I cut my teeth in the small business world, so I’ve always been a jack of all trades. But over the last couple of years as the company I worked for was acquired, I entered a new world of private equity and growth targets and senior management and specialization.

I’ve been incredibly grateful for the opportunities and I’ve done my absolute best, but it’s been a bumpy road.

Along the way, however, I’ve always had my side projects.

I squeeze in an evening here or a weekend there to build and design tools around those ideas that come during long showers or quiet drives. They’d always been a fun, creative outlet and way to develop new skills.

The Big Question
But in recent years I felt that I’d been improving. My interfaces seemed cleaner, the designs sharper, the ideas more thoughtfully approached.

It seemed I was getting better, but I wasn’t sure.

I wondered if it was still just a fun hobby, or if these skills were becoming something bigger. Something more.

I wondered and wondered until I launched one on Product Hunt.

If you can’t see it in the screenshot, my humble efforts (aided by my good friend Patrick Sande on the user research side) managed to be the #2 product of the day…on a weekday…against incredible tools built by big teams and massive budgets.

It was an awesome day, but as time went on I wondered if it was a fluke. I wondered if I got lucky.

So a few weeks ago I launched one of my other big projects.

This time, despite being built for a fairly niche audience, it climbed to the #5 product of the day. I was elated, blown away, and humbled.

Most of all, however, I was extremely grateful. Grateful that a service like Product Hunt existed in the first place.

Thanks, Ryan.
Product Hunt has given me a huge boost of confidence in my own abilities to see a need, design a product, and execute on that idea.

It’s amazing to me how level a playing field Product Hunt has remained over the years. It gives people with good ideas and a willingness to hustle and scrape and work a chance to get exposure and feedback that side-hustlers like me could never afford.

So, thanks, Ryan. Really.

I see my career in a very different way these days, and this optimism stems from the product you’ve built and the opportunities it’s created for people like me.

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