I’m a high school student currently juggling homework, AP classes, exams, extracurriculars, a social life, and building a SaaS startup from scratch. This is the story of how I spent months building a calendar app that ultimately flopped—but led me to a genuinely useful product: Fushi.
The First Attempt: My Failed Calendar App
Like a lot of beginner founders, I built something that I thought was cool.
I created a calendar app with a unique UI, focus session features and detailed analytics that made sense to my brain. I spent months coding, designing, planning, polishing—then finally deployed and started marketing.
I posted it to Reddit for feedback and got roasted.
Not because it was buggy.
Not because it was ugly.
But because it wasn’t actually useful for other people.
It didn’t solve a pain point.
It didn’t improve someone’s workflow.
It was basically “my personal taste in calendar form.”
I had built a product for myself—not a product for a market.
What I Learned
- Don’t validate after building. Validate first.
- A product that solves a real frustration will outperform a polished product that solves none.
- User feedback > assumptions
- If your potential users need to adapt to your system, it’s probably wrong. Their current workflow should feed into your product, not the other way around.
The Next Idea: Fushi
After recovering from thinking about how horrifying that went and the hours "wasted", I assembled a group of my friends and spent the next month doing market research: asking friends, talking to people who struggle with scheduling and assignment management, going on the internet and browsing comments, etc.
The pain became obvious:
- Some students have packed daily schedules and too much homework
- Some constantly forget assignments even though they don’t feel disorganized
- Some procrastinate until due dates crush them
- Existing tools either treat tasks like events, require too much manual effort, or are too rigid
That led to Fushi: a productivity tool for students who have too much to do and no clear system for working through it.
What Fushi does:
- Fetches assignments from school platforms automatically
- Asks for minimal input: time needed + priority
- Generates an optimized order for your day
- Helps you focus on one thing at a time
- Keeps work from slipping through the cracks
This isn’t just another calendar.
It’s a decision-assistance webapp for overwhelmed students.
Current Progress
I’ve just begun building Fushi. The dashboard is in early development. Here’s a look at some current UI progress:
(More images will be included as the build continues.)
Tech Stack
- Vite (React)
- Supabase backend
- Google Cloud authentication + Calendar scope integration
Building in Public
I’ll be documenting how development goes as I continue building Fushi:
- early tech stack choices
- UI/UX decisions
- onboarding design
- database considerations
- scaling strategies
- marketing and testing with real users
If you're interested in productivity, student tooling, startup building, or you want to follow this journey as it unfolds, keep an eye on my upcoming posts—I’ll be publishing at least weekly.
And if you want to contact me directly, discuss the product, give feedback, or test the MVP, feel free to email me:
Thanks for reading. More to come soon.
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