The Rise and Fall of BigReach

A side project that became a product. A product that became a success. And a success that became obsolete. The story of how we built a social media analytics tool that Facebook accidentally killed.

CTO takeaway

The lesson, minus the scar tissue.

Always have a moat. If you're building on someone else's API, you're building on borrowed land.
Don't fall in love with your product. Fall in love with the problem you're solving.
Sunsetting a product is not failure. It's maturity. It's knowing when to move on.

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#001 · The Accidental CTO

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#003 · The Friday Night Deployment

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A comic, a story and a takeaway every other week. Written for founders who inherited a codebase they didn't choose.

Related Chronicles.

Issue #001

Origin Stories 6 min· 8 May 2026

The Accidental CTO

Laid off for having 'too much potential.' Found a founder on a sketchy website. Built a prototype. Launched. Asked for a contract. Got a title instead. And equity I didn't even know I had. The origin story of how I became a CTO without even applying.

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Issue #003

Production Horror Stories 8 min· 1 Jun 2026

The Friday Night Deployment

A junior dev. A production deploy. A Friday night. And a CTO who's 30,000 feet in the air. The story of how I debugged a broken deployment from an airplane aisle.

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Issue #004

Client Horror Stories 9 min· 11 Jun 2026

The Handover Heist

An American client. A shady dev team. A codebase that looked like it was copy-pasted from Stack Overflow. And a contract negotiation that turned into an 8-year hostage situation.

Read the issue