This “failed” app changed my career

I built a dream app in 30 days.

Nobody used it. But I still won.

A few months ago, I set out to build my own thing.
After years of working on client projects in Flutter, React Native, Kotlin, and Swift, I wanted something that was mine.

So I built a smart, AI-powered expense tracker:

• Chat-style UI in Flutter

• Firebase backend

• OpenAI for categorizing expenses

• Real-time charts and insights

It was fast. Fun. Polished.

I launched it with hope in my chest.

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And then… crickets.

1200+ landing page visits.
11 signups.
2 actual users.
Ouch.

What I didn’t share publicly

The worst part wasn’t the low numbers.
It was how personally I took it.

I’d poured weeks into this thing — believing it could help others track expenses in a way that actually felt human.

But I skipped some of the most critical parts:

• No user validation

• No onboarding

• No clear “why should I care” moment for users

• No real launch strategy beyond “share and hope”

Takeaways

✨ What it gave me instead

Turns out, this “failure” was the best thing I could’ve done.

Here’s what I walked away with:

• 🚀 Confidence to ship solo ideas

• 🔍 A new lens on UX and onboarding

• 📬 A freelance project from someone who found my post

• ✍️ The push to start writing and building in public

• 🔥 And most importantly, a reminder: I love building

My new rule for every project

It sounds simple. But that one question has saved me from months of wasted work already.

🔧 What I’m working on now

I'm sketching out a new product idea — with tighter feedback loops and better user empathy from day one.

Every issue of One Fix Later will share what I’m building, what’s breaking, and what’s working — in public, without fluff.

Next week:
🧭 How I validate whether a project is worth building in under 2 hours