My learnings after quitting my highly-paid job 5 months ago and going full-time into building products

Hi, indie hackers! In this article, I’ll share my learnings and failures, focusing on the learnings. Although we all love success stories, I firmly believe we have more to learn from failures than from successes.

I quit my high-paying job 5 months ago after 12 years of full-stack web development. Since February 1st, I started building products, traveling, and trying to find my way toward content creation.

How it started

Honestly, I was confused about the path I wanted to take.

It all started with a desire to create an audience and sell, become an entrepreneur, looking at people on social media like walking $ bills. I started building web development tutorials to create courses later on and sell to them, making a living out of it.

After investing 1-2 months into this, I’ve found myself not liking it all. I wasn’t good at it at all. 👀.

I apologize, folks; I won’t think about you this way ever again.

First Product’s failure, mistakes, and lessons

In March, AI was on all-time highs in terms of hype, so I created my first product - a ChatGPT UI which was supposed to be better, but that didn't get too much attention due to the lack of marketing and strategy as well as the way the market evolved - ChatGPT UI was getting better and better, and a mobile app was being developed. Also, the value proposition was unclear; how can someone pay for it?

I wasn’t discouraged or disappointed but was realistic and didn't blindly insist on it. I knew it lacked value at that moment, and I didn’t have any marketing strategy.

Hence, I decided to pause for now the project development and let it be there. It’s me using it mainly. I’ll return to it in a month or so after launching the following product.

So my mistake was that I developed a product that solved no problem, had no defined market segment, and no strategy in mind. Of course, it failed; I would be naive to be surprised!

Another lesson is that perfecting the product will help it stand out more. It won’t.

As much as it hurts me to say this, marketing and selling are more important than your code stack. Use something reusable that helps you deliver fast and not perfect. Don’t try to make it perfect; focus that energy on bringing users to the app; if it solves their problem, they won’t mind some bugs.

How would I do it today?

I’m going back to this project to think about its direction, pivot to a new kind of AI application, see what problem it solves, and if I would use it myself.

If it solves a real problem, I’ll define the market segment (the product positioning for users having that problem) and its functionalities in phases (Phase 0 → beta, Phase 1 → …).

After I have these things clear and written down → I touch the code and start the development process. Then validate it as soon as possible. I would launch an MVP, charging a highly discounted price or lifetime - if it makes sense from the business perspective.

Second Product

Until I get back to my AI product, I want to launch another one that’s more ready than the one above, built while building other products - using my 12 years of experience.

I am talking about a SaaS boilerplate with CICD, authentication, automated deployments, headless CMS integrated, and one configuration file for the backend, frontend, and a mobile app in Flutter. It’s impressive tech.

When I started developing this one, I made the same mistake.

I didn’t know:

• Who am I building it for?
• Was the market big enough?
• Were enough developers using NestJs or ExpressJs as their backend?
• How many developers are using NodeJs for their backend? What about AngularJs or ReactJs?
• What is the profile of the users I am addressing to?
• Did I talk to any of those users?
• Am I part of their communities?

I didn’t know to answer any of these questions!

But how am I applying what I learned to this product? We will repeat our mistakes if we don’t apply what we learn from our failures.

Usually, it should be the problem first and then the solution. At least I got this one right! I had this problem of repeating myself and losing time developing the same things that should be shared between apps. So I created a solution to it.

I am first working on defining the problem in writing and explaining how my product solves it. Then I would clearly define the market to which I can address and analyze how big that market is. If it’s in the millions area, I will only break it down into segments and focus on a single market segment.

Having a clear market segment to which I am addressing to makes it easier for me to write content and create my messages specifically for that audience, such as SEO articles, learning material, videos, etc.

Trying to target everyone is a mistake.

This is my approach to the new product;

My new direction in content writing is not to teach web development anymore; I wouldn’t say I liked to do that because I wasn’t good at it.

The new direction I like to write about is my experiences, failures, and learnings on my journey to become a real entrepreneur.

What are your recent learnings and mistakes?

Let's Connect.

I constantly write about Coding, Marketing, and Business on Twitter and in my Newsletter.