How I spent ten years on 18 projects to understand the fundamental rule of startups

My journey in startups began 10 years ago, and I've launched 18 startups, most of which failed. Briefly on why they failed:

1. 🪦 «Contract Online» — my first startup in 2015, which was supposed to be an online service for remote signing of contracts for any transactions between individuals. A kind of analogue of a secure transaction. For this startup, I even managed to attract a business angel who invested $16,500.

Reason for failure: I had two lawyers on my team who discovered in the process that the legal framework at the time could not provide reliable grounds for protecting our users in remote transactions. The contracts would not have been considered legally signed.

2. 🪦 «Natural Products» — In 2015-2018, I became very passionate about healthy eating, but in the process, I discovered that products in all chain stores are full of chemicals, and stores with truly natural products are inaccessible to the majority. Hence, the idea emerged to create my own online platform where you could order natural products directly from farmers at affordable prices.

Reason for failure: For several years, I tried to launch this project, even trained as a baker of natural bread and tried to create my own farm, but in the process, I found that few people are willing to pay for truly natural products, even if these products were only 20-30% more expensive than market prices, and not 2-3 times more, as in premium stores. Hence, the market was so small that all my attempts were doomed.

3. 🪦 «Revolutors» — In 2018-2019, I decided to follow my love for music and release my «revolutionary» headphones onto the market at affordable prices. By working directly with manufacturers from China, I managed to create my own headphone brand, truly «packed» with advanced functionality for that time.

Reason for failure: Due to its functionality, the product's cost was above average, and this is a segment with really strong competition, which is why I didn't have enough of my own and borrowed funds for quality promotion and fighting monopolists. At that time, I lost all my savings and was left in debt.

4. 🪦 «Mefody» — In 2019-2022, I decided to go into online education and create a «revolution» by building a platform where you could buy or sell individual lessons, not entire online courses. The idea was that a user could assemble their cart only with the lessons they really needed, without buying the entire online course.

Reason for failure: Despite interest from users, unfortunately, the market was not ready for such a concept, and everyone wanted to buy entire online courses to be «led by the hand» to the desired learning goal. This is because it was easier and more familiar for people. State school and institutes formed such an educational experience for most people on the planet. A pivot towards selling any content at all didn't help the startup because there were already many strong competitors there (e.g., Patreon).

It was painful because I was counting on the success of this project the most and even, together with my partner, paid two developers who helped us build the product. My financial resources were reset again.

5-14. 🪦 «Mefody Consultations», «Mefody AI», «Pravker», «BuilderCourse», «Kevin AI», «Klark», «Case500», «Therus», «CalcSite», «SuperDrooper» — From 2022 to 2023, I decided to quickly test product hypotheses through real launches, spending no more than 2-3 months per product, testing real demand. In the end, everything went badly. Either nobody needed it, or I realized that I myself was no longer interested in continuing something, mainly because it was a small market. But the main reason: nobody or almost nobody needed it.

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💡 Turning point in 2023. After 14 failures, I took a break to understand what I was doing wrong. I came across an essay by Paul Graham who argued that you shouldn't search for or invent ideas, but should look for problems around you to create a startup that will truly come to life and be needed by people.

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15. 🚀 «Moment87» — In 2023-2024, I found a problem with my wife, who was tired of Instagram turning into a noisy place with an emphasis on video, polished content, advertising, and bloggers who only do business with their audience. She missed the focus only on simple photos (like Instagram in 2012), general simplicity, and a warm, cozy community. We managed to do it.

Hooray, the project came to life and got real and very satisfied users. This project has been alive for almost 1.5 years now. There are active users who love this product. Unfortunately, the market turned out to be small, and it became a niche product. Or perhaps the market isn't ready for such a product yet, or there weren't enough resources for promotion. But even now there is small monthly organic growth. We'll see what happens next.

16. 🚀 «Startbro» — In 2024, I found a problem with my younger brother, who decided to try his hand at creating websites and entering a freelance exchange, but encountered the «newbie problem». Most clients bypassed him, and experienced, popular website creators with many reviews outbid him. So I created a platform where beginner freelancers could get their first orders, and clients could save on services.

Hooray, this project also came to life and got real and very satisfied users. Organic growth began among freelancers. Orders started coming from real clients (we received about 300 orders from them). But, unfortunately, my brother didn't want to develop further in this direction, and I personally didn't enjoy this project, so I had no motivation to develop this startup without him. I handed this startup over to an acquaintance, but he also for some reason didn't want to develop it. If anyone is ready to develop this project long-term, I highly recommend paying attention to this idea.

17. 🚀 «Arvess» — In 2025, continuing the search for problems, I found a problem with a friend regarding importing designs from Figma to the Tilda website builder. It turned out there was no properly working solution for this task. We created this product together, and literally within a few weeks, we got our first paying users. Now I have stepped away from this project, leaving myself a small share, because I decided to focus on my latest and current startup — ProblemHunt.

18. 🦄 «ProblemHunt.pro» — In mid-August 2025, I am launching this startup. It solves my personal problem: I couldn't find more unsolved problems from real people, preferably problems that people are willing to pay to solve, in order to create a startup based on them that would immediately generate money. Hence, this platform emerged where you can find such problems.

In the process, it turned out that this is exactly the product I want to work on for many years, and I really enjoy it because I saw how many startup founders make the same mistakes as I did. It doesn't bring in money yet, but I didn't plan to monetize this product until October 2026. We'll see what happens next.

My conclusions over the years:

1. You need to look for real problems around you, not ideas. And specifically those problems that people are willing to pay money or time to solve.

2. Only do what you truly enjoy (meaning solving certain types of problems), so that you can stick with something for a long time despite the upcoming difficulties.

3. If you have big ambitions, the size of the market matters. But in my experience, it’s difficult to estimate the market size with certainty if you are creating something that has not yet been created or has not gained sufficient popularity. If you see that the market is small, don’t get discouraged — if it is growing, that’s a good signal.

Boris, founder of ProblemHunt. And thank you to my wife Victoria for being with me and supporting me all these years. ❤️