Starting Over: My second try after failure
Starting Up Again
A few years ago, I started a company with a small team of co-founders. Despite all our late nights and small wins, things eventually fell apart. While the end result was technically a "failure," all those hours of hard work taught me invaluable lessons.
What stuck with me wasn't really the failure itself, but not being able to finish things on my own terms. I'm the type who needs to see things through to the end, but with multiple stakeholders involved, I couldn't always steer the ship the way I wanted. Internal complications forced us into an ending I hadn't planned for, and that unresolved feeling lingered.
So here I am, starting my second company. This time, I want to see it through properly, building on everything I learned from my first attempt.
So what are you building?
What am I building? Well, Paul Graham talks about avoiding "sitcom ideas" (bad ideas that just seem good) by solving your own problems. Even if it's not revolutionary, at least there's a real need. So I started with a problem I experienced firsthand.
During my last startup, we kept getting this feedback from users: "This is great! But... where's the app?" The need wasn't overwhelming - maybe a 4.5 out of 10 - but it was consistent. We faced two main obstacles:
- The learning curve: Could we really spare the time to learn app development with our already packed schedule?
- Maintenance: We were stretched thin with web development - how could we handle ongoing app updates?
So, my problem back then was...... there wasn't an easy way to build apps.
Haven't you heard about RN, Flutter, Capacitor, WebView, duh?
Yes, there's RN, Flutter, Capacitor, WebView, and other great tools. But even the "quick" options like Cordova or Capacitor required more time than we had. When you're spending every minute validating hypotheses, designing, developing, and testing, even a "little" learning time feels impossible.
We ended up optimizing our mobile web experience instead, but it always felt like a compromise. My founder pain point was clear:
"We need a one-click solution for building mobile apps - all we have are two or three-click solutions."
Maybe I should solve this problem
Through various conversations, I discovered other companies facing the same challenge. Many startups developing app-first services also needed web presence for CAC reasons, but their options weren't any better than what I had.
That's when I decided to tackle this problem myself. I'm building a true "one-click" solution that lets small startups create mobile apps quickly and painlessly. I called it react2app - literally what it does, turn React into apps. (I later changed it to next2app when I decided to focus on Next.js)