StoryCareer Editorial
Published Aug 3, 2026 · 1 min read
After eight years in corporate jobs, I left to build a small software product. It failed twice before I found something people were willing to pay for.
I had a comfortable job, a good salary, and no good reason to leave. But I kept building side projects on weekends, and each one taught me more about what customers actually wanted than my day job did.
The first two products I built solved problems I thought people had, but nobody used them. I had spent a year and most of my savings on solutions nobody wanted — that was both humbling and terrifying.
I forced myself to talk to thirty potential customers before writing any more code. The product I finally built was embarrassingly small, but it solved a specific problem a handful of people had already told me they would pay for.
Most days are a mix of customer conversations, fixing bugs, and doing the marketing I used to consider beneath me. I set one small goal each day so I can stay consistent without burning out.
Do not fall in love with your idea; fall in love with the problem. If you can find even a few people who are already trying to solve it manually, you have a place to start. Everything else is just iteration.
I started a weekly newsletter about marketing experiments. Two years later it pays a meaningful part of my income — and it taught me more than any job.
I moved from a retail job into security analysis through free labs, homelab practice, and a first role that paid less than my old job but taught me everything.
My first product was a two-person build with an eight-week deadline. I learned that writing the spec was the easy part — the hard part was saying no.