I'm excited to share this interview with Nick Fogle, who built generational wealth from coding after he sold his startup Waave he co-founded. Nick was $250k in debt from law school and realised he hated the idea of being a lawyer. So he taught himself to code by using free online resources. In this interview Nick shares his tips for learning to code and getting started as an entrepreneur.
Can you introduce yourself?
Hey, I’m Nick Fogle, the founder and CEO of Churnkey. These days, I’m hard at work building Churnkey into the best SaaS retention tool on the market. Formerly I co-founded a company called Wavve which we grew to about $150k MRR before being acquired in 2021. I’m 35, have two toddlers, and I live near the beach in Charleston, South Carolina. You can find me on Twitter @nickfogle.
Why did you get started with coding?
Long story but I’ll try to keep it short. When I went to university back in the mid-2000s, I don’t think I realized I could make money working on software. I studied Economics and despite graduating a semester early at the top of my class, the jobs evaporated just before graduation due to the 2008 financial crisis. So… what do economics grads do when there are no jobs? They go to law school.
After 3 mind-numbing years of reading legal text and clerking at law firms, I graduated and could go work as an attorney. There was just one problem with that plan. Well, actually two problems. I couldn't pay down my debt ($200,000 and growing) on an attorney salary (started at $50k where I live), AND I dreaded spending the next 40 years of my life doing legal work.
I’d always been creative and felt that the legal profession stifled creativity. I was doing transactional law, so lets say I poured my heart and soul into drafting the best contract I possibly could for my client. Well, if I did my job correctly odds are high I would never hear about or see that contract again. With software, I could write a simple program and unleash it into the world in a matter of minutes.
