Every now and then, I get the desire to build something new. I get excited about an idea that is not necessarily innovative, but where I think I can do better than what is already out there. I spend endless hours coding, but once I go public, I always have to face the reality that it is extremely hard to find someone who actually wants to spend time trying it. Then, my excitement fades quickly, and I abandon the project. I am sure many people feel the same, so I wanted to share this experience.

The fun part

This time I built InsideStack, a curated tech news site that aggregates thousands of feeds. I thought it was a very doable solo project. I always want to learn new stuff, so I got excited about building it on a modern stack. So I started this new project a few months ago and in this time extensively studied the TanStack, learned how to build an SSR react app with bun, I switched from FastAPI to Litestar for my Python backend, self-hosted my own Postgres, got hands-on with Nginx, and wrote my own deployment scripts with pyinfra to deploy both backend and frontend safely to Hetzner in just a few seconds.

I knew that it was unreasonable to pour too much effort into a project before even validating the idea. But at the same time I enjoyed implementing new features and polishing coding patterns in both frontend and backend. So I continued coding until I could not ignore the rational side of my brain.

Launching app means facing reality

And last month, I decided to launch my app. That meant I could no longer focus solely on building new features, but I also had to start driving traffic to it. Unfortunately, people do not get excited about yet another app launch, especially, with all the AI slop and the AI agents flooding the web. So I started writing social media posts, hoping people would engage and was bracing myself for them to tear my idea apart in seconds. In addition, attention spans are incredibly short, and even a good post only drives traffic for a day or two. And a good bunch of traffic is coming from bots rather than humans.

Back in reality

I miss the time when I was passionately coding, but at the same time, I know that it does not make much sense when nobody knows about it. Luckily, I do not have any pressure to succeed. Running the app only costs me 15€ per month. I have improved my skills, which makes the time worthwhile, and challenging myself keeps my mind sharp. Much more than the repetitive work that is paying the bills. I have the greatest respect for all developers who stick with this for years, patiently working until they finally get the attention they deserve. I hope that I will be more persistent this time.