It's been about ten months since I put my startup to rest. I've had time to sit with it — to reflect on everything the experience taught me. Letting go of something I had invested so much time and energy into was hard. I had to come to terms with the idea that I had failed. But was it really failure? We've all heard that failure is part of the journey to success, but I didn't truly believe it until I lived it. I'm grateful for the experience, and I hope that by sharing what I learned, I can help someone else who's going through the same thing.

1. Fundraising is not a destination.

From the beginning, I was so focused on the idea — something I thought was cool and exciting — and I believed all I needed was someone to write me a check. My goals were misaligned. I wanted to build a venture; I should have been focused on building something people actually needed. Fundraising doesn't guarantee success. It's a meaningful milestone, but if you don't know what you need the capital for, you'll spend it on the wrong things. That's exactly what I did.

2. Don't outsource what you can do yourself.

My background is in software development — I knew how to code. But I wanted the perfect startup setup: two co-founders, one technical and one not. So instead of building the product myself, I spent time hiring underqualified people and burning through runway trying to get them to build my dream. I wanted a full Agile environment before we had a product worth shipping. I should have just built it myself, gotten it in front of users, and listened. I did the exact opposite.

3. Cut out the noise.

As a founder, you have to be selective about what you pay attention to. That doesn't mean ignoring your competitors entirely — but it means cutting out anything that doesn't make you more productive or your product better. I was constantly watching what everyone else was doing and trying to match it. I'd seen this pattern before: I once worked with a CEO who was so fixated on what competitors were launching that he lost sight of our own customers. Somehow, I made the same mistake.

4. Solve a real problem.

This is the one I keep coming back to. If you solve a problem people genuinely have, you won't have to force growth — it finds you. The first app I built was a sports app that let you watch any NFL game for $5.99. I made over $50,000 in three months during my freshman year of college. I didn't have a pitch deck. I just solved a problem. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that. I got so focused on raising money that I stopped asking whether anyone actually needed what I was building.

5. Be patient.

Things don't happen overnight. The best thing you can do is stay focused, take it one day at a time, and keep going. Over the past eleven months, I've been working on something new — and I've been following these lessons. I'm in a better place than I've ever been. I'm about to become a father, and I'm genuinely excited about what's ahead.

I'll be writing more here as I go through this next chapter — building, parenting, figuring it out. Thank you for reading.