Deleting Features
I spent three months building a post discovery algorithm nobody used. So I deleted it and rebuilt the app around the one question people actually asked.
Marty Markenson's Blog
Marty Markenson's blog RSS feed https://martymarkenson.com/rss
Latest posts
You Can't Buy People Coming Back
I ignored RSStoKindle for a month. No new code, no posts. Active users jumped from 20 to 32 anyway. Most side projects are leaky buckets — this one is sticky.
Discovering Good Writing with RSStoKindle
Social media killed the discovery of good writing. Here is how I am trying to fix that with RSStoKindle.
I Took a Swing at Charging and Missed
Months of building, and the market said it was not worth $7. So I will keep building something I use every day and play the long game.
My First Job After College Sucked
My first job after college was corporate hell. Quitting gave me freedom, VR became an obsession, and hanging out with people building interesting things led to a dream opportunity.
After 3 years of vibe coding, I finally built something I use daily.
For the first time, I built a product for myself first: RSStoKindle delivers posts from blogs I love to my Kindle as ePubs—no feed, no tabs, just words.
Writing Jira Tickets That Dont Suck
One of my favorite Claude Code workflows as a PM. Rough idea → Claude Jira skill → ticket created via CLI. 5 minutes instead of hours. Let Claude write tickets using the code as context. No more meetings explaining what you meant.
I Just Paste Tickets into Claude Code and Hang Out
As a PM, I care about sprint goals, stability, and building the right thing—not who or how the code gets built. We automated PRs with Claude. Initially terrible. Tighter rules, smaller tickets, and better testing made it work. Have you set it up to actually work?
Success Is About Leverage
"People don't pay for hard work. They pay for value." Quitting my job taught me that working harder won't make people care. Find something easy for you but magic to others.
FINALLY did it.
Bought my dream house. The SaaS failed, but building solo taught me to ship fast—and companies pay good money for that. The software is dead. The house is real.
I Built a Vitamin, Not a Painkiller
5 years ago I dove into real estate. VR tours → AR filters → branded GIFs. One influencer led to another, and I hit $10k/month. But realtors used the GIFs once and never came back. Failing at selling GIFs was the best education I ever paid for.
What Quitting Actually Did
Quit my high-paying PM job in 2023 to go full time on a side hustle. Had a year of cash saved. But your idea is either working or not—quitting doesn't change that. Instead of killing the idea faster, I burned 12 months and savings on something that would never scale.
Treating Business Like a Game
I've put pressure on myself to hit $10k MRR, launch a podcast, build a known product. But success should make life better. So I treat it like a game—get to the next level, celebrate wins, try again when it doesn't work. Way more fun.
Did You Hire a Designer for This?
Nope. Just me, Claude, and the right setup. Tell Claude to be an expert designer, have it interview you, ask for your design system, save as .designsystem. 20 minutes to setup. People will think you hired a professional.
I Just Killed a Product That Made $1,788 MRR at Its Peak
A video editing service for realtors. Looked good on paper. The profit wasn't there. Success isn't just knowing when to push—it's knowing when to give up.
Ship Fast and Break Things?
Why blindly shipping products is like giving keyboards to monkeys and hoping for Shakespeare. Think first, ship second.
I Shut Down My Online Business
At its peak it made $10k/month and $56k total. Here are the lessons from shutting it down.
My First Business 'Failure'
Gave it a shot, learned a good lesson. Finding customers is not enough - you need the right business model.
2024: The Year of New Beginnings
Got married, rebuilt the Apollo Theaters website, hiked 3 peaks, finished trail races, Disney twice, Noah Kahan, closed my first product, won vacations at charity auction. Just getting started.
The Single Screenshot Theory
To build a lean, high-growth product, you need something that can be explained in a single screenshot. Within seconds people decide: "I've got to try that" or "You need to convince me."
Business is a Different Kind of Hard
Everyone says starting a business is hard. But no one really says why it is so hard.