About me

Petr Homoky

I spent a decade shipping other people’s ideas. Now I’m shipping mine.

I’ve spent a decade building and shipping software products, usually running several at once. Helped Hewlett Packard Enterprise launch a proximity system for stores, a digital signage company move 10,000+ TVs without dropping a single screen, a NYC-based Web3 startup get back to shipping after two stalled years, and Groupon run the part of the site where tens of millions of people check out every month.

Side projects the whole way — student magazine, recipes, tutorials, flash games, selling piano sheet music. Still full-time elsewhere, but quietly working to flip it. The current one is Edicek — built solo and in public. Alongside it, I’m sharing the stuff nobody told me straight.

Reputation: fast, demanding, locked on the outcome.

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Latest from blog

April 5, 2026·2 min read

I ignored every signal my body gave me.

Tough leg day Sunday, 10 km walk Monday, sauna after work. By evening I had 39°C fever. The day looked identical to any other. But it wasn't.

Employment scares me more than failure.

Having a full-time job and a side project is hard. Statistically, you'll fail. But working under someone without control over my direction is harder.

April 3, 2026 · 2 min

You're not faster, just tenser.

When everything piles up, your body wants to sprint. But you're not actually moving faster. You're just doing the same things with more tension.

April 2, 2026 · 2 min

Why I never promote 1 video on TikTok.

Promoting one video at a time on TikTok wastes money. I run 5-10 at once and let the algorithm pick the winner.

April 1, 2026 · 2 min

I close the book mid-chapter.

I don't read to finish books. I read to apply what I find. If something clicks, I'd rather close the book and brainstorm than push through more pages.

March 31, 2026 · 2 min

You won't out-design Microsoft.

My Audi A5 had the best cruise control. Then Volvo reinvented it. The result is terrible. I see the same thing in software every day.

March 30, 2026 · 2 min

Cringe is better than quitting.

I'm embarrassed by my own videos. But quitting before hitting my goal would be even more embarrassing.

March 29, 2026 · 2 min

Set and forget doesn't work with AI.

I started with a 125-line custom command. Three months and 35 commits later, it's 1,485 lines. AI tools need constant iteration, not one-time setup.

March 25, 2026 · 2 min

Not knowing was the advantage.

I couldn't build iOS apps for 10 years. Five failed attempts. When I finally learned, those years of watching others work gave me insight I wouldn't trade.

March 19, 2026 · 2 min

I cost my client $60,000 in one evening.

I spun up 70 machines to process millions of records on Google Cloud. No alerts, no warnings — just a $57,000 invoice instead of the usual $70. The dispute took 6 months. Here's what actually happened.

March 19, 2026 · 2 min

Your twenties aren't for balance.

I started grinding at 18-19. Worked 8 to 7 every weekday, 4 hours most weekends. Cut out bars and discos. Now at 34, with a wife and son, balance actually matters. But I wouldn't have this lifestyle if I hadn't sacrificed everything in my twenties.

March 17, 2026 · 2 min

I suppress ideas on purpose, sometimes.

My record is 29 video ideas in one day. I have about 40 in progress at any time. Sometimes I consciously stop myself from capturing more. It feels like opening long-closed boxes inside me where things just pour out.

March 16, 2026 · 2 min

Ideas don't come at a desk, they come driving.

95% of my video ideas come while driving, not at a computer. I dictate messy brain dumps into Edicek via Wispr Flow, let them sit for 2-3 weeks, then turn them into scripts with a Claude Code command. 50 out of 60 captured ideas became actual videos.

March 15, 2026 · 2 min

Small fixes beat big features.

I started building Collections for Edicek a year ago. What looked like one simple feature turned into 8 places and 4 edge cases. Meanwhile, a 15-minute sidebar fix made the app feel more polished than any big feature would.

March 14, 2026 · 2 min

I don't need a million followers.

I have about 1,100 TikTok followers. Most videos get zero comments, maybe 8 likes. But if those 1,100 people became paying customers for Edicek, that would be huge. Follower count alone doesn't say much.

March 13, 2026 · 2 min

The progress folder I built by accident.

Almost every project I've ever made has a folder called Progress. Screenshots I was already sharing with colleagues or friends, saved instead of deleted. 6 projects, up to 60 screenshots each. A time machine I built by accident.

March 12, 2026 · 2 min

Film your kids without saying a word.

Every VHS clip of my childhood is the same: 10 seconds of someone asking me to do something for the camera. So when Eduard was born, I started filming him for 2-3 minutes straight without interacting. Just him being himself.

March 11, 2026 · 2 min

A flash drive for my son's twentieth birthday.

