10 years of failing taught me one thing. Tomorrow I'm betting everything on it.

Hello PH Members,

This is my first ever post on Product Hunt, I'm Tanmay. 26 years old. College dropout. 7+ failed startups. Dozens of dead experiments. And I'm launching CroozLink tomorrow.

But before you see the product, I want you to know the builder.

Few months ago, my family went out for the evening. First time I was alone in months. I sat on my floor and cried, the kind of crying you can only do when there's nobody home to hear it. Seven years of building and failing, and I couldn't point at a single thing that worked.

I want to tell you what happened after that. But first, you need to know how it all started.

The $25 Phone

I come from a humble middle-class family where buying a phone was a luxury, not a given. All my friends in the neighborhood had Samsungs and Lenovos. I didn't have anything. I begged my dad for months. Kept insisting, kept asking, kept annoying him until he finally gave in.

He came home one day with a $25 Chinese phone called "Kingbell." It worked fine. But the moment I saw my friends flashing their phones around, I knew I couldn't show mine. The shame was real.

So I asked myself a weird question (Honestly i didn't know that time this is what first principle is) : How do people actually know this is a Kingbell?

I broke it down. Three things,

a) the boot animation when it turns on,

b) the "About Phone" screen,

c) and the logo on the back.

I had no WiFi at home. No broadband. I used to buy scratch cards that gave me 30MB of mobile data. That's it. 30 megabytes. I spent nights on 2G networks reading forums about changing boot animation, rooting phones, saving pages offline, reading them in the morning.

With my old dusty PC, I modified the system image and flashed a Lenovo boot logo onto the phone. Then I took a razor blade and physically scratched the logo off the back until it was blank. Went to a local sticker shop and got a custom Lenovo sticker made.

The shopkeeper looked at me like I was insane. "Why not just buy a real one?"

Because I was 12 and this was all I had.

It worked. For weeks, nobody questioned it. I was finally "normal."

Then I got greedy. Tried to mod it to look like an iPhone. Deleted a critical system file. Bricked the phone. Dead. And the firmware didn't exist online because it was a Chinese device, no recovery possible.

Terrified, I took it to the shop. The shopkeeper knew me and my family. I begged him, please don't tell my father, can you do something? He called the distributor. The distributor turned it on and instead of "Kingbell," the screen flashed "LENOVO." He was literally shocked, then he looked at me. A 12-year-old kid.

He laughed. Not at me. Out of respect. Gave me a full refund.

I walked out with my $25 back.

That was the day I learned: if you can't afford the game, change how the game is played and second learning i learn is Technology is like a magic with which you can do anything.

I just didn't know yet that this lesson would take me 14 more years to actually use properly.

The Seed

But the real reason I couldn't stop building wasn't the phone. It was my father.

He manufactured generator spare parts, ignition coils, spark plugs. He was genuinely brilliant at what he did, everyone who used his parts said so. But middlemen would come, buy his work at rock-bottom prices, and sell it at 3x to the actual market.

One day I asked him: "Why don't you sell directly?"

He looked at me and said: "Son, no one knows us. No one knows our name."

I watched his business slowly fall apart. Not because the product was bad. Because nobody knew it existed. I was too young to understand what "distribution" meant. I just knew something was deeply unfair.

For years, I saw those middlemen as villains. That anger is what made me start building things, I wanted to figure out what they knew that my father didn't.

I swore I'd crack this. If my father couldn't learn to sell, I would.

Years later, after dropping out of college, I needed money to survive. I turned to Fiverr. The market was brutal, 15,000+ gigs in android development, java bugs fixes. I was invisible. So I did what I did at 12 with the phone. Found a gap nobody was filling, a micro-niche with almost zero competition, open source rebranding.

Ranked on page 1. Built up 60+ five-star reviews. Became a Level 2 seller. Finally, I had learned how to sell.

My father couldn't sell. I figured it out. That felt like a win.

But it wasn't. Not really. Because I'd learn that much later.

The Decade of Failing

At 19, I was in college doing engineering. But I was already experimenting on the side, building random things, doing video editing, building app with thunkable (if you know it , congrats :) ), learning basics of coding, testing ideas, trying to figure out how businesses actually work. The classroom felt like a waiting room for a life I didn't want.

