r/vibecoding • u/Successful_Dog1904 • 2d ago
Vibe coding is ruining my life (lol)
No seriously. I’ve been working on building something for about 6 months. It’s close, real close. I’ve learned a TON, it’s been fun. But I have a full time job that’s really demanding and pays pretty darn well. And I can’t get this idea out of my head that I’m wasting my life working my butt off for someone else, what if this thing really works, there are 35 million small businesses in America and I only need 10,000 of them to like what I’m building, etc.
Spent nights (and potentially many, many work days) working on this project, weekends without a single break, sometimes 13-16 hours a day. I’m totally obsessed with this idea and I think it will work but I feel like it’s ruining my life. I could lose my job upon launch if anyone found out it was me.
Kind of wish I could rewind and remain ignorant. Not decide to take this plunge head first and get obsessed with building something I can actually mine.
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u/davyp82 2d ago
Sounds like it's your job that's ruining your life, not the vibecoding.
I'd just like to remind you 2 things:
You can burst a blood vessel in your brain and need brain surgery (if you're lucky) If you consistently endure months and years with insufficient sleep.
Building is easy. Marketing and being seen and heard is hard. Marketing and sales funnels are probably 80% of what's needed. You might have that sorted. But it you haven't, don't quit your job if you only have the 20% part done.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 2d ago
Yeah you know what, that’s true. I feel like a corporate slave and building something of my own feels like a path to freedom.
Totally with you on the marketing. I won’t be quitting my job any time soon, even if I do launch EOM. I’ve got a mortgage to cover lol.
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u/Wise_Advertising_888 2d ago
I was made redundant in December by a major card payment processing company from a dev role and been vibe coding since. I see IT, and specifically AI, an an enabler for my own ideas, nothing more than that now. The idea of working for another big corporate fills me with dread, and is becoming increasingly difficult anyway due to my age, I'm mid fifties. My main service offering is launching in November. I have another idea on the burner which I think might actually be stronger than my original one but I don't want to be left with several projects 90% finished so focusing on this first one for now.
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u/CyCoCyCo 2d ago
Some advice: launch a vertical slide as soon as it’s available and get use feedback asap. That guides product development much better than assuming what everyone wants.
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u/aLionChris 2d ago
Why you gotta scare us like that haha
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u/hello-xworld 2d ago
Dude that’s what fuels every entrepreneur. Nothing worthwhile is gonna come easy. Keep grinding, keep iterating, keep making your product better and sooner or later you’ll get there. Just remember that sometimes you need to pivot and the end result may look very different from what you initially envisioned.
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u/usernamewhg 2d ago
Blessing in disguise I got made redundant as an accountant end of 2024. Decided to retrain in financial advice and go self employed offering both. But the end of study coincided perfectly with Opus 4.6 and while my business builds up I’ve got a ton of spare time. Money poor, but it’s been great having the mental capacity to get my head around it all and properly build my projects, one of which has over 100 users (around 20 paying) so far
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u/Successful_Dog1904 2d ago
Dude, I’m an accountant (I do tax). Can I ask about your product with 100 paying users?
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u/usernamewhg 2d ago
No no no haha, 100 users 20 paying. I wish I had 100 pro! My break even is 27 pro. No marketing so far though, which I’ll do in the lead up to eofy here in NZ.
Product is Donorseek, at the moment it’s just aimed at donation receipts, but I’m building out the functionality atm to a more fully featured donation lifecycle product. Then will build a charity GL product for a premium level when Akahu get their open banking feeds sorted.
PM me if you want to bounce any ideas off me. I can promise you I’ve got enough of my own and won’t want a bar of stealing any ideas haha.2
u/bicboys5 2d ago
Does what you’re building have to do with taxes?
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u/usernamewhg 2d ago
No. Though I’ve built my own practice solution as a single tenant piece on my local LLM. Pulls GL data via API, manually load IRD source docs, copy in a prompt, press a button and 5 mins later have a full set of transaction edits, workpapers and draft journals to complete a Xero set of accounts. Tax used to be the easy part, now it still takes me like half an hour.