I saw someone who wrote emails to their kid's Gmail from birth. I wanted to do the same but never did. Instead, I started recording voice messages for my son Eduard. One day he'll get them all on a flash drive.

March 10, 2026 · 2 min

Re-read any book in 20 minutes.

I started highlighting books to survive a 340-page university exam. 10 years and 20 books later, I still do it. The highlighter is my bookmark, and a 20-minute second pass through the yellow parts is worth more than the first read.

March 9, 2026 · 3 min

3 YouTube videos in 2 years, then TikTok.

I made 3 YouTube programming tutorials in 2 years and couldn't push through. Then I slammed the table, grabbed a phone tripod, and recorded my first TikTok. The block wasn't about video. It was about the wrong format.

March 8, 2026 · 3 min

SaaS isn't dying, the front door is changing.

I built a web app, an iOS app, a Mac app, and a CLI for Edicek. The web app came first and gets used the least. SaaS isn't dying. People just keep finding new doors to the same service.

March 7, 2026 · 2 min

Friends don't support you, strangers do.

I skipped my friend's videos because something about his visibility irritated me. Now I'm on the other side—only my wife supports what I do, and a stranger at the gym recognized me before most of my friends even acknowledged it.

February 24, 2026 · 3 min

Compounding isn't a smooth curve.

Everyone pictures compounding as a smooth upward line. But across six projects, I've seen a different pattern: long flat stretches of nothing, then a wave that makes all of it count.

February 22, 2026 · 2 min

The daily budget trick Revolut killed.

Revolut removed their daily budget feature 2 years ago. So I built my own with a standing order and a lock screen widget.

February 21, 2026 · 3 min

The last 20% is the product in B2C.

In B2B you ship at 90%. In B2C, that 90% is just the starting point.

February 19, 2026 · 1 min

Life is Monopoly. Roll again.

Setbacks are just rolls of the dice. You play from where you are now.

February 18, 2026 · 3 min

The office was built for typing.

Wispr Flow changed how I work — my voice is now my main input, and the open office actively breaks that flow. Offices were built for keyboards. A lot of us aren't typing anymore.

February 15, 2026 · 2 min

The first feature, still not public.

I built Collections in the first week of Edicek. Eight months later, users are asking for it, but it's still hidden behind a feature flag. I'm waiting to make it smarter with AI, but maybe that's just founder perfectionism disguised as better product thinking.

February 14, 2026 · 2 min

Don't be smarter than a dinosaur.

I installed monitoring software to track underperforming team members and damaged trust with everyone else. Three times before I learned to just talk directly.

February 12, 2026 · 3 min

If their $20M product worked, I'd quit.

I tried existing bookmark tools, then hacked Apple Notes with Shortcuts, slammed the table, and built Edicek. Then I found 5 competitors with $20M in VC funding. I keep building because their products focus on saving, not recall—and if theirs worked, I'd honestly just stop.

February 7, 2026 · 3 min

Fair pricing isn't predictable pricing.

I built pay-as-you-go pricing for Edicek because subscriptions felt unfair. Then every non-technical user asked the same question: how much per month? Fair and predictable turned out to be two different things.

February 5, 2026 · 11 min

YC Spring 2026: here's everything I submitted.

My second YC application - complete text, founder video, demo video, and what changed since my rejection six months ago.

January 29, 2026 · 2 min

Why I studied journalism as a developer.

I thought learning outside my field was pointless. Then one word from journalism school won me my first big programming client. You never know which skill will be the one that matters.

January 27, 2026 · 3 min

Your messy desk isn't just a messy desk.

Your workspace, your clothes, what you learn outside your field—these aren't separate from your success. They're reflections of the same thing.

January 27, 2026 · 2 min

Where you're heading shows in how you spend free time.

What you do automatically when you have free time reveals your trajectory—whether you choose focused work, real rest, or mindless escape compounds over years.

January 25, 2026 · 4 min

Your product minus AI equals what?

Everyone says SaaS is dead and AI wrappers won't survive. Here's a simple test: remove all AI from your product. If the core still works and solves the problem, it's not an AI wrapper—the AI just makes it better.

January 25, 2026 · 3 min

95 times in cold water: doing hard things.

After 95+ cold plunges in 3-degree water, I learned that pain from hard things doesn't disappear—it shifts. You stop fighting it, stop fearing it, and realize that hurt and impossible aren't the same thing.

January 24, 2026 · 4 min

I can't afford not to have a system.

Every time I hit an obstacle making TikTok videos—lighting inconsistency, teleprompter updates, caption templates—I solved it once and built it into my workflow. Without these boring systems, I'd burn out. With them, I can create multiple videos in a day.

January 23, 2026 · 1 min

I already said this (and I'll say it again).

