Intro
In today’s blog post, I want to do a kind of confession. I want to share with you all my projects that failed.
Since I remember I was always interested in entrepreneurship. I decided to use my programming skills and try to convert one of my ideas into a working business /startup.
I have been working as a software engineer since 2016. My main programming language is Python, but I also feel comfortable with Front-End technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Also, I have no problem with simple infrastructure, I know AWS, Terraform, and Cloudformation.
All sounds perfect.
I know the backend and how to do the frontend, there is no problem with simple infra.
What else is needed? Nothing, I would say.
I took all of it and started building projects after my work hours.
The reason for this blog post is simple. I noticed that most of the posts on social media Instagram, and Twitter shows success. No one wants to share failures. They are not generating views and shares. I have seen so many posts about thousands of MRR or ARR done by solo entrepreneurs. So I decided to make this blog post to show the reality.
I do this mainly to fight against the beautiful, perfect, well-organized, automated life shown everywhere on social media.
Projects that failed
Let me go through all the projects I developed, one by one starting from the earliest one.
gene-calc.pl
Year: 2018
Project description:
Together with my friend who is a biotechnologist, we came up with the idea to create a web application dedicated to calculations related to biological sciences, especially focused on the field of genetics. The application offered a couple of tools such as:
- Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium calculator
- Chi-square tests:
- Independence (Associations) chi-square
- Chi-square goodness of fit test:
- Estimator of genetic distance
- Polymorphic information content and heterozygosity calculator
Target group:
Students and young PhDs of biological sciences.
Reason why failed:
At that time we didn’t know how to promote this app. We had quite a nice number of unique visitors each day, we even received requests for new features from the customers. We decided to offer additional features after creating an account. We managed to get 341 users in our application. Still, we didn’t know how to monetize this app. We knew that it is used by users, and it is helpful but when it comes to monetization - we had no idea 😄.
pyszne.barbonanza.pl
Year: 2018
Project description:
My uncle has a restaurant in Łeba city. He wanted to catch more clients. We came up with the idea that every day we send SMS messages to people with info about different kinds of discounts that are happening today in his restaurant. The SMS message contained a special code that was verified by customer service during the order. Discounts were only available to people who registered and provided a phone number in the application. Initially, I created this app only for him and his restaurant. I wanted to sell it to other restaurants in Łeba City. I thought that if it succeeded then other owners would also want this application available in their restaurant.
Target group:
Restaurant owners in seaside towns.
Reason why failed:
The application didn’t get traction, customers didn’t want to provide their phone number in the application. During the two months of the summer season, we grabbed ~100 phone numbers. We sent SMSs every day but customers didn’t use them during ordering.
spec-jobs.pl
Year: 2019
Project description:
In my opinion, this project was supposed to be a real revolution 😄. I came up with an idea about creating a job board for specialist from industries different than IT (welders, plumbers, constructors, mechanics, etc) with clear description, known responsibilities and visible salary ranges.
Target group:
Specialists from industries different than IT.
Reason why failed:
Marketing was harder than I thought, unfortunately companies from not-IT industries have not been keen to provide salary ranges. Also they were not interested in publishing job offers with so many details. They always asked me if it is possible to post a job offer without specifying the salary range. I want to highlight that all was free, it was just about posting a job offer. No payments. This is sad, to he honest. I wanted to apply the IT culture when it comes to job offers - unfortunately the reality was brutal to me. I still hope that these industries will mature and they change their approach to job offers for his potential employees.
neoguide.pl
Year: 2020
Project description:
I came up with an idea about creating a web application where you can listen to catholic songs/psalms. This time I was smarter and I didn’t start with the code first. What I did was I created a Google form and I posted it on one of the Facebook groups. The interest was huge, to be honest, I didn’t expect it. I started the development. Once the app was ready I posted it on the same Facebook groups. A few hours after the post I had ~4300 unique page views.
