I started my business in April 2025, the goal was to create software, and fund the development cost with odd delivery and courier work, I love driving, but software pays more once it's complete - Lighthouse has taken nearly six months to create.
Took a small lump sum from my pension, purchased a van, created a Ltd company, and got to work.
The problem was, I severely underestimated how hard it is to run a business successfully, it's easy to start, but difficult to keep it running, and so after one year, my business has made a loss of £1,900, with expenses far exceeding income, and a director loan that's grown from £6000 to £8200.
Obtaining new customers is extraordinarily difficult, I have a customer base of one business and three people, and count myself lucky if I get 1 job a month, hence the director loan amount, I'm forced to fund the business from a personal funds.
Part of the reason I created Lighthouse, was because, honestly, I was sick of paying subscription costs for a service I hardly used, but it was more than that, I needed a set of tools that could manage my business backend.
In my example, for odd jobs, I've made £2540 in this financial year, that's about £210 a month, so the subscription fee for my Xero subscription (£40), equates to nearly 20% of my income.
Design Decisions
Once Lighthouse is complete, it will be 75% financial management, 25% tools and business development.
My difficult small business journey has been one of paying too much for services I don't need, so I wanted something where I could manage my business under one platform.
That's why Lighthouse is;
Ideal for Small Business
My goal with Lighthouse is to create something that anyone can use, provide tools that help small businesses grow, and in phase 3 make the software compatible for businesses of any size - it's already multi-user and multi-site compatible.
As a skilled developer, my code is minimalistic, all hand coded, there's zero bloat or unnecessary libraries, so unlike the subscription services I could name, but won't, Lighthouse runs superfast, there's no waiting for pages to load, or long delays when uploading files.
If you're not satisfied with the speed of Lighthouse, I'll give you your money back ;)
Pricing Model
In my opinion, though I'm obviously biased, Lighthouse is a bargain, it's completely free of charge, with support and guides included, which puts it head and shoulders above the subscription services.