Why I’m building Tabflow
For roughly 15 years, I’ve built websites, software, and other digital products for clients. I love the independence of it. You get to choose what you work on, build something useful for someone, and get paid for the value you create.
But working for yourself also means running a business by yourself.
You’re the salesperson, account manager, project manager, finance department, and operations team. And somewhere in between all of that, you still have to actually do the work your clients hired you to do.
I’ve always thought there should be a better way.
The business of one
I think we’re entering an interesting period for independent work.
Technology is giving individuals capabilities that used to require teams, companies, or significant capital. More people are consulting, freelancing, building businesses on the side, working as fractional executives, or simply finding different ways to make money from what they know.
I think we’re going to see a lot more businesses of one.
The problem is that most business software wasn’t really designed for them.
Today, you can have one tool for meetings, another for proposals, another for invoices, another for payments, another for expenses, another for accounting, and a few spreadsheets holding everything else together.
All the tools exist. The business is still somehow your job to connect.
And most of the context connecting it all lives in your head.
That’s the idea behind Tabflow
I don’t think an independent professional needs six enterprise-grade products.
I think they need the right amount of capability across their entire business, connected around the way their work actually happens.
- A client conversation becomes scope.
- Scope becomes a proposal.
- A proposal becomes work.
- Work becomes an invoice.
- An invoice becomes revenue.
Along the way there are commitments to remember, expenses to track, follow-ups to send, and decisions to make.
Those things aren’t separate workflows. They’re one continuous flow of context.
That’s what we’re building Tabflow around.
The meeting should know about the proposal. The proposal should know about the client. The invoice should know about the engagement. The expenses should know what work they supported.
And eventually, the software should understand enough about your business to actually help you run it.
Why now
AI makes this much more interesting.
Not because every product needs an AI button, but because software can finally start doing more than waiting for us to operate it.
It can understand context. Remember things. Recognize intent. Suggest what should happen next. Take repetitive work off our plate.
For someone running a business alone, that could be incredibly powerful.
My long-term vision for Tabflow is software that feels less like a collection of tools and more like additional operational capacity for a business of one.
Something that helps you remember what you promised a client, get the proposal out, invoice on time, understand whether the engagement was actually profitable, and generally stay on top of the things that are easy to miss when you’re doing everything yourself.
Why me
Part of the reason I’m building this is because I’ve lived the problem.
I’ve spent roughly 15 years running a business of one alongside my career. I’ve forgotten to send invoices. I’ve pieced together proposals, meeting notes, expenses, spreadsheets, payment tools, and accounting software. I know how easy it is for the business side of the work to become an afterthought.
I’ve also spent my career building and commercializing technology products, including several years building fintech products and partnerships at BILL.
Tabflow sits somewhere between those two experiences.
I certainly don’t think that means I have all the answers. We’re building this by talking to independent professionals, watching how they actually work, and learning where running the business gets in the way of doing the work.
But I have a pretty strong belief about where we’re headed:
Working for yourself shouldn’t mean doing everything yourself.
I want Tabflow to give independent professionals some of the tools, intelligence, and leverage that historically required a much larger company behind you.
We’re still early.
But that’s what we’re building toward.