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Day 1: When I bet on the future with $60

3 min read
  • startup
  • milestone
  • DaoKit

Today is April 15, 2026.

I registered two domains: daokit.io and perrilee.com. Total: $60.46. Roughly ¥435.

Sounds trivial. The price of a hotpot dinner.

But for me, this is the first time I’ve spent real money on “my company”.

Why these two names

daokit.io is the product.

“Dao” (道) is one of the hardest characters to translate from Chinese philosophy. It’s not “way,” not “road,” not “path” — it’s “the way things are meant to be.”

I’m building a SaaS tool. But I don’t want to build a “Silicon Valley template” tool. I want to build a tool with Eastern philosophy: restraint, whitespace, mood, balance.

So it’s called DaoKit — the “Dao toolkit.” Built for Chinese brands going global, who don’t want to lose their cultural soul along the way.

perrilee.com is for me.

For the past decade, I’ve done SEO, paid ads, and content — telling other brands’ stories. But I’ve never told my own.

Starting today, I will.

Why $60

That’s Cloudflare’s wholesale price.

I didn’t go to GoDaddy (30-100% markup + endless upsells), didn’t go to AliCloud (expensive + requires China registration), didn’t fall for those “$1 first year” promo traps (jumps to $30 in year two).

Cloudflare’s logic is simple: sell to you at cost, never raise the price.

This “anti-consumerist” product philosophy resonates with me. When I build DaoKit, I’ll have the same attitude — don’t sell people what they don’t need.

Why I waited until today

Honestly, I hesitated for a long time.

The W2C project shipped earlier this year, valued at ¥250K. Ever since, I’ve been asking myself: “Should I start my own company?”

But every time, a voice talked me out of it: “You can’t even code. What gives you the right to start a tech company?”

Until three things changed me:

First, W2C’s success made me realize: my partnership with Claude can deliver what used to take a 5-person traditional team. One person + AI = one army.

Second, after writing my SOP handbook (8 documents covering the full client journey from intake to delivery), I suddenly realized: I’ve already crystallized “how to run a company” into a methodology. I already had it.

Third, after turning that SOP into 8 Claude Code skills, I realized: every new project, I just say “let’s start,” and Claude executes the standard flow automatically. I have my own “product capability” now.

So today’s $60 isn’t an impulse purchase. It’s a natural step that was always coming.

Next 14 days

I’ve set my pace:

  • Day 1-2: Launch perrilee.com (personal brand presence)
  • Week 1-2: Launch daokit.io MVP (product validation)

Build trust first. Sell later.

The order matters. I’ve seen too many founders push product before establishing trust — and nobody buys. Strangers don’t buy from strangers.

So first, I become someone worth trusting. I publish my methodology, my mistakes, my thinking openly. You get to know me first. Then you consider what I might do for you.

A note to my future self

Five years from now, looking back at today:

If DaoKit takes off — remember, it didn’t start from an idea. It started from one specific action: clicking that Cloudflare “Purchase” button.

If DaoKit doesn’t take off — remember, your courage today deserves any future version of you.

“The Tao gives birth to one, one to two, two to three, and three to all things.” — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Today’s two (domains) are tomorrow’s everything.

—— Perri Lee, 2026-04-15