I dropped out in my 2nd year. My family didn't take it well. Nobody in my circle had dropped out before. I became "that kid who threw away his future."

First thing I built after dropping out: an AI chatbot startup called The Virtual Bots using that many chat sort of thing. It went nowhere. Dead within months.

Then came the one I was actually proud of, a book marketplace. I was co-founder in it, we built a platform for trading second-hand books using local shops as exchange points. Scaled to 4 cities. Marketing was working, I was pulling real traffic from Quora. We were so confident that we even applied to Y Combinator with it.

YC rejected us. And soon after, the business died too. Buyers were in big cities, exchange points were in small towns. The exchange could never physically happen. We tried delivery but shipping a $1 book for $3 made no sense.

Lesson: Don't build a business where every new customer costs you more to serve.

After that, the failures came faster:

An AI video tool, use multiple open source project to build one and won $2,000 in google cloud credits. Went nowhere. A gaming marketplace. An anonymous messaging app. An AI judge tool and what not. Each one lasted weeks to months. Each one taught me one thing and died.

And the pattern was always the same: Build -> Fail -> Money runs out -> Back to freelancing to survive -> Save up -> Build again -> Fail again.

Fiverr was my safety net. Every time a startup died, I'd crawl back to client work. It kept me fed but it also kept me stuck. Because when you have a comfortable fallback, you never truly go all in.

The Agency

Eventually I started a service agency, video editing and storytelling for businesses. Ran it for a full year even hired employees using my savings. This was supposed to be "the one." It work little bit but margin were not so good, and i was bad in getting clients.

Got on calls with founders. Pitched to real businesses. One of them was a founder whose startup was personally recognized by a major tech CEO. He didn't buy my service but that one conversation taught me more about what businesses actually struggle with than any course ever could.

The agency failed. Revenue wasn't enough. Clients were hard to retain. After 12 months of grinding, I shut it down.

But something happened during that year that I didn't realize at the time. Every client call, every failed pitch, every project where I had to turn boring content into a compelling story, it was training me. I was learning a skill without knowing I was learning it.

Storytelling.

I didn't know it mattered yet. I just thought I was doing video editing.

The Breakdown

After the agency died, I looked at my life honestly for the first time in years.

26 years old. Dropout. No degree. No job. Failed at 7+ startups. Killed dozens of experiments. Shut down a stable freelance income that was actually working. Shut down an agency after a year. Savings almost gone.

I sold my personal gold to buy myself a few more months. That's not a metaphor. I literally sold gold.

And that night, few months ago, sitting alone on my floor, my body just gave up before my mind did. Seven years of building, failing, rebuilding, failing again. And I had nothing to show for it.

The Click

The next day, I called an old friend. Someone I hadn't spoken to in months because I'd been hibernating, head down, building, ignoring everyone.

He listened to everything. Then he said one thing that hit me like a truck:

"Bro, why do you always chase visionary ideas? Why not just look at what's already working in the market and do that?"

My first reaction was defensive. I'm not a copy guy. I can't build something unless my heart is in it, that's just how I'm wired. If I don't genuinely care about the problem, I can't sustain the grind.

But his words kept bouncing around my head. "Look at what's already working."

So I started looking. And that's when I stumbled onto Linktree.

50 million users. $1.3B valuation. And all it does is show a list of links. A dead, boring, static list. No personality. No story. No connection with whoever visits. Just, here are my links, click one.

And I thought: millions of people already proved they want a digital home. They just got handed an empty room with links on the wall.

Then the dots started connecting so fast I couldn't sleep.

1) My agency "failed", but it taught me storytelling. How to make someone care about something in the first 3 seconds. What if a link page wasn't a list, but a story?

2) My father's business died because he had no distribution. No way to be found. What if a link page wasn't a dead-end but actually helped you get discovered?

Every startup I ever built died from the same disease: invisible product, no distribution. What if I built a tool that solved that exact problem, for everyone?

And then I thought about build-in-public. I'd been doing it myself. Posting on social media, trying to "build an audience." And I saw the ugly truth:

You have to stop your actual work 3-4 hours daily just to farm engagement. You spend months building a following you never truly own. My own YouTube channel and Etsy account got flagged and removed by an automated system , zero human review. One algorithm change and your reach disappears. You stop posting for a week and your audience forgets you exist.