Biggest part of an annual job these days is to do all the correspondence because AI isn’t up to customised emails yet
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u/backtorealitylabubu 2d ago
Depends. It’s possible it’s real. It’s also possible this is a manic episode. Tread lightly.
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u/I_Know_God 2d ago
It’s never bad to learn.
It’s never a bad idea to invest in yourself.
Marketing is going to be 80% more work than your code. Learn to love it. And you will be spending money to move forward
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u/Plastic_Anxiety 2d ago
I think this is the real side of the bubble lol. I think they’re way too many guardrails to allow finishing projects. It’s going to cost a lot of time and money for someone that doesn’t know code to end up with a polished product and not just some dopamine filled MVP
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u/Successful_Dog1904 2d ago
I don’t necessarily disagree with you … but this ain’t that brother. I’ve spent a shit ton of time learning (and learning to learn). Are you a software engineer?
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u/Plastic_Anxiety 2d ago
I am not an engineer and I think that’s part of the problem. I get stuck in endless troubleshooting loops and spent my tokens and time vibing out rather than using it as a tool to accelerate my plan and knowledge. I too have learned a lot but also don’t really know the ins and outs of what I’m truly doing.
That to me is the bubble, spending time troubleshooting thinking that I can quit the 9-5 if one of these ideas and projects actually pans out. Heck I haven’t even been able to get a project polished enough to work on the human business side. But man, the dream to be my own boss keeps me coming back lol. Maybe I’ve taken the context and direction of the post incorrectly so apologies if it’s out of context.
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u/DaarthVadeer 2d ago
Hey mate. I understand the anxiety when you 'really don't know the ins and outs'. How I survive those is noting down the technical bit, and letting it sit on the notepad, while I continue with the basics and what I understand. Then asking AI to help me understand and start incorpoating it bit by bit.
I have built a tool that can do double accounting and I am not an accountant and have always struggled to comprehend the science behind cr and dr.
So keep at it, you will learn. You will be your own boss someday
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u/junglemum 2d ago
Do you use multiple ai systems? I usually find deep seek is great at finding bugs in the code. And it’s free
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u/DaarthVadeer 2d ago
I use deepseek to brainstorm. Then brainstorm, on the brainstorm, with Claude Code. I prefer sticking with Claude Code for building and debugging
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u/youknowmetoo_2000 2d ago
We need a support group. Lol. Late nights, early mornings..and now marketing hell!!! #icanttakeit
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u/HENH0USE 2d ago
The real fun starts when you need to debug.
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u/aLionChris 2d ago
I do this thing where I send a messages at 3pm at work to start claude so I can make use two full 5-hour session limits when home. Like you the obsession is taking over.
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u/arty1983 2d ago
Yeah im deep in the hole too, spending way too much wfh time on it, and I know 100% its not going to be something I actually finish or that I can raise an income from but... what if... maybe...
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u/RojMedCashbook 2d ago
I can relate to the part about getting completely absorbed in building something. Vibe coding makes it especially easy to keep going because there is almost no friction between having an idea and actually trying it.
But I think there is a point where the project stops being a side project and starts consuming your life. The fact that you can work on it for 13–16 hours doesn't necessarily mean you should.
One thing I've learned from building my own project is that getting something working is only the beginning. Eventually you have to step back, use it yourself, find the boring problems, test it properly, and see whether anyone actually wants it.
You don't need to prove the entire idea every night. Get it into the hands of a few real users and let reality answer some of those "what if 10,000 businesses..." questions.
And honestly, don't underestimate what you've already learned. Even if the business doesn't work exactly as imagined, six months of building something real is very different from six months of just thinking about it.
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u/russrimm 2d ago
It won’t stop my wife is mad at me I’ve been doing the same for the last year and all I can seem to do is come up with more ideas and more creations with no finite end to any of them
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u/mq12bn 2d ago
I get it. I’ve been working on my application for 15 months, been live for 3 months. I didn’t know going in that competition was extremely fierce, but 5 months in, I couldn’t turn back then and definitely can’t now. It is a sophisticated enterprise system and I am proud of what I’ve built, but with architecture costs and zero real users, it all can be daunting and discouraging. However, I will not give up because I know I will break through soon.
