Yes. I "wasted" 2019 building a platform that my customers didn't need. Scare quotes because it wasn't really a waste; it taught me a lot about what not to do.
In 2020, realizing it was going nowhere, I started talking more with my target audience. Really talking and really listening. It turned out that most of them had a very specific pain point.
I thought about how to solve it. I could build another gigantic app. Or I could start as small as possible. I could write a tiny script that addressed that pain point, and do everything else by hand.
If I knew it would scale to x, I might have started with more. But I realized I'm bad at predicting what will take off, so I started as small as I could.
This year I'm getting close to $1K MRR. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, but coming from no business experience, it means a lot to me.
My biggest takeaway so far is, for those like me who don't have an incredibly clear vision, start as small as possible. Not "if you build it, they will come," but "when they come, you can build it."
In 2020, realizing it was going nowhere, I started talking more with my target audience. Really talking and really listening. It turned out that most of them had a very specific pain point.
I thought about how to solve it. I could build another gigantic app. Or I could start as small as possible. I could write a tiny script that addressed that pain point, and do everything else by hand.
If I knew it would scale to x, I might have started with more. But I realized I'm bad at predicting what will take off, so I started as small as I could.
This year I'm getting close to $1K MRR. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, but coming from no business experience, it means a lot to me.
My biggest takeaway so far is, for those like me who don't have an incredibly clear vision, start as small as possible. Not "if you build it, they will come," but "when they come, you can build it."