My father lost his business because he was invisible. Today, creators and businesses lose their work because they built everything on rented land, platforms that can snatch it away in a second.

Same problem. Different generation.

That night, everything I'd been through, every failure, every lesson, every skill I accidentally learned, collapsed into one clear picture.

I knew exactly what to build.

CroozLink was born.

An AI-powered storytelling link-in-bio combined with a discovery network. Instead of a dead list of links, AI weaves your offers into interactive story slides, your story does the selling. And CroozRadar helps you get found organically by answering real questions in your niche, without begging algorithms.

The 4 Mistakes That Cost Me 7 Years

Looking back, I can see exactly where I went wrong. Every single time.

1. I chased fancy over functional. I always wanted to build something that sounded impressive. AI this, marketplace that. Never once asked: does the market actually want this right now? I was building for my ego, not for a customer.

2. I was obsessed with results, blind to the process. All I cared about was the outcome, users, revenue, traction. I never fell in love with the daily work. The moment results didn't come fast enough, I'd lose motivation and jump to the next idea.

3. I wanted to change the world from Day 1. Every startup had to be a "big vision." I never gave myself permission to start small, serve 10 people well, and grow from there. I was always swinging for a home run and striking out.

4. I focused on what I was building, never on who would find it. Product, product, product. Never distribution. Never "how will a stranger discover this?" My father's exact problem and I kept repeating it without realizing.

What's Different This Time

I know what you're thinking. "Every founder says this time is different."

But here's what actually changed:

I stopped chasing outcomes. For the first time, I'm in love with the process itself. I wake up, I build, I improve. Not because I'm expecting a result tomorrow but because the work itself makes sense to me in a way nothing ever has before.

I'm not trying to change the world on Day 1. I just want to solve one problem well for one type of person and grow from there.

And most importantly, I understand the market. Not from reading blogs. From 7 years of living the problem from every angle. I know why people will pay. I know where the gap is. I know what existing players are getting wrong.

Every failure gave me exactly one piece. For the first time, I have all the pieces.

One Last Thing

If there's one thing I wish someone told me 7 years ago, it's this:

Let yourself break down.

I spent years faking "I'm fine"for everyone around me. Pushing through. Grinding. Never stopping to actually feel how lost I was.

That night when I cried on my floor, alone, with nobody watching, was the most productive night of my 7-year journey. Because it was the first time I was honest with myself. And clarity only comes after honesty.

So if you're in that phase right now where nothing is working and you feel like you've wasted years, don't fight the breakdown. Let it happen. Cry if you need to. Then look at your failures with fresh eyes. The pattern is there. You just can't see it while you're performing strength for everyone.

When I sold my gold, I secured about 9 months of runway. I've burned through most of it building CroozLink. I have roughly 3 months left.

I'm not going back to freelancing. That safety net is gone and I'm not rebuilding it.

And honestly? I don't have million-dollar dreams right now. I just need to make enough in the next 3 months to cover my household expenses. That's it. That's my bar. Once that's handled, I'll grow CroozLink slowly, sustainably, the way it should be grown.

Every startup I've built before, I gave up within a year. The moment things got hard, I'd jump to the next shiny idea. Not this time.

This is my public commitment: I am not leaving CroozLink. Not in 6 months. Not in a year. Not until it either succeeds or gets acquired. This is the one I'm riding till the end.

Every failure is solving a different piece of the same puzzle. You just can't see the puzzle until you have enough pieces.

CroozLink launches tomorrow, Feb 25th.

I've never been on an airplane. I have no investors. No connections. No safety net. Just 3 months of runway, a product built from my room, and 7 years of scar tissue.

See you at the launch 🚢

P.S- Still here? Wow. That means you either read really fast, or my 7-year startup chaos actually resonated with you. If you want to read the full rollercoaster with exact snapshots from what leads to dropping out of college and landing a massive client, to getting trapped in HOUSE EMIs and selling my last 44g of gold to fund this war, it’s all documented here: https://unwiring.tech/about