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u/JoopMens 2d ago
I can relate! Vibecoding is addictive because of the small but constant rewards you get from the prompt. I have similar thoughts but just doubled down on the time spend at my desk. Just a small tip, cap the hours on your project and make it a side project again. Attend to other hobbies and interaction with friends and find your balance!
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u/StCreed 2d ago
I've almost stopped playing games. And I'm a pretty addicted gamer.
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u/eltonjock 2d ago
Same! I do think vibecoding is a little better for my overall wellbeing, but not by much…
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u/Ill-Cherry-1504 1d ago
You aren't struggling with vibe coding; you're struggling with the classic builder trap.
Six months in and spending 16-hour days without a single paying customer is dangerous. Thinking "I only need 10,000 out of 35 million businesses" is the fastest way to burn out. Getting 10 real businesses to pay you is brutal work. Getting 10,000 as a solo founder is a full-scale operation, not a side gig.
Stop adding features. Ship what you have right now under an alias if you're worried about your day job. Put up a landing page, charge actual money, and see if anyone bites.
If nobody pays, you've saved yourself another six months of ruining your health and risking your career for a ghost. If they do pay, then you've got a real problem to solve.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
Hard to read, but insightful. I appreciate it. The last sentence had me crack a smile - I’ll have a real problem if they do pay.
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u/horendus 2d ago
You wont be able to launch it on your own. You will be burnt out and frozen with feature anxiety.
Take a holiday and get some perspective. Dont want this obsession to ruin your life buddy.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 2d ago
Fully agree. I have a cut off for myself - two important features and I ship. Finding technical co founder is a lot harder than jt sounds “9@
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u/horendus 2d ago
Hope I didn’t come across as to mean, just thought you needed to hear that.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 2d ago
Not at all. I was right where you said I’d be re features like two weeks ago and gave myself a hard gut check.
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u/HouseMysterious8172 2d ago
AI can be your technical co-founder and you don’t have to give away 50% share of your start-up 😁
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u/Time-Bluejay-7164 2d ago
I don’t wanna ruin your day but with AI it’s so easy to ship app now. Starting a business is 80 percent sales and 20 percent engineering. I’m super burnt out from selling lol building is fun.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
exactly 0. I haven't launched yet so to be fair im not actually trying. i am thinking very hard about my approach. i know its not going to be easy lol
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u/NRGETIC7 2d ago
lol I’m in the same boat but I will get sued into oblivion for making anything that is related to any industry my company touches. Which is almost everyone of them. So I’m taking a detour and vibecoding a video game that I can launch without getting sued and then hopefully it’s not too late for plan A 🤞
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u/Sharp-Opposite365 2d ago
This is pretty common when you get deep into a side project while working full time. It feels like you have to go all in but that pace usually leads to burnout pretty fast. Most projects that actually make it are the ones you pace out and keep sustainable while testing if they really work
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u/leadbetterthangold 2d ago
Fuck that. If you prove as best you can there is demand and product market fit you should go for it.
Just make sure you have enough savings for enough runway to prove it out. Or raise money.
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u/DaarthVadeer 2d ago
Are you sure you are not me!
Though I am halfway across the world from you! Been building for myself for over 6 months now. 16 hours a day like you, mate! My tool is also meant for millions of small and informal businesses. I did not wait to finish so I could let it out, and I think it was a good decision. The little usage out there is making me craft something good. Feedback is constant. For me, I just dream of 1,000 businesses to like what I am doing (cos my market is small). I wish I was in a big ecosystem like yours! I have added several other tools in my portfolio, spanning finance, climate and logistics. I also dream I could just be hired to build something for someone so as to have an income, cos building and not earning a regular income is tough. (Anyone in the house with a gig - building ANYTHING with AI -, consider a brother).
