Mihai Hlodec

May 2026

Opened my first company, killed Netflix for good.


The big one: I opened a company. After a couple of evenings of "how does one even open a company and which accounting firm do I use", I picked one, sent the docs and paid. It's official. The side stuff has a legal home now.

Netflix is dead. Not "watching less". Gone, cancelled, by the end of the month. I just got rid of that stupid time waster altogether. I already did the math on what it was costing me a while back. Should have done this years ago.

On the side projects: the free tool on the wall-art project started getting real traction from SEO, so that's where most of the hours went. Fixed it up, shipped a new landing page, and worked out how to move free users toward a paid lifetime deal. Around 2 hours of side work a day, before or after the 9-5. That's the honest rhythm of this whole thing.

The other project was all distribution: applied to become a partner on three property-management platforms, got an interview with a big one, which went well until the part where listing costs $2k plus a 20% fee. Also fought Reddit ads twice: first blocked by the AWS outage, then the account apparently got banned. Marketing is humbling.

Work reminded me why the side stuff matters: paged at 4:45 AM one Saturday, five hours of incident work. Anything but easy.

Early mornings held up: 6 AMs, a 6:15 Saturday, one forced 4:45. The morning is still the only time nobody wants anything from me.

Almost turned a year older so I got my gift early: a Sony RX100. Then a weekend at a cabin in the woods with Mary and our parents. Exactly the birthday I wanted, after failing to find any decent resort.

Mary had her own party earlier in the month: six of her friends over, and I was on pizza and basque cheesecake duty for a day. Worth it.

Health stayed solid: 13 gym sessions on a clean 4-day split, three runs including 12km through Faget at 25°C, sauna and cold showers.


By the Numbers

  • 1 company opened
  • 0 books read
  • 13 gym sessions
  • 3 runs (~22km total)
  • 6 meetups with friends
  • 1 weekend at a cabin

Thank you May 2026. Yes, summer came.