Hey IH — 13 years building other people's visions, finally figuring out my own lane

I'm Nikhil. Full-stack developer, former CTO, currently based in India and working almost entirely with US founders.
The quick version: I spent over a decade building software — startups, enterprise systems, everything in between. Got into Toptal's top 3%. Had a 4-year run with a US warranty company where I was basically their Executive Director of IT, overseeing a platform that processed over $1M in warranty transactions. Good work. Stable. Respectable.
Then I tried building my own SaaS. CodeWarranty — a warranty management platform I was convinced the market needed. Built the whole thing. Launched it. Crickets.
That failure was clarifying in a way success never was.
What I realized: I'm genuinely good at building. I'm not naturally good at distribution, positioning, finding product-market fit from scratch. But I kept meeting founders who were the exact opposite — sharp business instincts, real market insight, no idea how to execute technically. They were getting burned by cheap freelancers who disappeared mid-project, or agencies that charged enterprise rates to deliver Gantt charts and status calls.
That gap felt like the actual problem worth solving.
So now I work directly with non-technical founders — idea to launched SaaS, typically in 8 weeks, at $30/hr. No agency overhead. No AI demos with nothing behind them. I even offer 5 free hours before anyone commits to anything, because I think founders deserve to see how someone works before signing a contract.
I'm not going to pretend I've cracked growth or figured out inbound yet. That's honestly why I'm here — this community seems to think clearly about those problems.
Curious if others have been on either side of this: founders who got burned by the wrong technical hire, or developers who realized late that building ≠ selling.
What I'm working on right now: getting my first few inbound leads from content (this intro post is literally step one), and documenting the 8-week SaaS build process publicly.
Good to be here.