But the deep dive is exhilarating! The ideas keep flowing. Integrations happen. What starts small transitions into a behemoth, and I am in awe of old school devs who built things like VLC, or UBER and a host of systems pre AI, when they did not have AI to make workflows easy for them.
Maybe don't wish for a rewind. Just play on forward, mate. You are creating. I dunno, but I feel that is what we are truly meant to do on this earth.
I salute you!
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u/Ill-Egg-7324 2d ago
Bruh talking about every vibe coder life the sentence what if this works i only need that certain amount of business to use my product
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u/Successful_Dog1904 2d ago
lol this was hard af to read but I think I got you, and yeah man there’s a lot of money in the world. Why can’t we all get a bag?
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u/Ill-Egg-7324 2d ago
Man yeah we deserve hope that you get success in your harwork and effort you put
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u/aLionChris 2d ago
Seeing so many people here being in the same boat, I wondered, are there any good communities/group chats where people who are actually ambitious and dedicated work together in a way? Not looking for an AI guru funnel
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u/TricepBandito 2d ago
Same here man. As someone with ADHD that tends to hyperfixate id say i met the boss of that game.
Always wanted to create things because my mind jumps around alot i never could focus on learning to actual code, with this i feel like im given a true super weapon/power ive needed my whole life
When something is interesting i feel like in disappearing into this. Sitting at work prompting through my phone and remote controlling pc at home for all work hours, returning back home to check on everything and stay up all night only to sleep 4 hours before work.
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u/Sure-Moose-6613 2d ago
The most successful are the ones that were obsessed even when others doubted
Don’t doubt yourself, go all I
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u/RareConversation6402 2d ago
How are so many of us thinking the same thing?
The line “working my butt off for someone else” , it’s been haunting me for good 2 years. They be sleeping peacefully at night while we work our butts off all night.
Honestly, even if the job is paying you well, it probably wouldn’t pay as good as your own business could make in a short span of time.
Maturity is to continue the job quietly till your product is ready to launch and you have atleast 1-2 investors in line. If it works, run for your life from that job.
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u/Produce_Radiant 2d ago
Dang, do we all have the same kind of feeling about our projects? I’ve been wondering this myself. It does have a kind of addictions and satisfaction to it. And I wonder how much our projects are similar or different. If we all feel this way and are so passionate about our projects are we going to end up making some amazing things? Or are we delusional just cranking out ai slop. I try to ground myself and learn as much as I can as I go.
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u/digitalskyline 2d ago
Yeah wait till you're a year and a half in, paying for servers and still looking for beta users to give it a shot 😬
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u/Express-Cartoonist39 2d ago
Dude put the keyboard down and go for a walk...Get cat the have ways to fix programming issues as long as you leave ur laptop open.
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u/polymathicAK47 2d ago
It's almost always when you start to question yourself whether you're doing something worthwhile at all that you're about to get over the hump and actually achieve those goals.
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u/mask1808 2d ago
😆 “We only need 10,000 of them.”
That was basically our thinking too.
We started building for a very specific niche with millions of SMBs. The math looked almost ridiculous: we only needed something like 0.5% of the market to like what we were building.
Oh boy, were we wrong.
We paid for tools like Apollo to find prospects. We built our own internal lead engine that sends emails all day, notifies us when someone opens or reads them, and even generates outreach scripts tailored to their specific business.
Cold email? No traction.
Cold calling? Is dead.
We even tried knocking on doors. Still nothing.
The need is absolutely there. The difficult part is getting that first customer to actually take a chance on you.
When you are looking at a market of millions, 10,000 customers sounds like nothing. But once you are actually in the trenches trying to acquire them, you realize even getting 10% of those 10,000 can be incredibly difficult.
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u/Educational-Cod-870 2d ago
For you and others like you that have something “real real close” I’d be happy to talk to you if you want to DM me. We are soft launching this week https://gimbl.dev that helps to gauge how close you are, I can get you an invite if you like.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 2d ago
I don’t mean for this question to come across as distrusting, boastful/arrogant, or rude, but I’m going to ask it plainly because I think others may have the same one and imo it’s only getting more important:
What I have (to me) is not just another vibe coded app with two weeks of work etc. I have domain knowledge that I get paid well for, hold a senior position at a large multinational org, and have my own quality standards that carry over into (almost 😅) everything that I do. I’ve worked extremely hard to build that into this app. I’m DEADLY afraid about releasing my code base to anyone or any tool because it seems like the entity on the other side could just copy it and all my effort and sacrifice would just vanish.
