I've lost count of how many side projects I've abandoned. Not because the code didn't work — because nobody wanted what I'd built. I'd spend two, three, sometimes four months architecting a schema, wiring up auth, polishing a dashboard nobody asked for, and then launch to a Product Hunt post with one upvote and zero signups. Silence is a special kind of expensive. It doesn't just cost you the hours. It costs you the conviction to try again.
At some point I stopped asking "how do I build faster" and started asking a different question: "how do I know if this is worth building at all, before I write a single line of backend code?" That question is the entire reason WaitlistTest exists.
This post is part build log, part argument for why validation-first is the only sane way to build software as a solo founder in 2026, and part honest look at what I got wrong along the way.
The pattern I kept repeating
If you've spent any time in indie hacker circles, you already know the shape of this story, because it's not just mine — it's almost everyone's first few attempts.
