Has everyone gone through that rough phase while building something?
by•
For a while now, whenever I’ve been building different apps, I’ve often found myself feeling frustrated and a little scared somewhere in the middle of the process.
There’s also another difficult phase that comes after building, especially when the product doesn’t get the results you were hoping for. You start feeling disappointed, and thoughts like “This is never going to work” or “No one is going to use this” start creeping in.
Have you ever felt the same way? What helped you get through it, and how do you deal with these thoughts when they come up? :)
1 view
Replies
Hey! Man, this hits so close to home. I think almost every builder goes through this exact rollercoaster.
A couple of thoughts that have helped me reframe this whole process:
Failure is just part of the deal. Statistically, most of our ideas won't work, and that's actually okay. That uncertainty is the exact risk we take as solo founders/entrepreneurs. It's why the upside is potentially huge compared to a regular 9-to-5 where you trade hours for a guaranteed paycheck. We're trading safety for upside.
Knowing this rationally doesn't make it hurt any less. Intellectually, we all know startups are hard. But emotionally, when a launch flops, it still stings like hell because we put our expectations, energy, and hope into it.
The one practical shift that saved my mental health was never going into a launch with just ONE plan/hypothesis (whether it's one marketing channel, one target ICP, or whatever). Now, before I even launch, I force myself to write down a list of 5-10 different hypotheses to test. And I make a strict commitment to myself: I'm not allowed to call the product dead or say "it failed" until I've actually tested every single item on that list.
Having a roadmap of experiments keeps you in "execution mode" instead of letting you spiral into "this is never going to work" mode after plan A fails.