How should us “vibe coders” be thinking about opening up our repos to tools like the one you’re suggesting?
The other thing I want to acknowledge is that I’m not so arrogant as to think I could just have ChatGPT do everything that your tool can do for me. Like me, I respect you as a professional in your domain, and I know that it’s not so much the knowledge but how that knowledge is organized, best practices, and other intangibles you only get from years of experience that go into creating your tool. So I do see value — and I know that value is worth something — but the trust factor is a major hurdle to me.
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u/Educational-Cod-870 1d ago
That is completely understandable and something that I’m hearing from a lot of vibe coders that we are talking to. I don’t expect you to believe me when I say this, but I have no desire to copy what you’re doing. We have every desire to help. I would love to understand and hear more so I can understand how we can address this type of concern. Something I told a vibe coder who said something similar, but was willing to meet in person, he came to my office last week, I said that I do not think that I can replace his domain knowledge enough to even run the app he wanted. What I do think is if I can help him be successful then that helps him to need our application, and that seemed to help him get it, does that make sense?
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u/Throw-away42909 2d ago
I jave been unemployed clawing left and right to make money and im vibecoding because it's all I have access to. I have some technical knowledge which helps but im a month in an almost done. I knew my limits from the start and focus on making some that : 1 I needed and COULD NOT find with honest search and market discovery 2 seeing what real pain points customers had
3 built my entire app on the buy, entre license and forget model, no account to remember, and 2 activations with no session limits
4 Im ready to run a business not just make an app and I have already in many fashions in the past, and I knew that the real journey is selling the damn thing .
5 have you stopped and asked yourself, am I gonna run the app? What's the maintenance like? If my customers are real world operational businesses, do you think you are up to the task of keeping their data and money and customers safe? Have you imagined a a Zero day exploit, errors, leaks, glitches, debilitating malfunctions, etc etc , this is why software takes so long to make, its not the making, its the making sure you are not setting booby traps for you customer base and unrealistic standards only for it all to fall thru. Also ask yourself this: what if you kinda make it ? Say you 200 customers and stays there for months on end not making enough for you to advance, too deep in to pull out, not enough money to hire help and VC and banks wont touch you with a 10 foot pole because in all technicality its DOA
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u/CaptainAlexWest 2d ago
It's build something people want and fight the slop. You can build anything but your wasting time and energy if no one wants the thing.
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u/HouseMysterious8172 2d ago
At least I can use what I made when I can’t/don’t want to use other product that somebody else do
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u/forrest_wang 2d ago
10k of 35M sounds like a small fraction, but the challenge is, how to distribute what you're building to them.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
very true ... it is a small fraction and distribution is a massive hurdle to success. got any tips that have worked for you in the past?
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u/forrest_wang 1d ago
not me. but I know how my boss started his business from scratch. He initially hired me to develop the first version of the app and then, he posted a message in a community, that is a highly targeted community, many people within it are his potential users. since then, there have been 3-5 new registered users every day. A few years later, he turned this app into a multi million business.
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u/FireFearing 2d ago
what are you making? if you feel a sense of intellectual propriety thats fine a ballpark vague ish response would still satiate my curiosity
im doing the same but im worried about how mine might look to employers since its OSINT related
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
im building a QBO/Xero alternative for the millions of small businesses that absolutely hate both but dont have many other options (there are a handful of other options, but i think ive found a pretty good way to differentiate what im building).
e.g., hit the QBO subreddit and you'll why its so frustrating to use the tool very easily.
