I had just finished building the MVP. 132 commits. 4 all-nighters. One long sprint fueled by ramen, Red Bull, and the fantasy that I was building the next big thing.
The dashboard looked slick. The onboarding was buttery smooth. The AI backend? Magical. I kept refreshing the homepage like a proud parent looking at a baby monitor.
And then… nothing.
No users. No excitement. Just the echo of a beautifully engineered ghost town.
It’s a harsh lesson, but one that hits many builders like me:
We fall in love with the product, not the people.
In my head, I thought:
“If I build it, they will come.”
But no — they won’t. Not if they don’t know it exists. Not if they don’t need it.
Not if they never felt the problem in the first place.
We celebrate the idea of the solo hacker — the engineer with headphones on, typing their way to glory.
But sometimes, those headphones become blinders.
I came across a quote from Marc Andreessen that punched me right in the gut:
“The market you choose matters more than the product you build.”
He’s right.
I didn’t choose an audience. I chose a feature set. I didn’t interview a single potential user. I interviewed my ego.
I wasn’t solving a problem. I was showcasing a skillset.
A friend recently launched a product that was 10x simpler than mine.
No AI. No animations. Just a basic web app with a killer promise for creators: “Find your next paid brand deal in under 5 minutes.”
She had 3,000 users in a week.
Because she listened first.
She hung out in the comment sections. DMed 50 micro-influencers. Rewrote her landing page 6 times.
She wasn’t building.
She was tuning in.
This isn’t a pity party. It’s a reckoning.
If you’re reading this and you’re in the middle of shipping something… pause for a moment.
Ask yourself:
Who am I really building this for?
What pain am I easing?
Do I even know where these people hang out online?
Can I write a tweet that makes one person say, “I need this now”?
Because if the answer is no, maybe — just maybe — you’re building in a vacuum like I did.
I’ve since gone back to the drawing board. But this time, I start with people, not pixels.
I listen more than I type.
And I’ve learned that the real MVP isn’t the product.It’s the moment someone says,“Hey, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Final thought?
You can’t connect the world with code if you never connect with the people first.
re-engineer-it 