I learned a lot of disorganized, fragmented pieces building **[january.sh](https://january.sh/)**, from engineering problems that occupies my dreams to sales demos.

After five months of a long-standing break, looking from far away, reflecting on what I did and the mistakes I’ve made, I’m genuinely impressed with the progress. it was an essential cornerstone in my problem solver establishment. The interviews, the task lists, the software, the connections, and all the learnings it is only degrading and pessimistic to call this a failure.

### **New Start**

I told myself I would not continue unless I got a client because I didn’t want to build [what doesn’t matter](https://signalvnoise.com/archives2/it_just_doesnt_matter). I wanted to serve my customers’ needs and not bloat the app with unnecessary functions.

I reached out to a few acquaintances and got a few opportunities to work with them, but not all were suitable (most project scopes were too overwhelming and extended beyond what **[january.sh](https://january.sh/)** meant to have).

After about a time, I got in contact with someone already rushing to build an API for their product.

### **Does this matter?**

My first thoughts weren’t what else the product was missing or what more I needed to add. On the contrary, I looked up the source code, and all I wanted was to remove any feature that could be done manually: anything that can be done quickly by hand is not worth having at this stage.

Going through each feature, I question, “Does this matter to have now?” I go with my instincts and remove it immediately. I ask, “Can this be done manually?” If my mind whispered yes, I drop it off without hesitation. *To be clear, although I say remove, I was moving them away from my main project focus. For example, I hid the navigation menus that I’m not going to work on or actively working on.*

I recall how I hated the empty look of the website over the past year, but nowadays, I can’t embrace it enough; that feeling of the minimalist look is surprisingly relaxing.

---

We are seeking early adopters to provide feedback on our product. In return, I'll help you with building the backend for your project. Feel free to chat with me in [Discord](https://discord.gg/CQCCpr3Xs7) or send me an email at feedback@january.sh

Try January in [Playground](https://app.january.sh/)

---

I look at the product now and say I didn’t need to do that; I could’ve just gone that way and gotten the work out there faster. Despite my initial naivety, I’m much better now at looking at things from getting the job-done perspective. I love and hate this. I hate that I couldn’t see things that way; all I did was perfect the small details that led me to stray while forgetting the bigger picture, and I love it because it’s a tremendous learning opportunity for me.

Another thing with too many features is that fixing bugs and integrating the internal part becomes much more complicated, eventually making the software a whole buggy. Instead, I should’ve focused on having a few solid features instead of making it a feature sink. although I'm not there yet but I highly recommend [Lower Your Cost of Change](https://basecamp.com/gettingreal/03.2-lower-your-cost-of-change)

**Selecting Persona**

While looking for a client to work for in conjunction with working on **january.sh**, I noticed how difficult that is. A surprise, It looks. Sure now. But before, I was so eager, enthusiastic, and naive that I thought I could get to my customers no matter what.

I’m trying to say that I might have done better if I doubled down on the customers I could reach too. In other words, how accessible is the target audience to me?

The main issue was the wide array of customers that I was focusing on [because I was building a general solution](https://youtu.be/TwDJhUJL-5o?t=1365) that did nothing but the opposite, distract me. If there were a reason why I didn’t continue, that would be it.

Ask yourself, how accessible the target audience to you, how you can reach them, and where they are?

Only What Is Needed: The Low Barrier To Entry

Software Engineer

January is a platform that makes backend development uncomplicated for businesses.

Try it out here: https://app.january.sh/

Ezz Abuzaid

2024