20 Hours Per Week: How I Built Production Healthcare Software While Running a School

It's 5:47 AM. My alarm hasn't gone off yet.

I'm already awake, staring at my laptop screen in the semi-darkness of my study. The cursor blinks in my code editor. Line 13,258 of index.php needs fixing. Again.

In three hours, I'll be standing in front of faculty members discussing the curriculum for 500+ students across five departments. But right now, in this stolen moment before dawn, I'm a different person entirely.

I'm building VaidyaAI.

This is not a success story. Not yet, anyway.

This is a story about constraint-driven development, brutal prioritization, and why having limited time might actually be the best thing that ever happened to my startup.

The Day Job That Nobody Knows About

Let me paint you a picture of my "day job":

Dean of School of Sciences, Woxsen University

• 5 departments to oversee (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biotechnology, Computer Science & AI)
• 500+ students depending on academic decisions I make
• 25+ faculty members looking to me for leadership
• Curriculum design, accreditation, research initiatives
• Budget management, stakeholder meetings, strategic planning
• Teaching responsibilities (because I refuse to stop teaching)

A typical day starts at 8 AM and officially ends at 6 PM. But we all know academic leadership doesn't work on a clock.

Faculty emergencies happen at 7 PM. Student issues arise at 9 PM. Research proposals need review by midnight.

So where exactly do I find 20 hours per week to build a production healthcare software platform?

The Brutal Math of Time

When I first had the idea for VaidyaAI, I did what any engineer would do: I calculated the math.

That 60.5 hours disappears fast when you factor in:

• Family time (non-negotiable)
• Exercise (already sacrificed too much)
• Social obligations (can't completely vanish)
• Unexpected emergencies (always happen)
• Mental decompression (or you burn out)

The realistic number I could carve out? 20 hours per week. Maximum.

Most startup advisors would laugh at this. "You need to go all-in," they'd say. "Quit your job and focus."

But I had three reasons I couldn't do that:

1. Financial security - I have a family. Bills. Responsibilities. Can't just YOLO into startup land.
2. Institutional knowledge - My day job keeps me connected to clinical reality through our university clinic. Invaluable for product development.
3. IP concerns - As a university employee, I needed to hit revenue milestones before going public. More on this later.

So 20 hours it was. The question became: How do you build production software in 20 hours per week?

The Time Architecture

Here's exactly how I structured those 20 hours:

The Tools That Made It Possible

I couldn't have done this without strategic tool choices. Here's my stack and why each piece matters:

Development Tools

Why This Split Works

VS Code + Copilot for daily debugging: When I only have 2 hours in the morning, I can't waste 30 minutes stuck on a syntax error. Copilot catches these instantly.

Claude AI for weekend features: Complex features need thinking time. On weekends, I use Claude to:

• Validate my architecture decisions
• Generate comprehensive code that I then customize
• Create testing procedures I'd otherwise skip
• Document features properly (documentation always gets skipped under time pressure)

The Decisions That Saved Me

With only 20 hours/week, I couldn't afford wrong turns. Here are the decisions that kept me moving forward:

The Crisis Points

Let me be honest: This journey nearly broke me multiple times.

The temptation to give up comes in waves:

Wave 1: The Overwhelm
Month 2. I had built 40% of the features. Needed 60% more. My mental roadmap showed 6 months of work remaining. At 20 hours/week, that was another 480 hours. A full year away.

What saved me: I stopped thinking about the destination. Started celebrating weekly milestones. "This week, prescription printing works. Next week, inventory management."

Wave 2: The Imposter Syndrome
Month 4. A doctor friend asked me, "Why would clinics trust software built by one person in their spare time?"

Brutal question. Valid question.

What saved me: I focused on one metric: Does it work? VaidyaAI had processed 300 prescriptions by then. Zero critical errors. That's all that mattered.

Wave 3: The Burnout Warning
Month 6. I was exhausted. Every morning alarm felt like punishment. The code quality was slipping. I was making stupid mistakes.

What saved me: I took a full week off. Didn't touch the code. Came back refreshed. Realized I needed sustainability, not heroics.

What I Learned About Constraint-Driven Development

Here's the paradox: Having only 20 hours/week made VaidyaAI better, not worse.

When you're time-constrained, you can't afford:

• Feature bloat: Every feature must justify its existence. I ruthlessly cut "nice-to-haves."
• Perfect code: I shipped "good enough" code. Perfection is the enemy of shipping.
• Analysis paralysis: Limited time forced quick decisions. Most were right. Wrong ones got fixed later.
• Scope creep: "Wouldn't it be cool if..." → "Does this solve the core problem? No? Cut it."

The 20-hour constraint became my superpower. It forced brutal prioritization that many full-time founders struggle with.

The Numbers After 8 Months

640 hours. That's what it took to go from idea to production software serving real clinics.

For context:

• Full-time founder working 60 hours/week: Would take ~10-11 weeks
• Me at 20 hours/week: Took 32 weeks (8 months)

The difference? 21 weeks. Roughly 5 months.

But here's what I gained in those 5 months:

• Financial security (kept my salary)
• Real-world testing environment (university clinic)
• Deeper product insights (stayed close to users)
• Sustainable pace (didn't burn out)
• Professional credibility (maintained dean position)

Worth it? Absolutely.

The Playbook: How You Can Do This

If you're thinking about building a startup while keeping your day job, here's what actually works:

What's Next?

I'm still working 20 hours/week. Still the Dean. Still building VaidyaAI.

Current target: ₹5-6 lakh MRR within 15 months. That's the number that lets me go full-time.

Until then? I'll keep waking up at 5:30 AM. Keep shipping features. Keep serving clinics.

Because here's what I've learned: You don't need unlimited time to build something meaningful. You need:

• Clear constraints
• Brutal prioritization
• Sustainable rhythm
• Strategic tools
• Willingness to ship imperfect code

The rest is just showing up. Every morning. For 2 hours. And doing the work.

If I can do it, so can you.

The Honest Truth

Let me end with complete honesty:

This is hard. Really hard.

There are mornings I don't want to wake up at 5:30 AM. There are weekends I'd rather sleep in. There are bugs that make me want to throw my laptop out the window.

But every time a doctor tells me VaidyaAI saved them time, every time a prescription processes correctly, every time I see the prescription count tick up—it's worth it.

Not because I'm building a billion-dollar company (though who knows?).

But because I'm proving something important:

You don't need to quit your job to build something real. You don't need venture capital to ship production software. You don't need unlimited time to create value.

You just need to show up. Consistently. With focus. And ship.

The rest takes care of itself.