I built two products doing everything right. Both failed. Built the third doing everything wrong. $5.4k/month.
Product one: researched the market, validated the idea, built what people asked for, launched properly. Dead.
Product two: same approach. Better execution. People wanted it. Made one sale. Dead.
Product three (MediaFast): built it for myself, didn't validate, launched without hope, told people to do LESS not more. $5.4k/month.
What I did wrong that worked
Wrong move 1: Built the solution, not the product
Products one and two were built for "the market." Generic solutions to common problems.
MediaFast was built for me. After getting banned 6 times from Reddit. It solved MY specific pain.
Turns out when you solve your own painful problem, other people have the same pain.
Wrong move 2: Launched without an audience
Every guide says build an audience first, then launch.
I launched MediaFast with zero audience. Just posted about my Reddit ban pain on X while building.
The pain was the audience builder. People related to the struggle, not the product.
Wrong move 3: Told people to do LESS
Products one and two were about doing MORE. More features. More value. More everything.
MediaFast tells people to post LESS on Reddit. Comment less. Wait longer. Rest more.
Counterintuitive sells better than obvious.
Wrong move 4: No validation
I didn't ask anyone if they'd pay for a Reddit marketing roadmap.
I just built it because I needed it after wasting 4 months getting banned.
Turns out when you're in enough pain to build something for yourself, others are in that same pain.
Wrong move 5: Charged immediately
No free tier. No trial. Just paid from day one.
If people are in enough pain, they pay. If they're not, a free trial won't save you.
The results
February 10, 2025: Launch Month 1: $360 Month 12: $5,400
185 customers who had the same Reddit pain I did.
Why wrong worked
Doing everything "right" meant building what I THOUGHT people wanted.
Doing everything "wrong" meant building what I KNEW I needed.
One approach = guessing Other approach = certainty
Built it wrong. Works anyway.
Maybe "wrong" is just "different from what everyone else does."
The predictive part is what catches most people off guard. By the time you post, the system may already have classified the account.
then.. did you promote your app on Reddit with your own tool?
had this exact experience. first two side projects i scoped perfectly, built full feature sets, wrote the roadmaps — zero traction. third one i threw together in a weekend because i was frustrated with a tool at work, shared in a slack group, got 20 signups before i even had a landing page. the "right" way killed the momentum before anyone saw it
Good that it stuck on the third attempt though. It's interesting that the least validated one ended up being the one that worked. Makes you wonder how much time gets wasted trying to validate stuff upfront when you could just ship it and see.
Going to apply this to my own product, thanks!
Built right vs. built for pain. I automate everything (11 different systems running daily) but the ones that work long-term solve my actual pain, not theoretical problems. Your "wrong" moves align with production reality.
the "doing everything wrong" part really resonates. i've been building an automated seo audit tool for six weeks now and made the exact same mistake — spent way too long perfecting the automation (16 cron jobs running daily, auto-followups, reply detection) before anyone even knew the product existed. beautiful system, zero users. your point about posting less and resting more is counterintuitive but makes sense when you think about it. most of us grind on building when we should be spending that energy on distribution. congrats on the $5.4k/month — that's real validation.
Great post! I think there is no right path to succeed, you just have to "do" things
hmmm i do not think the reason for success was building wrong. you offered a solution people needed
Interesting piece. I think there is a lot of randomness as well to what sticks and resonates. I've had the dumbest ideas go viral and well thought out ones go stagnant.
Love this especially the point about building for yourself first. So many founders guess what others want and end up stuck.
One thing I notice often is that even when the product solves a real pain, messaging and positioning can still kill early adoption. Making the “why this works for you” instantly clear usually accelerates first sales.
looking back at MediaFast, were there any tweaks in messaging or onboarding that made a big difference in conversion?
The roadmap feature is a great touch. Most tools just give you the 'what' (scheduling), but skip the 'how' (strategy/compliance). For a SaaS founder, navigating the nuances of Reddit and X without getting flagged is half the battle. How are you determining the 'best times to post'—is it based on general subreddit/platform trends or specific account engagement?
What you call “wrong” is actually just honest building.
You didn’t optimize for advice, you optimized for your own pain — and that’s why it worked.
This kind of story is perfect for growth, but text alone has limits.
If you turn this into a sharp 15–30 sec video showing the pain and the outcome, it’ll hit much harder and bring better traction.
That’s exactly the kind of launch/demo content I specialize in.
Some nuggets of wisdom here. But:
"Turns out when you solve your own painful problem, other people have the same pain."
I think it turns out that if you understand your target customer (which includes understanding their 'pain') you can relatively easily pick up some early adopters.
As someone who keeps getting banned on Reddit, this might just be the solution I need.
I can totally relate! Built my first website 6 years ago, somehow it started picking up in 2025 (!!!). I thought i did everything well, SEO, maerkting, social media, you name it. Now I am building my second app. Hopefully I dont replicate your story :)
I can relate to this a lot. I spent about 3 months building an app out of pure frustration to solve my own problem (trying to cast a turntable to Google speakers). It actually works really well, but when I shared it on Reddit I barely got any response. Now I’m kind of stuck not knowing what the next step should be or where to take it.
I've known about your tool for a long time, great results! I didn't know you started out that "wrong"
Maybe "wrong" is just "different from what everyone else does."
wow that sentence hit i always feel like doing what is right will get me where i want but after reading this post and also failing a couple times with some products i just figuired that doing it "right" will actually wont make ant different than all of the other products on the market
Looks amazing!