Solo Founders Doubting Their Own Build
Independent developers and founders experience a recurring cycle of excitement, rapid initial progress, followed by self-doubt, marketing anxiety, and a sense of overwhelming complexity as projects grow. This leads to stalled projects, feelings of embarrassment about promotion, and a loss of momentum. The core pain is the difficulty of sustaining motivation and navigating the complexities of building and launching products alone.
SOURCES (60)
“Uhm.. I have been working on a game! Since last month, learned every coding and experience from youtube.. tbh! 0 experience.. but while working, I was working with my friend, who had shown same excitement as like me when we started.. but seeing now, he…”
“Basically anything I coded that is that 2/3 years ago from the current point in time. You look at the code, think what is this trash, git blame, spider_man_meme.jpg, life goes on.”
“This is a fair point. Building faster does not mean building something valuable. The real challenge is understanding the problem deeply and talking to real users before spending months building. Speed helps, but direction matters more.”
“My first programming projects from university suck. A lame weather app and calculator app with terrible design quality, both of which were developed in Adobe Flash. Did I just age myself?”
“Over the last few projects, I kept running into the same problem. Users would DM feature requests on X, send emails, leave Discord messages, or mention ideas during calls. Everything ended up scattered across different places. I'd spend weeks building something, only to realize hardly anyone actually wanted it. So I started building Signalboard . It's a simple feedback board where users can: Submit feature requests Vote on what they actually want See what's planned, in progress, and”
“Agreed. The useful version includes the constraint, the failed attempt, and one measurable result. “I got tired of X” is only a hook; what helps other builders is what changed after shipping—activation, retention, or whether anyone paid.”
“TL;DR: I've been making games for over a decade, but for no apparent reason, I'm afraid of failing with my first commercial project—even though I'm under no obligation to succeed and am just doing it as a hobby. Has anyone ever gone through this? Hello, I've been making games for a long time, I've won a few Game Jams, and I believe I'm quite experienced in game development. Recently, I came up with the idea to make my first commercial game. It's a Boss Rush—nothing re”
“I wrote a script I put it away for a month. I reread it and was relieved that a lot of it worked. There were definitely things that needed improvement. But now I’m in this weird headspace where I keep setting aside time to revise and then not doing it. I’ll read a little bit and make some notes but every attempt to revise has seemed to make it worse so now I’m just not doing anything. Is this a normal part of the process? submitted by /u/paigemikey [link] [comments]”
“Honestly I am legit nervous to even put this out there. I think I might tear and cry in the corner. 😭A little backstory, I knew absolutely NOTHING about coding, let alone C# language. I literally isolated myself from friends and even some family members for quite some time because I was focused on learning and making my first game. And I would be lying if there weren’t many times I legit REALLY wanted to quit and doubted myself and what I wanted to do with my life. Really….learning coding langu”
“Honestly I am legit nervous to even put this out there. I think I might tear and cry in the corner. 😭A little backstory, I knew absolutely NOTHING about coding, let alone C# language. I literally isolated myself from friends and even some family members for quite some time because I was focused on learning and making my first game. And I would be lying if there weren’t many times I legit REALLY wanted to quit and doubted myself and what I wanted to do with my life. Really….learning coding langu”
“If you dont mind asking what you'd actually tackle first if you had the energy?”
“i have made that mistake several times and still didnt learn my lesson i try to validate but what is the threshold or formula submitted by /u/Pale-Pin8737 [link] [comments]”
“The fact that you built something and recognized the problem shifted is actually the hard part that most people skip, so you're further along than it feels right now. Before you pivot completely, I'd spend two weeks talking to 10 actual developers about what they struggle with when context switching between business needs and code, not what the market seems to want. You might find the real problem is adjacent to what you started with, or you might discover your original instinct was righ”
“Hey, I'm working on a game right now, but I'm thinking about pausing for a month just to make some slop and get big on Twitter, because apparently people like adding chores to their already chore-filled lives. I'll go with a first idea: you have numbers from 1 to 1,000,000, and you have to put them in order. Making and rendering 1,000,000 number meshes might be a bit too much work tho, and I want the lowest-effort dev process possible, so... Hit me with a genius idea. submitted”
“The "maintaining the system became a part-time job" framing is dead-on, that's the exact reason most knowledge tools get abandoned. I hit the same wall from a different angle (video content instead of text notes), so I'm convinced "zero manual filing" is the right bet. One question out of curiosity: how do you handle it when the AI files something wrong, can users correct it, and does it learn from the correction? That felt like the make-or-break loop when I was think”
“I have finished the third draft of my first book and have started revision. Right now, I think that this will be the last. But I know that if I return after a few weeks, I'll find myself wanting to revise over and over again So when should I accept it for how it is and publish it, knowing it will never be perfect? submitted by /u/Used-Strike2111 [link] [comments]”
“Usually, when I get an idea, my first instinct is to immediately start building it. This time, I tried something different. I spoke with a friend who makes YouTube videos and asked him to walk me through his process. Instead of pitching him an idea, I asked which parts of his workflow were the most repetitive or time-consuming. After understanding how he works, I identified a few bottlenecks that might be partially automated. I’m now building a deliberately non-scalable solution specifically for”