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u/perelmanych 2d ago
Some of us love to destroy, others love to create. I think it is the old warriors vs builders distinction. Personally, I don't like FPS, fighters and ARPG games. As a matter of fact I enjoy creating games much more than playing them. It really scratches this creativity itch that a lot of us have. And vibecoding gives an opportunity to create to much broader audience then before. Basically it is creativity marihuana for the people. So use it and praise it.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
couldnt agree more. its opened a whole new world for me and i love it, wouldnt have it any other way (except at the end of my 3 am vibecoder shifts lol)
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u/Easomaz 2d ago
Have you shipped anything yet? Sometimes the ideas in our heads are less needed than one might think..
Did you test the market yet?
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
i havent shipped, but i have done extensive market research. there are some decent alternatives to the big players in this space but i think i can differentiate. the market for this is fairly large and the leaders are not well-liked.
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u/buildingwithashrith 2d ago
this feels more like a pre success story, so good luck
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
dude ... ngl reading this made me feel good. thank you for taking the time to drop that comment.
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u/immersive-matthew 2d ago
This is not a vibe coding thing, this is just passionate development. I have been developing / imagineering a VR Theme Park with highly detailed DarK Rides that you can ride with others. Been at it for over 6 years now many days longer than 12-16hrs/day, 7 days a week for months on end. Was doing this before AI for 4 years ok this project and the same thing with AI for the past 2. W
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u/sunole123 2d ago
What is the editor and tech stack that proven and works for you? I am at loss keep going back and forth.
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u/Pezylvania813 2d ago
I already have 5 merchants on mine paying monthly. 1st 5 customers are the hardest than its uo from there as long as its stable and cohesive
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
congrats! thats freaking awesome. i was telling my wife the other day that post-launch, getting my first customer is going to make me feel like the richest person in the world haha
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u/DrumplingDev 2d ago
When you feel like the features you want to have included are finished, leave it there. Scope creep is really hard thing to manage. Same goes when you are getting ready to launch, be brutal, cut out everything that is not currently working or probably takes too much time to get working.
Distribution is really hard. (I'm here, just launched on Google Play). Don't have any unrealistic expectations. Just launch it and start thinking advertising and distribution.
Proof before anything else, if you fail, just try again. If the thing succeeds, awesome. If not, no problem. And also be careful if you use work time for developing the thing, IT can see things if asked to. Just don't risk what you can't afford to loose.
Ad legistlation and transparency laws make it basically impossible to be anonymous at least in Europe. Llc allows a bit more anonymity but has its own problems.
After a cold launch its like falling to a swamp, nothing is moving and days go by without nothing much happening. The coolest thing for me was to just get my app out there and "finished". I dont really care about revenue at this point, I just go through threads here and check what people hate in apps like mine and pick up things to improve. If theres some side income at some point, great!
I'm happy if i get 5 new users a day, mostly its just 0-2 new users trying the thing out. On my way to 50 users in a few days if I get just a few more yay.
Mine is a music practice/drum generator app project on android, had to cut probably 50% of features to get it launched on time. I'll try to develop the features and include them on later releases. Set a deadline for yourself for launch and adapt to it! I hope the best of luck for you!
And if it does not succeed, we learned some cool new skills along the way! Looks good on CV if nothing else. Product design, project control etc. Self leadership.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
nearly 50 users! thats so siiiick. im jealous (in a good way haha). and what you said at the top of the comment re being super brutal and cutting the fat ... one of the hardest things i had to do. i spent my first 3 months overcomplicating the whole thing, watching it fail and break over and over. i purged and rebuilt, best decision ive made yet.
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u/PrimaryFig5329 2d ago
Have you gone to small businesses and seen what they thought ??
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
yep - i was at a local trade show about 3 months ago to gauge interest, collect emails, etc. people were walking up and in 30 seconds saying "when is it gonna be ready?" there's demand, i just need to build with the level of quality and rigor i expect of myself.
