What most solopreneurs don’t do, and why you should.
In its early days, Notion wasn’t the tool we love today.
The product was buggy. It crashed often. Their infrastructure couldn’t support what they were trying to build. And their marketing missed the mark — most users just didn’t get it.
By the time the founders realized how bad things were, they’d burned through almost $2 million in angel funding.
Most people would’ve folded.
Instead, Ivan Zhao and Simon Last laid off their team, moved to a cheap apartment in Kyoto, and started from scratch.
No fanfare.
No income.
No audience.
Just two people doing hard, invisible work.
Today, Notion is worth over $10 billion.
But we rarely apply them to our own work.
Most solopreneurs wouldn’t rebuild even the simplest product if it didn’t work the first time — even if we really loved the idea.
We’d say:
“Maybe the idea was wrong.”
“Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”
“Maybe I’ll try something new.”