“And yet, I still want to go ahead because it’s a project I genuinely care about. It focuses on a fairly niche topic, vegan and gluten-free recipes, which I’m also actively studying. Writing allows me to explore the subject more deeply, keep learning, and stay consistent with that process. At the same time, I do want to monetize it, or at the very least, avoid running it at a loss. I already have experience with blogging, I’m fairly confident with SEO, and I know from experience that this is cert”
“For my current WIP, I have written some scenes that have come to me. But mostly I will be working from a very detailed outline draft that’s broken down scene by scene. I’m very happy and excited to be at this point in my project. But tbh I’m kind of scared and nervous about all the things I don’t know. I want to be traditionally published. Yes, I know many writers who are traditionally published and did not get MFAs. But I worry not having formal training will be a hindrance for me. As a non-MFA”
“The impulse to build your own tool when existing ones don't quite fit is very relatable. What kind of stuff were you storing in your head that finally pushed you to build this? I'm curious whether it's mostly dev notes and bookmarks or more general life stuff.”
“I'm gonna try to collect some references and turn them into a clear idea, then see what happens.. I'd definitely appreciate any help, and thank you so much <3 btw sorry for the late reply, it's been a rough few days.”
“I almost broke the feedback post rule on the guidelines, but just realized today it's supposed to be "Feedback Friday", so nevermind LOL. So, maybe some of you read my previous post about how the hell do I begin as a solo dev for a passion project, this is some form of continuation of that post: So, I've been working on the project and all the concepts, the name of the project is between._Corpora, it's a RPG inspired by Deltarune/Undertale with the bullet hell elements, it”
Keep working! Maybe time to change a few things and measure!
looking forward to it. are you working on anything right now?
“I've recently developed a bit of a problem and now have 13 books on my plate. Someone around here suggested that I "take a break" from the more complicated projects and give my rabid brain something smaller to chew on every once in a while. This was great advice. My life has been saved. I'll fiddle with some poetry, synopsis, flash fic. One of the books is definitely a goofier one that I like cozying up with. So, tell me about your "comfortable" projects when taking a”
“When I started building, I had this picture in my head that the hard part would be writing the code. Once the feature worked, I'd ship it and move on to the next thing. That hasn't been my experience at all. The feature is usually the beginning. Now I need screenshots because nobody is going to click on a wall of text. I need to update the landing page because the old copy doesn't mention the new feature. Someone asks for a demo, so I record one. A customer gets confused, so now ther”
“Someone in a thread here said something that reorganised how I think about my own product, so I'm stealing it and generalising: the thing you built might be scaffolding around the job, not the job. If people keep using one corner of your product in a context you didn't design for, that's not a second use case. It's a hint that you named yourself after the scaffolding. Mine, concretely: I make a Mac tool (TuringShot 1.5.12) that zooms and highlights on screen while you record. So”
“There are a lot of people here working on projects of some sort - side projects, startups, podcasts, blogs, etc. If you've got something you'd like to show off or get feedback, this is the place to do it. Standards still need to remain high, so there are a few guidelines: Don't just drop a link in here. Give some context This should be some sort of creative product that would be of interest to a community that is focused on product management There should be some sort of free version”
“I understand - hyperfocus is the other side. That can be your superpower if you harness it. Maybe a small mindset shift will help - learn to love the process. Results will come as a natural byproduct, but if they don’t happen as soon as you expect or in the way you expect you can still fall back to the process and keep going. Going a step further - are you 100% clear on what you want from life? This is the big question that most people don’t give enough attention to. Figure that out first, then”
crit is here if anyone's curious → github.com/tomasz-tomczyk/crit
“Honestly this hit close to home. For years I thought working nonstop was the badge of honor, like if I wasn't exhausted I wasn't trying hard enough. What changed it for me was realizing the business runs better when I'm NOT the bottleneck. The day I stopped needing to touch every lead, every decision, every little fire, was the day it actually started growing. Sounds like you're already there. Having your BDM run through those leads without you hovering, that's not you slacki”
“Idk if I have ADHD or something but EVERY TIME I start a story, regardless if I like it or not, I always end up leaving it unfinished to start a new project. And I often look back at my old projects with absolutely amazing plots and all the ideas I had for that story and cannot for the life of me start writing again... In some of the stories I've started I just have an idea of what I want for one character (the main character) and MAYBE some other characters and I just build a story around s”
“I've always been good at building. But it's the promoting, sharing, and putting myself out there than holds me back more than anything. And it's really easy to procrastinate doing all that in favor of building. Can anyone else relate? submitted by /u/tolarewaju3 [link] [comments]”
“Not sure how you can claim you are covering the fundamentals but don’t have projects built. You must build a project with Java Spring Boot, PostgreSQL DB with structured logging that gets deployed to AWS (for free trial duration). So stop reading solely theory and build/deploy something.”