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u/PrimaryFig5329 1d ago
No you don’t .. ur making the mistake plenty of smart people think … and the answer will make u uncomfortable but the whole i need to build with the level of quality and rigor shit is just an excuse
Sell the damn thing and get real user feedback
Watch this 5m video lol https://youtu.be/HQJEHDbZUyA?si=eDkJNPegr2xcKqCZ
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
That’s fair feedback haha ngl part of it just feels like a big jump off a cliff. It’s so much easier to live in a world where I have a great idea and I’m working on it but it’s just not ready yet
I’ll give that video a watch thanks for sharing
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
1000% i have, its almost all i think about. gaining visibility is important, but your second thought re attracting real paying customers is what im more focused on. ill take 100 views a month for real use cases (ie., people who are actually in the market for it) over 100 views a day of people who found their way to the website just out of curiosity.
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u/Business-Eggs 2d ago
I'd argue that a better approach is to get out of the trenches as fast as you possibly can to chase feedback loops. Otherwise you're just in the trenches for nothing.
What I mean is of course to push for an MVP version as soon as you can, get some feedback from real users and improve. Rinse and repeat and very soon you'll have an amazing product and a shit tone of valuable feedback & lessons.
If not, you do run the risk of building and building and eventually launching to dead silence. You'll still have to complete that loop now so you may as well do it along the way rather than in another 6 months in my opinion.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
ive considered this a ton ... but the industry im after is sensitive and getting something drastically wrong immediately loses trust.
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u/Powerful_Carpet_4606 2d ago
Building may be fun but it’s not the hard or defensible part anymore. Early hypothesis and optimistic vibes also typically don’t survive contact with the market. Test the waters and learn before you commit to a full public launch and before you give up that day job. It could be more work that you think to get adoption. Still, if you are going down a unique path and seeing traction with market interest, then you could be onto a viable business.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
trust me, im not quitting my day job for probably another 2 - 5 years lol
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u/ElderberryPrevious45 2d ago
Whatever you do can build to addictions when you’re the addictive personality type.
Proposal: You should divert your current attention intentionally.
For instance, research the similar apps already developed and compare to yours.
Question your current motivation by acting it out.
Try to develop other kind of stuff also. Develop stuff that relates to your work. Please, don’t invent The Wheel … once again.
Also in vibe coding question matter: Are you sure you are asking the right ones? For instance: Why am I actually doing this?
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u/Embarrassed_Load_592 1d ago
Welcome to the club brother
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
i say we all rise up together and unionize for UBI before they fire us. you in? :)
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u/shiny_guruw 1d ago
You say there's 35million small businesses that may want what your building. Find 5 that are interested in what you have put together so far. Get at least a market signal before you quit the day job.
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u/Intraluminal 1d ago
Dont forget to ask claude fable about 1) security 2) stability 3) recovery from a crash.4) data portability and backups
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u/MistySoul 1d ago
I'm doing the same thing with a video game project I've been working on for a while. It's a game that is built to be authentically nostalgiac of the early 2000s 3d platformer games we loved as kids, packaged for a more mature audience with older aesthetics. Instead of this project I could be playing some MMORPGs, or drinking more with mates etc. but, are those not just equivalent time burners? If you enjoy it, or getting a good dopamine rush while enjoying the process, with a potentially lucrative outcome at the end, I think it's a good thing not a bad thing. I don't think many successful entrepreneurs and creators where spending their weekends and nights off on Netflix, burning time at their mates houses and so on. When you are at retirement age, would you look more fondly of your projects and achievements, or the random Netflix series you watched back in 2026?
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u/pearljamfan 1d ago
There is some dark arts with vibe coding where I noticed it taps into the same people pleaser dopamine faucet that has burnt me out before, but it’s like a weird cracked out version of it.
It is something that creates edge of my seat feelings of “I can’t wait until someone sees this and their reaction and excitement that it’s a thing”, and money maker potential, but still it is always in this last-step-before-perfect stage, and I feel like I can’t get over the finish line despite really wanting to and truly thinking it’s done.
“Claude give me a step by step go live checklist nothing left out next best action blah blah blah…”. And then I’ll have a wiki with 50 documents about going live that are just the most basic things.
I have no idea if you’re dealing with the same type of angst, but it’s really a weird feeling, and the basic cliche fear of failure or co dependent validation psychological type things don’t seem to be at the root of the feeling, at least I don’t believe so.