Target group:
Catholics that wants to listen to songs/psalms
Reason why failed:
Unfortunately one day after the app launch I received a telephone from one of the church authorities and I had to shut down the application. I don’t want to go into the details of it but I had to do this.
valorantprofiles.net
Year: 2020
Project description:
To be honest I don’t remember what this one was about. I’m sure it was something related to the Valorant game. Again I started with the landing page instead of coding first.
Target group:
Valorant game players
Reason why failed:
We didn’t get traction. There were too small interests, and fewer e-mails left via the landing page than we expected.
geneintelligence.io
Year: 2021
Project description:
After the Gene-Calc project, together with the same friend, we decided to do another try in the same field. Below you can read the short description of what GeneIntelligence was:
GeneIntelligence (GI) provides a fully automatic tool for exploratory data analysis purposes. The main concept behind GI software is to figure out, and rank associations between measurements (genes expression or methylation levels) and the phenotype of interest (cancer grade, treatment response). Unlike other methods (such as linear regression) our algorithms have no direct assumptions about input data. Thus, they are not biased when, for example, the assumption of normality is not met.
We learned from the previous failures and started this project differently. Since the very beginning, the project has looked promising. We won the startup challenge, and we signed an intentional letter with one of the Polish professors from ZUT. We joined a startup incubator and we had a few calls with investment funds. We had a mentor who supported us, shared business knowledge, and helped us reach potential customers.
Target group:
- Commercial entities (e.g. BigPharma) focused on data-driven projects in the LifeScience industry focused on transcriptomics or epigenetics
- Non-commercial entities, e.g. universities implementing projects/grants in the field of transcriptomics or epigenetics
Reason why failed:
Unfortunately, despite the effort we put in, we failed. Mostly due to disputes, tensions, and frictions in the team. We had to close the project.
bio-python-masters.pl
Year: 2021
Project description:
At the same time when GeneIntelligence was growing. With the same friend, we decided to do a course for people from the life science industry. We wanted to address two areas:
- lack of programming courses tailored for life science industry needs
- promote GeneIntelligence as an analytical software for the life science industry
We started with a landing page and promotion in the Facebook groups. The interest was good enough for us.
Target group:
People from the life science industry who want to learn programming for life science purposes
Reason why failed:
It failed for the same reason as GeneIntelligence as it was happening at the same time. Due to that, we didn’t have the motivation to make it to the end.
talestruction.com
Year: 2023
Project description:
A friend of mine, who was my leader in one of my previous jobs. He presented me with the idea of “talestruction”. He wanted to build an app where with the usage of AI you can convert your text stories to video clips. It was not my idea. I just offered myself to share all of my knowledge from previous projects and help him with starting the project. We agreed that if we get the traction I will be coding it.
Target group:
Any story writer who would like to convert his story to video clip.
Reason why failed:
We didn’t manage to get enough people signed up for the newsletter. We tried Facebook groups, Reddit, and other sources. The interest was too low.
Current project
Currently, I’m working on a fishwise.pl project. It is a mobile application designed for anglers. Together with my friends, we are still working on it. We will see, maybe this one will also join the Projects that failed section 😄. I hope it will not but who knows? You have my word that if this project succeeds I will write a separate blog post about how we did it, step by step.
Summary
That’s the end. That’s my story. Thank for you staying here.
Now you can ask me how I feel after all of it.
I feel great, I learned a lot from each of the projects. Both the programming side and the business side. Each project was an interesting journey. I will still keep trying. I’m not going to stop doing it.
I wanted to make this blog post to show you that running a startup as a programmer (full-time employee) is not a piece of cake. The picture shown on the social media is not true. The algorithm shows us what we want to see. What we see on social media is a small percentage of those who succeed.
If you are like me and you are also trying to challenge yourself with a business idea, let me know. I would love to hear about problems/failures.
I wish you all the best! Smash it and crush it! Don’t believe in social media pseudo-influencers - do what you do.