I'm Chris Carmichael, a Solo Entrepreneur. I had one of the largest followings on Snapchat in the world back in the day. I was featured in Time Magazine (link). I leveraged that audience to launch the first vertical video social network before vertical video was a thing. I raised $1.25M from the founders of Candy Crush to build the first vertical video social network, and was featured in TechCrunch (link). TikTok came into the market a year later and dominated the vertical video market so I was forced to pivot. I knew nothing about building startups at the time.

After pivoting a few times and learning how to get to product-market fit I launched VideoEasy (link) - one of the first AI video editors - and grew it to 4 million users.

Then COVID hit, and I lost everything.

After that, I was determined to find a way to build without relying on anyone else. In 2021 I started learning how to code with AI - it was barely able to code back then. By 2024 I discovered Replit and became obsessed. I thought I was unstoppable. I wasn't. I spent $20K on Replit with barely anything to show for it. My wife thought I was crazy - and she was right.

You know the feeling. A bug breaks your app. You hit fix. Replit charges you $72, makes it worse, and you're reverting to start over. One unfixed bug costs almost the entire price of a Claude Code monthly subscription. Every update, I thought this one will finally fix things. It never did.

Then I tried Claude Code - and here's the best part: you can run it right inside Replit's environment. You don't have to abandon Replit. You still get access to Replit Agent when you want it, but Claude Code does the heavy lifting for a fraction of the cost. More got done in one weekend than in months of using Replit alone.

I started MoveTheCode.xyz to teach new solopreneurs how to make the switch - step by step, no coding experience needed. I also help with thinking through product-market fit so you're building the right thing, not just building faster.