Today I Quit My Silicon Valley Job to Pursue My Startup Idea
Published: 2021-04-02 17:55:56

Here we go! Sooo... I decided to quit my 9to5 Silicon Valley tech job and pursue this crazy idea of having a room where people can do pomodoros together in a fun, transparent and gamified manner that is simply fun and motivates you and co-workers/friends to accomplish goals and be more efficient together. In a greater sense, I believe we can all help each other out and push ourselves toward success, being whatever that means to you.



I honestly have no idea if the idea will take off or not.. but I had to try! Some part of me tells me that it COULD work and be really helpful to many people out there but another side of me tells me "this might not be useful".. so I'm unsure, but it's an itch I can't get rid off until I pull it through all the way.



So.. enough of the introduction! I want to walk you through on what happened and how I got here in the first place. Since the beginning of time, I've always had a passion for building something that people use. Over the years, I've developed a keen sense that we as humans are happiest when we are creating, specially creating things that contribute towards the general advancement of the human race. But what do we build in the first place? Blogs/Youtube tutorials & seeing/hearing advice from other successful people(who have created products) will leave you split in half. Some will say "solve problems!", others will say "create products you would use", others will say "create products people would use everyday" and so on .. I mean, you will get so many variations of advice on what to build that you will probably be left worn out and indecisive on what path to take after all.



After watching over 50 hours of Youtube videos on really cool Youtube channels like SaaStock, SaaStr and MicroConf to get some advice because failure scares me.. these are the things you'll find in common:



*Building things you are passionate about is important because building a startup will 10x harder than you think

*Having followers, user base, email lists etc., will help you

*Talking to users, gathering feedback is super crucial

*Sales and marketing are just as important as building a product

*It's crucial to have metrics in place, they will help you determine if you are successful or not

*Charge, charge, charge! lol

*Having a low churn rate is very crucial



All the fuss around what to build just left me feeling like "f*ckk, I have no idea what to do now, am I building the wrong thing?".. but after careful consideration, I decided to follow Steve Wozniak's advice on what products to build => "Build things you want for yourself that is not available in the current market. Make sure it satisfies your needs first then try to sell it to other people". So me being a huge believer in simplicity and the ideologies of Steve Jobs, I decided to stick to that mantra. Simplicity and useful products.



So here it is: https://timerfy.com !!! This is my MVP and since my last day on the job is today 4/2 Friday 2021. Starting Monday, I will focus 100% on improving and adding features(rooms, contact form, feature request form, full-screen mode, ability to edit tasks, customizable settings, animations etc.,) to this product for the next 3 or 4 months and see what happens from there.. wish me luck because I will need it lol



Thank you if you have taken the time to read this and have a happy weekend :)



You can follow my progress here twitter: https://twitter.com/timerfycom