cloudflare, and Claude Code for $6/month.

The long game

Rucking at dawn, leading teenagers, compounding effort.

If you're building something alone, I'd like to walk alongside you. I'm a few steps ahead on some trails and a few steps behind on others.