I'm a Younger Builder. I've Failed 4 Times. Here's why I'm Still Going.

Basit Jumani — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 07:22:49 +0000

This is the first post in a series where I document everything — the ideas, the failures, the process, and the journey

Who Am I?
My name is Basit. I'm a younger builder, from Pakistan, and I'm an engineering student who spends more time building products than studying for exams.
I see the world like a lens. Always observing. Always framing. Always looking for what others miss.
I don't have a computer science degree. I don't have a mentor sitting next to me. I don't have a community around me that thinks the way I do. Most people in my environment don't understand what I'm trying to do and honestly, that includes my family.
But I'm building anyway.
The Honest Part Nobody Talks About
Here's something most "young builder" stories skip:
I've worked on 4 ideas. None of them made it past the prototype stage. Not because the ideas were terrible some of them were actually decent but because I kept finding reasons to stop before I ever reached real users.
That's not failure. That's something worse: quitting before you even get to fail.
I realized this recently when I read about Pieter Levels the indie hacker behind Nomad List, Remote OK, and a dozen other products. The man failed 90+ times before anything worked. Ninety. And he kept going. Not because every idea was brilliant, but because he treated each one as an experiment, not an identity.
I was treating my ideas like they were me. So when an idea felt shaky, I felt shaky. And I stopped.
That ends here.
What I'm Actually Doing Now
I'm not launching a product today. I'm not announcing a startup.
What I am doing is this: I'm spending 3 days observing my own life every frustration, every "I wish there was something for this" moment and writing it down. No filtering. No immediately googling if it exists. Just raw observation.
Because the builders I respect Pieter Levels, Kumar Shah they didn't start with ideas. They started with problems they genuinely felt.
I want to find something I genuinely feel.
Why I'm Writing This Publicly
Two reasons.
One: Accountability. If I document this publicly, I can't quietly disappear when things get hard. You'll notice.
Two: I want to find my people.
Right now, I exist in an environment where nobody around me thinks like this. Not my classmates. Not my family. The conversations I want to have about building, about systems, about why certain companies win I can't have them in my daily life.
So I'm building that community here. One post at a time.
If you're someone who obsesses over founder stories, who reads about how Pinterest or Airbnb survived their early days, who thinks about product and distribution at 2am this blog is for you. And honestly, it's for me too.
What's Next
I don't have a clean answer to where this goes.
A year from now, I want someone to ask me "what did you build?" and have a real answer. Right now, I don't. And that gap between who I am and who I'm trying to become is exactly what this blog is about.
I'm going to document every step. Every idea. Every dead end. Every small win.
Follow along if that sounds interesting.
— bjumani
Builder. Observer. Work in progress.

DEV Community: Basit Jumani

I'm a Younger Builder. I've Failed 4 Times. Here's why I'm Still Going.