HACKER Q&A
📣 asoomi07

After 8 Years of Failed Apps, Should I Give Up?


I’m asking because I have been trying for eight years, before AI and vibe coding. I’m an IT engineer and a hard worker. During all those years, I tried to build tens of apps. I was always so excited at first, but after a short time, I would get demotivated and realize that my app was useless. So I would stop, get excited about another app, and repeat the same cycle over and over.

I stopped for one year because I had built a great app. It was a local app, only for my country, and it was getting 3K users every week. I was just a student, so I had no money to pay for ads. All the growth came from organic traffic and social media marketing.

I started feeling that I was very close to success. Then, suddenly, at least three apps that were almost copies of mine started appearing. They had huge marketing campaigns, better versions, and even famous people promoting their apps.

My users started dropping from 3K to 2K, then 1K, 300, 100, 30, and finally only one or two. I became really depressed because I had been so close. I have always financed my apps with my own money, and it hurts even more when months of work and spending are gone.

Now I have built this new app. I launched it, and then the trauma came back, LOL. Once again, there is the financing issue because the app has API costs.

I tried to think outside the box and made songs, hoping that if they became famous, my app would also get attention. Somehow, the songs became popular and started earning me some money, but the app got no attention, LOL.

I started getting other ideas again, but I have to break this bad habit. I promised myself that I would fight for this app and finance it through an investment program.

I trust this app more than the others because I would not be the only one earning from it. The users could also earn a lot. Creative people who currently struggle and share their prompts for free could make significant earnings from every prompt remix.

However, I have never taken the investment route before, and a part of me still keeps asking whether this is just the same story repeating itself again, like it has for the past eight years and with all the apps I have built.

So I need your honest feedback. Please, no hate, because I am already struggling with my ideas. I would also appreciate suggestions for an investor or a program that is aligned with my project. After my previous experience, I am still afraid of going online without a large marketing budget.

Thank you.

  👤 horticulturist Accepted Answer ✓
Keep trying. You have limited downside and unlimited upside.

Take the outside capital and ride the dragon. Doesn’t always work but if it does you’ll be doing fine.

Took me 18 years to get to success. Sometimes these things take a while.

👤 sagunbuilds
Tough to go through what you are describing. The only positive thing I can add is all this experience is making you better skilled / positioned for your next project. When the cycle repeats enough times, eventually you get success. Best wishes.
👤 elmer2
If you are interested in creating a business out of it, you might want to look at ideas that will make money first and figure out the app around it.

The other problem is that with only one person (you), there's only so many features you can add to an app, and a team (or AI) will now be able to duplicate those features. You need to come up with something fairly unique and hard to duplicate.

👤 pmpmpmpm
Hi! I’m a PM, and I have one suggestion. If you haven’t yet, now is a great time to talk to a ton of ppl who you think might be interested in your app and learn everything you can about them. Do it until the answers you get sound the same. If your app is fun, you are working to capture attention in a crowded market. Your #1 job now should be to identify what’s different about your app that someone can’t get anywhere else & what about the differentiator makes ppl want to pay. Marketing (the result of discovering a repeatable sales model) is probably less important in the beginning than knowing who you are selling to, how and why they buy, what their options are, and what makes them choose you. Armed with this, you don’t need good ideas just dedication to your users. Good luck and hang in there! Your tenacity will pay off!
👤 tacostakohashi
If you have the tenacity to stick with it over a number of years, and have had an app with a few thousand users, you must be doing a few things right!