“I spent 3 weeks building a feature I was convinced users wanted. The day I released it, almost nobody touched it. I kept waiting for people to discover it. They never did. Deleting it felt like admitting I'd wasted 3 weeks. Looking back, the feature wasn't the mistake. Building it before talking to users was. Since then, I force myself to talk to a few users before building anything new. It isn't as fun as writing code, but it's saved me from making the same mistake twice. What&#”
“The iterative process challenges me in many ways, but the never ending feeling of not being done is the hardest one… submitted by /u/Practical-Hope-3200 [link] [comments]”
“Do a side project for yourself, it helps you to learn more about what you do bc you have to do things e2e by yourself. You can check Joberney and see if it helps, I did that as a side project”
I think the rest of the work I have to spend time on - that's stopping me.
“this is where I'm struggling. Given it's remote, I'm spending almost all the time by myself to solve things, write docs, write specs. Some tasks takes few days. In that time, two more things get missed. When your time is split between so many moving parts and talking to other people, what's the best way to quantify it? At this point I'm not even sure if the work is too much to take or I'm spending more time than I should?”
“If you don't have enough tasks or tasks that advance your development then find some side projects to build up the skills you want to improve on. You probably don't want to do that on a work computer.”
“I don't need friends 😂 I mean the more the merrier. I was going to work this idea myself, but honestly it's a lot and I burn out. Just being honest. I know lots of people want to own and build something, why not build together? Every business uses partners to talk ideas, diversify skill sets, learn and grow together. Why wait?”
“In December I thought I was done with making changes but the fun never stops :) https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/s/fwiIfwb3oI submitted by /u/Muted-Ad-1415 [link] [comments]”
“All of my successful products and ideas have been things I’ve built for myself, any time I try to make something for someone else it’s shit.”
“It's the normal process of creative destruction. Things get built. Most of them are shit. They die. Those that stay maybe grow and even the fact that people are building this same shit is fine. If for nothing else it increases competition and helps consumers get better prices. Some of the builders that fail today maybe will learn, fail another 24 times, and build something really useful in 10 and 20.”
“A dozen conversations with hardware founders and engineers over the last few months, and the same three or four problems keep coming up, almost in the same order every time. Before I trust that pattern too much, I want to check it against a bigger sample than my own DMs. Quick background so this doesn't read like a survey with a hidden agenda and I've spent years building hardware and IoT products, and I'm working on tooling in this space too. No link here, no product name. Genuinely”
“I have this problem where my feed is full of developers who suddenly realize they aren't needed anymore, trying to find new ways to stay afloat. Sorry it's your turn. I wish I could silence all of the extreme AI posts.. From both ends of the spectrum, so I could focus on the important conversations in the middle. That's an app that needs building.”
“Okay so I feel like I have started to use my projects more and my Custom GPTs less as of late. Just cause it feels like less work to teach i guess? I question it cause maybe it’s just me. But I’m thinking maybe I’m not using them like in the best/most efficient ways most people may do. So I have I think 8 custom gpts and probably 15 projects but really with my projects I more-so am just organizing the same topic of the conversation into said projects so almost just like a folder. I have a few wh”
“Hey all, been lurking here for a while, figured I'd share something that's changed how I approach builds lately and see if others do the same. I used to just pick one model and run the whole thing through it, planning and actual node building both. Lately I've been splitting it instead. Use the strongest model purely for the architecture side, mapping the logic out, figuring out where the workflow could actually break, deciding how the pieces fit together before touching a single nod”
“i have a pattern that's cost me real money over the years. i build something. people want it. i get traction. then i get bored and give it away for free. 3D Bars Blender Addon — paying customers, real money coming in. i got bored and open-sourced it. that one decision set the tone for everything after. i stopped thinking about money as an option. i told myself it was idealism. "money corrupts the work." "i'm not doing it for the money." that's not what was happeni”
“This is a classic engineer problem. We get excited about building the thing before asking if anyone wants to use it. Just take it as a learning moment and remember to ask around before building something next time.”
“I think a lot of creators quit too early because they expect viral growth instead of compounding growth. What follower milestone made you finally think, “Okay… maybe I can actually do this?” For me it wasn’t a viral video. It was realizing people were coming back to watch my content on purpose. submitted by /u/TDoubleDownMac [link] [comments]”