Failed for the past 12 years as a tech entrepreneur. My key takeaways.

Thank you for sharing your honest story, so great to read since most of what you see here and on Twitter is "I've been up and running for 3 months and have $10k MRR!!!1!". My story is a lot more like yours than like those. 😅

Important to remember that MOST "overnight" success comes after years and years of grinding.

Keep going!

And THAT'S the kind of content I'm looking for on IH, not the "How I made 10 million dollars in 10s" kind of BS

Love the honesty! It's important to spread stories like this - It's not always success and winning.
Failure is part of the process and ultimately makes one better in many ways.

Thanks for sharing and I'm glad to hear that you found something - Keep grinding!

I think social media and even IH sometimes looks like everyone else is having huge success and growing quickly, and it's easy to see this and think why isn't this happening for me? But I reckon for the 1% of successes you see (which you're more likely to see because people will retweet/share/comment/like) there's 99% of us just trudging away making slow progress - but, it's still progress if you're trying, even if you're just practising your craft/learning tech/design/marketing. I don't think you failed for the past 12 years, you've gained 12 years experience!

Sounds like you've learned this though from your conclusion, and thanks for sharing, it's good to hear from others in the same boat

I can sympathize. Your story and journey as an Indie hacker are heart warming.
its rawness is only matched by its genuiness. I have no doubt that you will soon hit your stride if you already have not with your latest endeavor. I just visited your site and I promise to be a paying customer very soon. Best of luck!!

Damien

blanq.io seems to be down...have you give up again?

The most important thing Ive learn in this path is perseverance, stick with it :)

Thank you for sharing this brother. There is much to learn from failures. I wish you all the very best with blanq.io and the landing page looks dope :). Btw what is failure? we make such a big deal about it and try to hide it but then in hindsight, it is all a learning process, a hands-on learning process. Which you very well know :).

I'm 100% sure you will make it. The trying is important (I'm someone who has trouble starting itself, at least you have tried).

It was nice to read your story!
Much power to you!

Thanks for sharing. Best of luck growing more! The blanq landing page and product screenshots look good. What UI libraries are you using for the dashboards and charts?

Consistency is a key. Thanks for sharing these valuable lessons.

Thank you for sharing! This encouragement is definitely needed and it's helpful to be reminded that consistency & patience are key 🙏

Great story. Thanks for sharing it.

Thank you for sharing this honest account of your journey! I totally agree with @mattmorris. We're inundated with stories of people rocketing to overnight success, but somehow the stories of struggle... and struggle.. and struggle... and then (maybe) success(!) rarely see the light of day.

I applaud your grit and dedication! 👏

I am in somewhat similar situation but started 4 years after you. Keep going 💪

Thanks for sharing, loved the good ending.

Wishing you good luck with Blanq!

Thanks! Needed to hear this.

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing.

Esto no es puntual a Shashiank.

He notado que el incentivo de zafar de una situación poco feliz actual no es combustible suficiente para conseguir consistencia y perseverancia.

La sed de buscar el camino más óptimo, saber soltar y ver chances que en otras circunstancias simplemente pasaríamos por alto.

Fascinante historia. Cruda y tan familiar como la vida misma.

I'm not into "get rich quick" idea, but man 12 years is a lot of time. 😢

Thank you so much for your valuable lessons and notes.

You've done a lot of things in 12 years, and I've spent 10 years doing the same thing, but it's also a failure

Very nice, keep it up! :)

I think customer discovery and validation is key before building a product. Would you be able to provide some more information on the product and the numbers?

Thanks for sharing :)

This is really inspiring, thanks for sharing and I hope your product grows even further!

Truly inspiring. It shows patience pays off. But its really hard to stick to the plan for so long when there is no initial success. Kudos to your perseverance.

Hey, thanks for sharing and I can totally empathize with that. My career has been full of startup, not startup. One thing I would add here is to be very systemic on why you're going to do something, it's very easy to get carried away.

Thanks. Gone thru the same situation.

Bought 20+ domains and ultimately failed.

Spent my hard earned money around 2L got nothing in return.

Took a break and currently working on my brand new blog.

Hope I get there one day.

Wow! Patience is everything! You may have learned the hard way but you've honed your skills.

Thanks for sharing! Do you think that if you would have stuck with or pivoted on one of your prior businesses it would have been successful?

Pivot vs. Persist vs. Abandon is a difficult decision.

Thank you so much for sharing your story in such a plain and transparent manner. It is concise, informative, simple, and truly inspiring 🙏🏻😊

Very valuable and couldn't agree more. Stay well and thanks for this!

a cool small win in the end to spark another big excitement to keep going

Thanks for sharing this. I think one thing you should’ve learned along the way as well is to validate faster. So many months and years went into building stuff without users. This kind is risk is avoidable.
Either way I’m impressed with your perseverance and glad you sticked to something that is now paying off. Congrats on your first customers 👏

Half way through your story I thought "dude, you gave up after only 6 months?" Really glad you figured out that you should give yourself more time.

I've also been working away for over 10 years, without an "overnight success" to show for it. Well, not yet, anyway...

Haha I remember your site as I did a landing page review video on it! Super glad you've made a breakthrough!

Thank you for sharing! I think you should have followed some ideas for longer period. Everything is iteration, and often growth is exponentially, which means that at the beginning you don't see any growth, while it suddenly explodes then...

Congrats! What kind of marketing have you done to get your first users?

Do you have your code of the replica of Facebook groups/ slack?? I would like to use it if you have one. Thank you.

With a mindset like yours you never fail. Great work. The landing page looks awesome.

Really refreshing to read. I too have had many failures, now just waiting on my next idea. I respect your tenacity bro. Great stuff

Thanks for sharing.

But is 10 paying customers enough for a service like that?

Thanks for sharing!

Thank you for sharing!