Hello friend,

Yes, what you just read is true.

I QUIT.

Keep reading!

TL;DR

This is a personal post. Don’t read it unless you’re interested in my journey.

Some context

My career in tech started with getting an internship at a company in Cluj-Napoca. After the 2 months of intensive learning and bad quality code, I got hired and worked there for 1 year.

Not that I didn’t enjoy working there, but, you know, I wanted more freedom, more money and something that at that time was considered more exotic: doing freelancing.

Freelancing, which lately turned into a business (since I started to put together a team of 6 devs) was a great experience. I had some freedom and made decent money. But I wanted more.

Relatively recently (late 2024) I decided to chase my dreams, and start something I’ve always wanted: become an indie maker and start building my own apps.

I enjoyed the journey so much, and I still do. But something had to change.

The “12 startups in 12 months” challenge

In 2025, I started the “12 startups in 12 months” challenge. I thought that would be easy. And indeed, building the apps, especially with leveraging AI agents is easy.

But what I didn’t know at that time is that selling these apps, and making money out of them is not that easy.

I did what I used to do as a freelancer: I built apps. I didn’t learn marketing, and till this day I don’t really know how to promote and make money from my apps.

After looking closely, all the good indie makers consider marketing being at least as important as building (if not more important).

Building one app and posting online about it is doable.

But what if, besides the one app, you’re trying to post on all the platforms, record videos, write a weekly newsletter, and engage daily with friends on X/Twitter? Add more family responsability on top of it, traveling and several medical appointments, and it gets too much. Way too much.

So that’s why…

I decided to quit the “12 startups in 12 months” challenge

This year is not wasted at all. Now I have a starting point, and I know how to be more effective with my time and with my focus.

Initially, I romanticized with it, posting every day how I work on my app, people being interested in each app I build. I thought this would give me some sort of credibility.

Learned the lesson the hard way: if your apps suck, no challenge is going to save it. Focus on shipping quality.

I decided to end the challenge here, and to accept the fact that I should move on. Wasting another month or two just to say I kept the challenge, but had no real results at the end makes no sense.

Some lessons I’ve learned

🚫 Quitting is not a big deal.

It depends who you’re asking for advice, but some are terrified of quitting because, they are worried of what other people might say about that. Would others consider you a quitter? They might. Does it matter? Not really.

🚫 Quitting too easy.

I don’t say “Quit with the first chance”. I did the same mistake couple of times: when things become either hard or too boring, I used to quit.

I think you should truly examine if you gain more from quitting, then from being involved into that activity.

It’s about keeping the right balance, and deciding in each case whats best.

🚫 Challenges are great.

Set yourself up for success by taking challenges. There are many purposes of why some challenges might be beneficial for you. You build habits, you learn new skills, and become more organized.

If I weren’t to take this challenge, I would have never created 9 public apps and projects, and 2 private apps for my friends.

Did I reach the milestone? Not really. But it helped me find a better path for my future actions.

🚫 Fake it till you make it.

I have mixed feelings about this expression. But, in a way, the “12 startups in 12 months” challenge made me an indie maker. Now I can confidently say “I’m an indie maker, I build my own apps. This is what I tried”.

In conclusion

Thank you for reading my post. It was another personal one, but I hope it inspired you, and you got some lessons out of it.

My second blog post was about why I started the “12 startups in 12 months” challenge. Check it out here:

The Reason Behind My 12 Startups in 12 Months Challenge

If you like this post and you want to keep the discussion going, these are a few places where you can find me:

👉 I’m most active on X/Twitter: x.com/razvanmuntian

👉 Checkout my LinkedIn account as well: linkedin.com/in/razvanmuntian

👉 My personal website: lunafinder.com

👉 Tech Terms Explained Simply: techterms.io

Thank you so much for reading this post and I hope it’s been inspirational!

See you soon!