How the "build it" lie almost killed my startup dreams

Took me 3 failed products to learn this: nobody cares how amazing your code is if they don't need what you built.

My worst flop? Spent 4 months creating this "revolutionary" project management tool. Added every feature I thought was cool. Launch day: 2 upvotes on PH and my mom saying it looked nice 😂

What finally worked?

Actually talking to people FIRST. Literally joined Discord servers where developers complained about their problems, then built the simplest possible solution to ONE specific pain point.

My current SaaS has actual paying customers because I finally stopped acting like some coding hermit and started understanding what people actually needed before building it.

Turns out marketing isn't evil - it's just listening before coding.

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@bundlesocial

4 weeks ago

Can you link up the discords that you joined it would be helpful for us

@Radjid

4 weeks ago

It's really just random discords, it would take me a while to list them all but you can just google "coding discords" or "developer discords" and start joining random ones. Sooner or later you'll see someone complaining on there lol

@harvansh

4 weeks ago

I think I’m following your old playbook! 😅 I've also built a few products just because I thought they were 'cool' — without checking if anyone actually wanted them. Learning the hard way now that talking to users before building is the real cheat code. Thanks for sharing this — it’s a much-needed reminder!

@Radjid

4 weeks ago

Ouch! But cool that you've learned from that 🙂

@harvansh

4 weeks ago

Yeah, definitely stings — but better late than never! Trying to avoid another ‘cool but useless’ build. How did you figure out which pain point to focus on when you pivoted?