Fear of Success

After spending the past 5 years trying to build products for 0 customers - both professionally and personally - I've realized I suffer from a devastating mental blocker that explains away a lot of the problems I've faced since Covid. I'm scared of success. In fact I'm way, way more scared of success than I am of failure.

Failure is easy; it's familiar. I've seen it many times already, and it affects no one other than myself (unless I've already found success and am working with others). Failure is how I've gotten as far as I have. People learn by making mistakes, so I've almost grown fond of them. The more mistakes I make, the more confident I feel I'm making progress. Failing and giving up also sets you free, it gives you the freedom to dream about your next idea and start working on it without any prior commitments. By accepting defeat, you no longer have to tackle the hard problems you were probably already avoiding, like doing product discovery, or talking to potential customers. You can revel in the fact that you've built the core technical tool, and no longer have to even conceive of anything outside your expertise.

Success, on the other hand... Can you imagine what my life would be like if I had a business as a customer paying me $200/month for a service? I'd have to constantly think about uptime, and breaking changes. If something is wrong on my end that's a lot more money they lose on their end, devastating! Not to mention the anxiety I'd feel about having to solve their problems in a timely manner. Most importantly, I'd lose the ability to give up whenever I want; pursuing something shinier. All for what is a measly 200 bucks, but what many customers would consider an enterprise plan with many expectations. I hate it when companies fail to deliver on their promises, so the idea of becoming one of them feels dangerous and terrifying.

All of these factors significantly change how I tackle making a product. It's much easier to only take a few hours to consider how I would implement what I consider to be a good idea, and immediately start building. Because building is what I'm good at – it's easy, fun, and makes me feel like I'm being productive. I love the feeling of seeing an idea come to life. But only until I've made about a Pareto principle's worth of progress. Once I'm 80% of the way to an MVP, I have to contend with the reality that the following steps will require me to go out of my comfort zone and find people to try the product. This is the point at which I try to change the definition of V in MVP. Maybe if I just build a perfect product I won't have to do anything but build, including finding customers. If all goes well, my friends will have a look and go "oh that's pretty cool," then close the tab without even scrolling past the fold. After which the project will fade into obscurity like many others that came before it. Worst case scenario, someone might actually be interested in it and enslave me by paying for what I've built. Thankfully, that hasn't happened yet, and it's unlikely to by accident.

So this is what I'm working on in 2026. I want to get into a headspace where I'm committed to achieving a goal, to be more afraid of failure than I am of success, and charge head-on at everything that makes me uncomfortable. I've spent 7 years learning everything I can about programming and building cool stuff, why should product discovery, talking to people or accountability put me off after having come so far? So go ahead and purchase my product for $200/month. If something happens I'll fix it. If I get more traffic than I can handle, I'll just do my best to scale. And if I fumble and lose a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I'll just try again. Because when you're scared of success, there are no opportunities to lose in the first place.