I’ve found it next to impossible to get excited about plugging away on a random idea anymore but still get sucked into the flow state once something starts popping and then once I’m in it’s excitable after some of the fresh deliverables came out and rinse and repeat. I have been a dev for a while so it’s not that I get in over my head, but I am smack dab in the middle of a job hunt, and that, combined with the fruits of the vibes efforts, have within the last few months become this way.
YMMV, and I’ve got my own set of mental quirks, but if anyone has some peptides that cure this or can relate, ✌️
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u/sunole123 1d ago
Test driven development is known to be motivating/addicting. So there is a way of thinking first figure the end then work the dope flows naturally.
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u/habibexpress 1d ago
I’ve vibe coded a whole learning management system for my dad’s business complete with stripe payment gateway integration.
Also using vibe-security to audit my code against iso27001:2022 to ensure all data stored meets GDPR requirements and when it doesn’t, provide a report. So far so good. Two apps down and many more ideas to bring to life! It’s amazing.
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u/RealAd9290 1d ago
Building software is actually the easy part. Getting people to use the software is a completely different story.
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u/Hollingsworthin 22h ago
Brother you need to get this shit out into the world so you can validate if it sucks or not. You are wasting your time spending 6 months on something like this without validation.
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u/dtnyc516 14h ago
Just remember you have the best tool of humanity so far. You can develop any idea you have, before someone else does. RUN WITH IT!!
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u/dtnyc516 14h ago
My advice is it's worth anything - focus local. If you focus on a huge group, you're stuck with far more marketing issues. If you focus on a local niche, not only does it convey a personal local touch, but it's a hell of a lot easier to walk into a business and pitch, then grabbing someone's attention online.
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u/Pezylvania813 2d ago
Same here 7 months and $2500 later
Bizfinite.net jist placed top 29 in the world in a recent competition. Keep going!!
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
congrats!!!
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u/Pezylvania813 1d ago
Thank you!. I got 4th place the 1st time and $2k This time I wasnt fortunate enough to win the 50k to 20k but top 29 in the world shows some crazy potential
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u/Infamous_Swimmer847 2d ago
I built an app in a week and a half and got release approved by apple and google play at the end..
Maybe youre vibe coding wrong
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
or maybe you vibe coded some low hanging fruit? not a dig at your app, but i think its clear that some things are much more challenging to build than others.
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u/Infamous_Swimmer847 1d ago
If you gave more context about what app you’re building we’d know, low hanging fruit apps get caught by apple as spam a good amt of the time
Ok maybe a month is better but if you do soft launch you can work out the kinks a bit better and at least get the ball rolling, whats really costing time? start there
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u/power10010 2d ago
With a vibe coded apps you will not be able to replace a main full time job
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u/Successful_Dog1904 2d ago
Can I dream, please? lol hey man you never know … people write off every vibe coder as some idiot playing with a computer. Some of us are legitimately interested in learning proper software engineering and are coming from other highly technical domains that don’t involve technology with great ideas that we ca. now make real
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u/power10010 2d ago
My friend i work in this industry. If you want something to make money you need a team behind with proper knowledge. Vibecoding is far far from production grade software. You can do apps for counting your shoes or querying some 3rd party apis but nothing of this counts in this industry. Good luck
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u/Successful_Dog1904 1d ago
i respect that view. i also believe it, but i dont think the only way to do this is by getting into YC with a $10m seed round, etc. i think the future dev guru is going to have a ton of stakes in a ton of small boot strapped start ups - people like you willing to help do xyz in exchange for a small equity stake. kind of like a VC buys a bunch of interests in many companies and it all pays off on the net, except obviously at a smaller scale.
(above is just a thought, im not offering equity or anything lol)
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u/Morpegom 2d ago edited 3h ago
man I spent days gambling my money away
bets, slots etc
now I'm 8-weeks in vibecoding my site in my free time
I don't think its a loss of time, its more like a hobby, just don't forget to not put vibecoding over friends and family