Three Hard Truths From My 13 Years in Tech

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Estimated read time: 5 minutes 20 seconds

My path through tech has been a series of increasingly valuable lessons. Here's what 13 years taught me about what really matters when building products and companies.

The Early Years: Ideas Without Action Are Worthless

It was 2012. I was using Snapchat, maintaining message streaks with friends, and watching as smartphones with increasingly powerful cameras became the norm. I had a vision: people would use these devices to share news and events directly, bypassing traditional media. Individuals would become the primary source of news for their communities.

I imagined an app where people could contribute news for others to consume – citizen journalism powered by smartphone cameras. When I shared this idea, it resonated with some people but not with others. That made sense. Much of my thinking was influenced by being in Pakistan and not really liking the media coverage there at the time.

But I never acted on it. I didn't take the time to learn how to build it myself, and I struggled to find someone to build it with me. So the idea remained just that – an idea.

Fast forward to 2024, and my prediction played out dramatically during the US election. The winner leveraged independent media for free press coverage, and most people looked to individuals rather than institutions for their news. The transformation I envisioned had happened, but I was watching from the sidelines.

Hard Truth #1: No one remembers the person who "had that idea first" but didn't build it.

Tech history is filled with people who "almost" built something transformative. The difference between them and the founders we actually remember? Action. Even imperfect, incomplete action moves you forward. Ideas without execution remain just interesting conversations.

The Middle Years: Competition Is Validation, Not Death

A few years later, I was running a design agency, building websites and handling digital marketing for college clubs and small businesses. My partner and I decided we wanted to build a product. After researching gaps in our market, we settled on a restaurant reservation system that would help utilize unused inventory – offering consumers discounts while helping restaurants fill seats during off-peak hours.

We saw this as our entry point to build a broader service for restaurants. We named it, designed it, and built a prototype. The process took months as we were learning app development alongside our marketing website work.

Then one day, seemingly out of nowhere, we saw signs for a competing startup at almost all the restaurants in our city. They offered delivery and table reservation management services. While not exactly what we were building, we panicked. We tried to figure out what to do, but ultimately, we gave up and scrapped our product.

That competing product was called EatOye. They eventually sold to Foodpanda for significant cash plus equity a couple of years later.

Hard Truth #2: Competition means reduced market risk, not reduced opportunity.

In retrospect, the appearance of EatOye should have energized rather than discouraged us. Their presence validated that restaurants needed better technology solutions. The market was big enough for multiple players, especially those with differentiated offerings like ours.

First-time founders often see competition as a death sentence, but experienced founders know better. They see competition as market validation. As long as your product solves the problem well for your users, you can build something valuable – even in a crowded market.

The Recent Years: Founder Alignment Trumps Everything

Fast forward several more years. I had moved to NYC, closed my agency, started as a product manager, and launched the world's largest AI workforce development platform.

I connected with some people and spotted an opportunity in a relatively ignored part of the economy: fast food restaurants. I noticed that their POS systems collected substantial structured data but did little beyond basic analytics and forecasting. With me having just dabbled in the data science and AI world, I saw an opportunity to build a SaaS tool that would bring advanced analytics to this industry.

I founded a startup with three other people. We built a platform that aggregated data from individual POS systems, then stored, analyzed, and modeled it. This could potentially reduce food wastage and optimize operations, creating direct savings for our users.

Our first iteration didn't sell well, so we needed to evolve based on feedback from our design partners. That's when the real problem emerged: we had four cofounders with different visions of what was most important and what problem we were really solving. We spent months going in circles, leaving our engineering team feeling directionless.

Eventually, we went our separate ways and shut down the startup. I still believe there's a market opportunity there. I still think we could have captured significant value. But none of that mattered because our founding team wasn't aligned.

Hard Truth #3: Even with the right market and product, misaligned founders can't win.

The lesson that every startup veteran emphasizes about choosing cofounders carefully is absolutely right. It's one of the most important decisions you'll make. You can have the perfect market opportunity, a great product, and still fail if your founding team isn't aligned on vision, values, and execution.

The Hierarchy of Success

Looking back at these three pivotal moments in my tech journey, I see a clear hierarchy in what matters:

1. Action beats inaction. You must build to have any chance of success.

2. Persistence beats market fears. Competition validates rather than invalidates your opportunity.

3. Alignment beats everything else. Without it, even the right market and product won't save you.

These principles remain true regardless of technology trends.

The most valuable lesson from my 13 years? The fantasy of success in tech is: brilliant idea → instant success. The reality is: action + persistence + alignment → chance of success.

That's it. Three hard truths that matter more than any technical skill or market insight. I wish someone had forced me to truly understand these when I started. Hopefully sharing them saves you some time on your own journey.

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