Day 1 — why I'm building this

I've spent enough time around barns to know how they actually run, and the answer is: not well, but heroically. The schedule lives in a group text. Invoices go out late because the manager finally sat down at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday with a spreadsheet. The vaccine records are in a binder. The waiver from the new client is on the front seat of someone's truck.

These are six-figure operations being held together by memory, goodwill, and the patience of the manager's spouse.

Today I started building the thing I keep wishing existed. Working name: EquiPilot — eventually a small suite of products, but at the start, just one: a real operating system for a barn. Lessons, clients, horses, billing, the whole loop.

The competitive landscape gave me confidence to start. There are barn-management tools out there — BarnManager, StableSecretary, EC Pro — and the reviews are universal: clunky interfaces, no real client portal, billing that only handles flat monthly fees, mobile experiences ranging from "bad" to "nonexistent." Most of them are priced $50–150/month. There's room for something better at $39/month with a real mobile app and billing that flexes with how barns actually charge.

The tech plan is boring on purpose: Next.js, Postgres with one schema per barn, TypeScript everywhere. Boring stack so the interesting work goes into the product, not the infrastructure.

No code yet. Today was the day I decided to do this. I haven't bought a domain or finalized a name — those decisions can wait until there's something worth pointing at. The real work starts tomorrow with pnpm install.

Day 1. Long way to go.