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The Backstory
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The journey behind the Low Code Cookbook
Stephan is a moderately successful entrepreneur—slightly more wins than losses. In 2022, he had to shut down a website, a startup, and a massive effort that should have yielded him a yacht. A very large yacht. A very unnamed yacht.
During that stretch, he looked at everything he had built, everything he should have built, and everything he had poured time, money, and people into. He started counting the hours—man-hours, dev-hours, woman-hours—and realized he could have shipped it all if he had stacked, packed, and glued together solutions from products that already existed.
That became an obsession. The obsession has since grown into another folly: Stephan maniacally collects, organizes, and aggressively promotes solutions you can glue together.
If you want to cheat the tech curve, find new ways to solve problems, or laugh at Stephan's typos—this is the place to be.
Stephan may or may not be writing a book about this. His current working title is either Yacht, Not Yacht, or simply Yachtless.
Completely fake book jacket (refresh for another title)
Yacht, Not Yacht
Learning lessons from a mediocre entrepreneur who almost sold his company for $80 million.
Pre-order from Amazon
Hey, how does Stephan make his living?
Stephan is a fractional CTO. He does special projects, he does presentations, and he comes in and helps teams unstick themselves from some old methods and find new ways to go fast.
Stephan Smith Solutions —technical judgment, tradeoffs, and practical help when technology decisions stop feeling obvious.
A micro SaaS on the side
Stephan also has a side project—he calls it his micro SaaS. It's a solution that helps fractionals keep track of their networks: who they're serving, what's on the calendar, and how work turns into invoices and retainers without living in spreadsheets.
Think of it as a fractional operating system—the product is Fractional.Tools.