I've spent the better part of a decade building things that didn't work. Multiple startups, countless pivots, and enough failures to fill a graveyard. Here's what I learned the hard way.

1. Validate First

I wasted years building products nobody wanted. I thought getting into an incubator or talking to VCs meant I had validation. I was wrong. Real validation comes from people willing to pay for what you're building.

2. Kill Your Ego

The product isn't about me. It's about the user. My taste doesn't matter. My preferences are irrelevant. The user has expectations, and my job is to meet them. Once I understood this, everything changed.

3. Chase Users, Not Investors

When you're desperately pitching VCs, they smell it. When you're focused on growth and users, investors start reaching out. I've never had more VC interest than now, when I care about it the least.

4. Only Hire Doers Until PMF

No managers. No coordinators. No "people people." Only people who can build things with their bare hands. So many people know how to manage. So few can actually ship.

5. Your Landing Page Doesn't Matter

Pick a template. Edit the text in an hour. Ship it. Nobody's browsing your five-page website at the early stage. They're already interested when they arrive. Don't make them hunt for the signup button.

Focus on conversion optimization only when you have consistent traffic. Until then, one page is enough.

6. One Fullstack Dev > Dev Team

Nothing is less productive than a team of developers building an early-stage product. One fullstack developer who owns the entire product will ship faster than any team.

7. Go Global on Day One

If your product and marketing are good, they'll work globally. If they're bad, they won't work locally either. So why limit yourself? The global market is 10,000x larger. You can validate in days instead of years.

I spent years building for small local markets, thinking we'd scale internationally "someday." That someday never came. Now I launch everything globally from day one.

8. Do SEO from Day Two

This is my biggest regret. I ignored SEO for over a decade.

It takes five minutes. Go to Google Keyword Planner. Enter keywords around your product. Sort by traffic. Filter out high competition. Pick the top 10. Add them naturally to your homepage and meta tags.

Then write one blog article per week. Manually or with AI. Just do it.

9. Sell Features Before Building Them

Talk to 10-20 users before building anything new. I DM users daily about ideas and features. It's obvious which ones resonate. Only build those.

No users yet? Post on HN, Reddit, or X. Ask in replies. People are helpful if you make the question clear.

10. Only Work with People You'd Want to Hug

If you don't want to hug someone, you dislike them on a chemical level. Even if you can't articulate why. That feeling is real, and ignoring it leads to conflict.

It takes ten years to build a startup. Make sure you're doing it with people you have a genuine connection with.

11. Invest in Your Startups and Your Friends

Not crypto. Not stocks. Not real estate.

I ran the numbers. If I had invested in all my friends' startups, three would have become unicorns. Even one would have made the bank. Since 2022, I invest everything into my products, my friends, and my network.

If you don't have startup friends, invest in yourself.

12. Post on X Daily

I should have started this years ago. It's my primary source of new connections and growth. If you haven't started, start today. You won't regret it.

13. Don't Partner with Corporates

They always look like amazing opportunities. Big, rich, millions of users. But you're talking to regular employees who have no skin in the game. They waste your time, destroy your focus, shift your priorities, and deliver nothing.

14. Don't Get Distracted by Hype

I lost 1.5 years to crypto. I met the worst people. Scammers, thieves, frauds. Some close friends turned into thieves just because it was normalized in that space.

I wish I had been stronger. I wish I had stayed on mission.

15. Build B2B, Not Consumer Apps

Consumer apps are a lottery. Only 0.00001% make it big. Even if you get users, monetization is brutal. I spent four years on consumer apps and regret it.

16. Don't Hold Onto Bad Projects

Some projects just don't work. Either the idea is unfixable or the team can't function. Don't drag it out for years. Give it a year max, then move on.

17. Tech Conferences Are a Waste

They cost money, drain energy, and you never meet the right people. Most attendees are corporate employees sent as a perk. Very few actual builders.

18. Scrum Is a Scam

If your team needs to be nagged every morning like kindergarteners, you'll fail. The only good work I've done happened with adults who could manage themselves. We synced on goals and plans over chat, then shipped.

19. Don't Outsource Until PMF

Everything in a startup needs to be done differently. More creative. More integrated with the vision. Outsourced work gets no love. It's just another assignment in someone's boring job.

They won't come up with great ideas for your project. They'll focus on padding their resume.

20. Bootstrap

I spent too much time raising money. Preseed, seed, Series A. Each round was a 3-9 month project full of meetings and distraction. I could have bootstrapped but didn't know it was an option.

I wish I had known earlier.

21. It Takes a Decade

When I was younger, I thought startups took a few years. So I kept pushing life plans forward. Marriage. Kids. Everything "after the exit."

I should have started living earlier. Don't make the same mistake.

22. No Free Tier Until PMF

I'd launch with a free tier, get signups, but few conversions. I'd treat free signups as KPIs and run on them for years. I'd even raise VC money with these stats.

But I was building a perfect free product. Not a paid one.

Free and paid users need different products. Once I went paid-only until validation, everything improved.

23. Don't Be Too Cheap

I always checked competitors and set the lowest price. I thought it was an advantage. It wasn't.

The $5 customer and the $50 customer are completely different people.

$5 customers: Pain in the ass. Never happy. Never recommend you. Churn in four months.

$50 customers: Polite. Give genuine feedback. Happy. Share with friends. Become fans if you solve their problems.

24. Expect to Fail

When I started my first startup, I thought doing everything right would guarantee success. But almost every startup fails.

I wish I had known to fail faster. Get to the second iteration. Then the third. Keep going until something works or you run out of runway.

25. Use Boilerplates

I wasted years and millions building basic infrastructure. Another sidebar. Another dashboard. Another payment integration.

I had too much pride to use someone else's code. I wanted everything 100% original. Because my product felt special.

It wasn't. Use boilerplates.

26. Spend Time with Family and Friends

I missed all my best friends' weddings. I was too busy. I thought the world would end if I didn't work every hour.

Looking back, it was wrong. Spending 10% of my time with family and friends would have had zero negative impact on my startups. But I can't get those memories back.

27. Build for Audiences You Love

I built products for corporates, consumers, and developers. I don't love any of those audiences.

I love indie founders. Risk-takers with kid hearts. Once I focused on building for them, my joy increased 100x.

28. Write Every Day

I thought I was bad at writing because of years of being told I was. But I kept telling stories. Recently I realized that in any group, I naturally become the storyteller.

So I started writing again. I love it. The process. The feedback.

I wish I had done it all these years.

The End

These lessons cost me a decade, but they're yours for free. Don't make the same mistakes I did.

Start today. Validate first. Build for people you love. Write every day. And for the love of god, use boilerplates.

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