It's not my first try, but final.
Backstory
I started my career back in 2011.
At that time I was in college, learning Visual Basic and dreaming about my own skin for Winamp. Soon I realized that Basic is dying, and the son of my mother's friend told me about PHP and HTML. I was so excited! Right next day I bought 2 books: Building web apps with PHP and MySQL, and Learning jQuery. They were boring! If PHP helps me a bit(I build a blog and a CMS), Learning jQuery I opened 2 or 3 times. The whole book was a copy of official documentation written in a storytelling format.
Then I spend the whole summer studying JavaScript and WordPress. At that time I'm not thinking about money. It was so fun building things and money after all was a nice bonus.
Now, this passion is gone. But first things first.
These eleven years were a journey!
I worked in startups, grew up along with Angular and React, made friends, and travel the world. And the most important - enjoyed writing code! My career grew from writing HTML and CSS to leading an awesome team of 20 engineers.
And all this time I tried to build startups. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes(mostly) not. The main reason for failure was marketing. I didn't know what to do after the launch. And instead of thinking about marketing, I worked on new fancy features. Features that definitely will make the product viral, and magically will blow up. Always I was busy, always have job to do and putting off launch day.
Money game
Over time all this turned into the money game. I start thinking more about making more, and not enjoying the process. I have a chance to move to Silicon Valley to work 60–70 hours per week and make $400k a year. But I still have hope of building my own business and reject an offer.
I double down on my new startup, spend it all my time and after 9 months I failed again. It transforms twice and became an HR tool that was almost impossible to sell. But this time I did much better: thought about marketing, did user research, did around 40 sales calls and 50 demos. But I've failed. The situation could still be saved: spent 2–3 months adding new features from potential users' requests, but I was burned out and decided to take a break.
Co-founder
After a couple of months, a friend of mine told me that his mate looking for a tech co-founder. He was a designer, recently sold his web studio, and wants to build a SaaS business in a niche similar to my previous project. It was a crash!
We partner up and start working on it. I've reused a lot of my previous code, which speeds up us a lot, but still, it comes us with a beta version only after 5 months of development. After getting some feedback from early-stage users we build a new backlog and start looking for the seed round.
And that war in Ukraine broke everything again. I was born in Ukraine but move to Austria 2 years ago, but my co-founder lives in Kyiv. Hopes to get a seed round disappeared, and my co-founder decided to put the project on pause for an indefinite time. Fail. Again.
A new addiction
Over time I lost that enjoyment and fun of writing code, but still, I love building products. And a month ago I comes up with a new idea - a marketing agency for SaaS products. And my most scary nightmare turned into a new obsession. I did almost all the marketing mistakes that it is possible to make as a Founder, so why not help others to avoid them? I put a deadline - launch it in 2 weeks. I already miss it by 2 days, because of the payment system approval. But still, it's my fastest launch, mostly because it requires only HTML and CSS. Back to basics.
And yes - now I'm quite a software development game! And I'm happy. I still building and doing things that I enjoy.
Secure Statement Converter — my next journey, and I hope, I'll succeed in it.
Top comments (7)
The seems to be a well written article, which can be enjoyed and teach people. Also I kinda support your decision, if you still earn reliably enough and have what you need.
Just a question, because it is kinda hard to believe: Is it actually that easy to "to move to Silicon Valley to work 60–70 hours per week and make $400k a year"? Because this sounds like a chance most people would not reject.
I would reject it. What's the point earning that much if you don't have any time to spend it because you are burnt out.
Besides, how much are you really earning after living costs are taken into account?
I do not know the living costs of Silicon Valley.
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Wow man! Seems like an adventure. And I always thought I should dive into the marketing sector at least once. Your article is just making that gut feeling strong. Thanks!
Loved this. Keep us posted for more.
I am happy to know that.
nice artcile!