Kovaze: The Past, Present, and Future.
Sin
Hey all, you may have noticed an increase in updates the past few days. As of Monday, I quit my job to run Kovaze full time. For the past few months, I've been coming home from my 9-5 and spending what few hours I had to work on the site. In the past few weeks, it's become increasingly evident that the site required more attention than I was able to give it. I had to choose between the site and my job, and the choice was quite clear. I love the site, the community we've built, and everything I believe it can become. I also believe the reason the other sites failed is the developers didn't believe in their platforms enough to go all in. Despite being told that I'm making a mistake by almost everybody, I have zero doubt in my vision for Kovaze. A little backstory to how we got here: I got into web dev at 9 by making Wix sites for my friends at school. By 15, I’d already learned half a dozen programming languages. At 18, I started development on what would later become Kovaze. A year later In 2020, I launched Blindsyde, the predecessor to Kovaze. It had Blogs, Shops, and Frenzy (which didn’t even have a POV yet). The 3-4 of you who were on it will remember how incomplete the website was. I shut it down a week later to focus on uni and work. I updated the code here and there, but as the years passed, the project began to collect dust. I always knew I'd come back to it one day with a clearer vision. Here’s a prehistoric screenshot I found of Harajuku’s account: And that brings me to something important - Kovaze has always been, and will always be free to play. That’s something I refuse to compromise on. I didn’t quit my job to turn it into a paywall, rather because I believe in building something special with the community, not above it. That said, the truth is that the site survives because of the people who choose to support it. Whether it’s buying Koinz, Diamonds, or just sharing the site with friends, every tiny bit keeps the lights on and lets me work on Kovaze full-time. I’m insanely grateful to everyone who’s made Kovaze what it is, and what it will become. The next few months are going to be huge. I’m excited. I hope you are too.