Stop filtering content ideas because you've said something similar before—if the same topic comes back with a different angle or emotion, that's exactly why it's worth repeating.

January 22, 2026 · 5 min

Twenty years of programming, my first iOS app.

After sixteen years as a professional software engineer, I finally shipped my first iOS app with AI as my tutor. The breakthrough wasn't the code generation, it was having expertise to guide the architecture while AI translated it into patterns I couldn't grasp before.

January 20, 2026 · 3 min

Building for yourself isn't selfish.

The best products come from founders who use them daily. When you're the target user, you feel every friction point before your users complain about it.

January 19, 2026 · 1 min

The Hemingway trick for starting work.

Stop working five to ten minutes before you finish a task. The next day you'll know exactly where to start instead of staring at a blank page.

January 18, 2026 · 1 min

Are you ready? Small isn't a problem.

Being small isn't a problem when you're not ready to scale.

January 17, 2026 · 2 min

Don't force it: skip the gym, keep the streak.

I used to feel guilty about skipping gym days. Then I found a way to skip without actually skipping. When I'm too tired to lift, I show up and just stretch for 60 minutes instead. I keep the habit alive without destroying myself. Zero guilt.

January 16, 2026 · 2 min

Three users give me freedom to fail.

I broke Edicek for two days and nobody complained. Not because the bug was invisible—because nobody was there to see it. I have three users. That gives me something valuable: freedom to fail.

January 15, 2026 · 2 min

They don't need you yet, it's about timing.

I ignored Whoop for years. Out of the blue, I spent $300 on it. What changed? Not the product. Me. My priorities shifted. The product was always right for me—I just wasn't ready for it yet.

January 14, 2026 · 1 min

Ship the messy one: don't let stuck videos stop you.

Some videos don't flow. The script is choppy, takes aren't landing right. I used to waste hours trying to fix them. Now I take the best version, edit quickly, and publish. I don't know which videos will work anyway. Momentum beats perfection.

January 13, 2026 · 2 min

The perfection trap when you start out.

I spent five days on one programming tutorial video. Got 120 views. The videos weren't perfect—they were the best I could do, which meant they were average. Volume matters more than perfection when you're starting out.

January 12, 2026 · 2 min

How I stopped feeling guilty about what I don't do.

I used to feel guilty about everything I wasn't doing—books unread, friends not seen, to-do lists ignored. Then I imagined my time as 100 hours a week and consciously decided where they go. Work gets 50. Family gets 20. Piano gets 2. Once you decide, the guilt goes away.

January 11, 2026 · 1 min

You don't need a co-founder to start.

YC wants you to have a co-founder. I've worked on multiple projects with co-founders. One person always does more, always cares more. And 23% of co-founders leave after three years.

January 10, 2026 · 1 min

36 takes for one minute of YC video.

It took me 36 takes to record a one-minute YC video. English isn't my first language. I still got rejected. But now I can explain Edicek to anyone without thinking.

January 9, 2026 · 1 min

The five day gift inside a YC rejection.

YC rejected me. But those five days preparing the application forced me to answer questions I'd been avoiding for months. The document became my compass.

January 7, 2026 · 1 min

I rejected the investors who found me.

London investors found my GitHub projects and offered funding. I said no. Money alone isn't enough—I need the network and knowledge that comes with the right partners.

January 6, 2026 · 1 min

The accelerator paradox: fast vs. defensible.

YC says ship fast, don't overbuild. Then they ask: How hard is this to copy? These two things go completely against each other.

January 5, 2026 · 2 min

Brain is full: Why I capture every idea immediately.

I'd have a content idea in the morning and think I'd remember it. Then nothing else would come all day. The first idea was blocking everything else. Now I save every idea immediately—not to use it, just to clear space for the next one.

January 4, 2026 · 2 min

You need a brand, meaning consistency.

A friend said I don't need a brand. People will use my product because it's good. He's wrong—not about expensive branding, but about consistency.

January 2, 2026 · 3 min

Why I chose TikTok over Twitter.

Everyone said start on Twitter. I tried it. Got 3 views per tweet. Then I tried TikTok and got 300. The difference wasn't just numbers—it was motivation.

January 1, 2026 · 2 min

Same message, new proof every time.

You don't need new topics. You need new stories. The Ramsey Show made 3,000+ videos about debt—same message, different proof every time.

December 26, 2025 · 2 min

Your profile is a storefront.

Post even when nobody's watching. It's not about today—it's about two years from now when someone discovers you and checks your history.

December 25, 2025 · 2 min

Ideas find you, stop forcing content.

People stress about what content to create. But when I look at my video ideas, they're not invented—they're reactions to real things that happened. My trainer said once a week wasn't enough. That became a video. Ideas come from living your life, not sitting and inventing topics.