When Plan B is Killing Plan A & When to Let Go - Stephen Chan, Pattern.io | The Other Plan

Episode 2: Plan B Was Killing Plan A - Stephen Chan, Pattern.io Stephen Chan had a £125k job at Adobe, a hospitality degree, and zero coding experience. He now has three apps in the App Store, a one-way ticket to Valencia, and his first paying customer. In this episode, Eleni sits down with Stephen to talk about what it actually means to be a founder in 2026, when vibe coding has collapsed the barrier between having an idea and shipping a product, when you can get 80% of the way there alone, and when the question is no longer whether you can build something but whether you have the clarity to know what to build. They cover the moment Stephen realised his Plan B was slowly killing his Plan A, how he built Still Alive, WhereTo, and Pattern without writing a single line of code from scratch, why he sold his car and moved to Spain, and what month one of full-time entrepreneurship actually looked like, one paying customer, a $25 Stripe notification, and a $500 MRR goal still far out of reach. Topics covered: Vibe coding and what it means for non-technical founders Building three products solo and knowing when to bring someone in The identity gap between what you're doing and how you describe yourself What building in public really costs Pattern.io - the AI content strategy tool for creators on TikTok and Instagram Find Stephen: @withstephen on TikTok and Instagram Pattern: getpattern.io The Other Plan is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. If this episode resonated, share it with someone who has been sitting on an idea.