Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur

I'm not an entrepreneur, so by all means you know far more than me. But it does puzzle me that a lot of your ventures seem very...generic. Like you made a tech blog in 2008. Great, but why is your blog special? That's like making a Twitter account now. There are some people who receive massive success from Twitter, but they're very rare.

Then you created a note taking app. I don't know if note taking apps were that huge in 2010, but it seems like they were since Evernote was founded in 2000. Ditto with a social media platform, with a news aggregator, with a link manager. Don't get me wrong, massive kudos to you for launching and working hard on these products. It just seems to me that you've been making stuff that already exists and doesn't have any differentiation. Even if you had a new feature or two, to quote Steve Jobs, that's a feature, not a company.

Nice. I'm glad something worked out. Honestly I did not expect the happy ending here. It sounded like the biggest issue each time was giving up way too early. It's easy to say that though and much harder to continue to grind at your own project/start up when it's been 6 months to a year without any real traction.

I am very proud of you, of what've you've accomplished, and happy to see that your latest venture is getting some growth. There's nothing more powerful in this world than someone who is determined to do something. Slow and steady wins the race!

Also glad to see many others sharing similar stories about not giving up. Since we are on a christmas mood already, big hug to all of you.

Regarding me, I've been making and breaking stuff for about 15 years with moderate success. On 2017, I went to KAUST (flagship uni at Saudi Arabia) as it was offered to me as a place that was looking for talented people, to help them develop and thrive. I drank the kool-aid and gave it a try. It wasn't that great but not bad either, I was enjoying what I was doing so I decided to stay. Time goes by and on 2020, my daughter gets kidnapped by some of the staff there, after I refused to let my wife work for some guys who were doing some pretty questionable stuff. With (not so much) help from my embassy I was able to leave the country and put myself and my family safe again. Almost 4 years of work down the drain plus the psychological damage inflicted to us. That event truly, 100%, burned me out.

But, ..., came back right before the pandemic started, and that turned out to be a blessing for me. The world stopped so I didn't have much to do anyway. I spent time on me, doing things I enjoy, connecting with old friends, taking care of my parents, resting, etc. Earlier this year, the urge to make stuff came back and I launched a climate-related startup that is doing quite well. I have people who work with me (that's a first!) and they keep me moving, focused and motivated. We are about to start working with a HUGE client next January and that is making us feel quite excited. Highly recommend this to everybody, it's common for hackers to tend to "solve everything by themselves", but try to get more people involved, whether they're associates, coworkers, mentors, you-name-it, there's people out there that can make your journey much more enjoyable.

And, as other's have said, don't give up on your dreams, no matter what. If you have to start over, then start over, it won't matter, you will make it in the end!

Thank you for sharing. Out of curiosity, how have you supported yourself all this time?