I've been writing code and playing the trumpet since I was ten. For seventeen years, these two aspects of my life ran parallel but rarely intersected. This year, everything converged.
I got married. I left a career I’d spent years building. I took my first real break since starting to freelance as a kid. I also started a company that finally allows me to build at the intersection of both worlds—as an engineer, a leader, and a musician who knows exactly where current tools fall short. If we haven't spoken in a while and you're reading this, consider this my overdue hello. If you're new here, my About page has the full backstory. What follows is what happened this year and where it's taking me next.
The Foundation (Late 2024)
By the end of 2024, I had been promoted to AVP of Engineering at League, a milestone of which I was genuinely proud. My fiancée, Tess, and I had bought our second home. On paper, the trajectory was clear.
In practice, however, I had been carrying a quiet restlessness for longer than I wanted to admit. I felt like my next chapter couldn't unfold where I was standing.
January – May: Culmination
In many ways, the first half of the year was a high point. I was leading an organization of about forty engineers. At one point, I had nineteen direct reports, which taught me more about leadership and my own limits than any book ever could.
I was inducted into the "League of Extraordinary Leaguers," an internal recognition award, which brought me to Cabo San Lucas with my leaders and teammates in April. I enjoyed connecting with the group on a personal level. This year, we launched new apps with our partners and exciting capabilities. I contributed meaningfully to our growth, and I'm proud of what we built together.
However, even at these milestones, something had shifted. The work was good, but the fit was no longer there.
June: Married Tess
In June, I married the most thoughtful, caring, and grounding person I know.
Some moments cannot be fully captured by mere words on a screen. Ask me about that day in person sometime!
What I will say: Tess has a way of staying calm when everything else is chaos. She genuinely cares more about others than herself and will actively offer her services where she is confident she can make a difference. She tells me when an idea is good and when I'm kidding myself, and I trust both answers equally.
When I decided to leave my job a few months later, we made that decision together. She went back to work full-time, while I dove into building and exploration. We've been taking turns like that for seven years now.
September: The Leap
In September, I said farewell to an incredibly talented and tight-knit team as I took my first steps toward starting my own company.
The decision had been building for a while. The pace of AI over the past two years made me realize that evaluating these tools from a leadership position of evaluation was not the same as creating them daily. I wanted immersion, not learning through observation.
I also had a hunch that merging my passions—product development and music—into one thing might create new meaning. It has so far. (I'll let you know if I still feel that way a year from now.)
September was a deliberate pause. I spent the month doing what I hadn't had time for in years: reconnecting with music, taking a deep breath, and eventually sketching out what I wanted to build.
October: Prototyping and Rediscovery
There were rapid prototypes, customer conversations, and mentors I hadn't spoken to in a while. (If you're reading this and we haven't caught up, know that I'm still reaching out. Consider this an open invitation.)
What I didn't expect was how quickly everything came back. I'd spent years worrying that I had lost my edge, that there were too many layers between me and the code and too much time spent in meetings. But within weeks, I was shipping production-ready features faster than I had in years. My time in product and design hadn't replaced my ability to build; it had deepened it. It had deepened it.
It was also at this time that the two threads of my life started to weave together.
I've seen musicians waste hours on software that ignores their creative process. I've felt that frustration myself. I've discussed it with fellow musicians, friends in the industry, and people I've met at gigs over the years. The problems are real. I finally feel well positioned in terms of time and space to do something about them.
November: Heads Down
By November, several decisions had been made. I committed to self-funding and delaying any hires until I had personally completed an end-to-end project. I was enjoying my own velocity. Building has so far been the easy part of the journey, though I'm aware of the challenges I'll face scaling and reaching best in class status. However, navigating the legal necessities of IP protection to properly safeguard my startup has shifted my original goal of building in public. For now, I'm working toward a reveal.
November brought me back to the creative flow I enjoyed during my childhood building experiences, when I regularly participated in hackathons and Startup Weekends—this time, without having to go back to school the following Monday.
I used Claude to build a dashboard that takes my raw macOS Screen Time data and surfaces insights from my work laptop usage.
I was most creative late at night, so I planned my schedule around my natural productivity bursts. I returned to my old creative rhythm now that I had full ownership of my calendar.
The response from other musicians has been genuine excitement. It's not just polite interest—it's the kind where people ask when they can use it and whether I've thought about an edge case they've been dealing with for years.
December: Perspective
I intentionally slowed down in December. Tess and I traveled to London for a family trip and to see my mom exhibit her painted icons at the King's Foundation School Gallery.
There's something clarifying about watching a parent showcase their artwork. My mom has been painting for decades, quietly and persistently. Seeing her pieces on the gallery walls reminded me that what you create sometimes matters more than the timeline in which you create it.
From London, we traveled through Austria and Germany to spend time with extended family—the source of many unshared highlights of our trip. It was restful. And it was necessary. I've spent most of my career treating rest as something to recover from rather than something that makes work possible. I'm trying to develop better habits.
What's Next
January is already underway. Later this month, I'll be at NAMM, one of the world's largest music industry trade shows. It's my first time attending as someone building for the industry rather than just playing in it. If you're there, come find me!
I'll probably be ready to release the first of the products I've been crafting end of February or March. Here's a teaser until then:
I'm ready to start growing my team, though I'm not taking outside investment yet. I want to own what I'm building and make decisions based on what's right for the product and its users, not external timelines. That won't last forever, but it's where I need to be right now.
Closing a Chapter
I've started thinking of 2025 as the end of the first act.
So much has converged: reaching a career milestone, closing out major projects throughout the year, settling into a home that makes risk feel less reckless, marrying someone who makes me sharper and steadier, and finally building something that draws on everything I've learned while knowing I have so much more to learn.
For too long, I asked myself which path would become my career and which my hobby. The answer turned out to be neither. I'm bringing them together. There's a lot I can't predict. I don't know how it ends. That's part of why I'm doing it.
If you've read this far, thank you!
You can find me on LinkedIn or x.com. And if our paths cross at NAMM or anywhere else this year, say hello! I'd like that.
—Alex Melnychuck, January 2026