Out There, on the Expedition With Us
The expedition, in this case, is the build itself. I am building The Hikers on my own, and the people on this page cover part of what it costs to run. They are the us in the headline.
This is where that sits on the record, along with the rest of it: what I am building, what it costs, and how I think it might one day pay for itself.
Why I Build This
Not because I need another house or a Ferrari. I build it because I want good tools for planning my own hikes, and because the planning is a real part of the fun.
Most of the year you cannot be out there. You can still be picking a route, weighing a pack, and working out which week in September suits four people with four different calendars. That is hiking too, and it is the part software can genuinely help with. The Hikers is built for that middle time: the trips you are planning, the gear you carry, and the people you go with, kept in one place between trips.
What It Costs
Outside of the time spent, building this has real costs. Those costs buy tools that let me build rather than administer: hosting, the database, the image generation that draws your character, the coding tools.
I am not interested in VCs or external funding. That is not the same as being naive about money. If there turns out to be an audience for this at all, I want it to become a sustainable business, and I have my own ideas about how it could pay for itself. I would rather work those out in the open, and be straight about what it costs, than quietly turn you into the product.
Until then, the people beside this cover part of the bill. What they give is as much a signal to keep going as it is help with the costs.
So, thank you. Paying for something that is not finished yet is a way of saying you want it to exist, and on the weeks when the build is slow that is worth more to me than the amount.
— Caspar