I closed a service after six months and started again

In June 2025, I started building a service of my own.

I had been interested in editors for a long time. I thought AI would let anyone create content and run a personal brand. That idea led me to build a service that automated content marketing with AI.

Looking back, I can see that the product I wanted to build mattered as much as the customer’s problem.

At the time, I did not clearly understand the difference.

There was work before and after the code

When I started my own service, I found much more work outside the code than I expected.

I had to register a business, buy a domain, set up work email, and configure social login. Each task showed me another task I had not known about. If I wanted to apply for government support, I also needed a business plan and many documents.

None of these jobs was impossible by itself. The hard part was that I did not even know what I needed at first. I had to research, decide, and configure each thing when it became necessary.

The hidden cost was not only subscriptions and domain fees. It was also the time these tasks took and the energy I spent changing roles many times a day.

At a company, I often developed inside an environment that already existed. When I built my own service, creating that environment was also my job.

Finishing the setup did not mean that I had built a business. Preparing well and making something people need are different jobs.

Six months later, I closed the first service

I spent my own time and money on the service, but I eventually closed it.

Looking back, I missed several things. I should have met more users before development. I should not have made the product more complex with features people did not need. I should have checked earlier whether customers cared about the features that mattered to me.

These lessons are easy to write now. They were not clear while I was building.

By the time I understood that something was wrong, a lot of time had passed. I was also stubborn. I had already invested so much time that I did not want to let go of my direction.

So I cannot explain this experience by saying, “I should have developed it better.” Implementation was not my only weakness. I also needed to decide what to build, what not to build, and when to change my mind.

It was my first step from being an employed developer toward becoming a founder, or more simply, a person learning how to run a business. I believe the experience was valuable. That does not mean I feel no regret about the time I spent.

The second attempt needed to be sustainable

After closing the first service, I rested for about three weeks.

Then I felt that I could not stay still, so I started a second service. This time, I wanted to start smaller.

I could not give all my time to a personal service as I had during those first six months. My life was not mine alone. I decided to continue freelance work at the same time.

It may sound strange to add freelance work when one personal service is already difficult. My time is more divided now. But everyone has different conditions, and each person needs a different way to keep going.

I needed more than the courage to try again. I needed a way to continue trying.

This time, I wanted to think less about how hard I could push myself and more about how I could keep going.

What “Startup for Everyone” means to me

There is a Korean program called “모두의 창업,” which means “Startup for Everyone.” The program says it supports the full startup process, from mentoring to prototypes and business development.

When I think about that name alongside my experience, I see a gap between being able to start and being able to continue.

I was a developer, so I could build a service myself. I could also use AI. Those were real advantages. But being able to implement a product did not mean that I understood customers. Building a service did not mean that the business could survive.

At first, I thought mostly about what I could make. After closing one service and starting again, I thought more about how this work could fit into the rest of my life.

For me, freelance work became part of the answer. It gives me less time for my own service, but it helps me continue making time for it. Trying again did not have to mean giving everything again.

So when I talk to someone about this experience, I do not want to say only, “Be brave and start.”

I also want to ask: How much time can you give it? How much can you afford to spend? If the result you expect does not come, when will you change direction? I did not think enough about these questions before I started. I faced them only after the work became difficult.

Not everyone can start a business in the same way. I am also trying again at a pace I can sustain instead of following someone else’s speed.

If I leave my story beside the name “Startup for Everyone,” I do not want it to be a story about one great decision. I want to say that I built something, closed it, rested, and started again. On the second attempt, I am thinking not only about the product but also about the life of the person building it.

The customer did not care most about my core feature

The second service began with a customer I had met through the first one.

This customer created travel content. From our conversations, I learned about needs around customer management, travel history, and the photos and maps shared with international customers.

I was building a service that created content automatically. But content automation was not this customer’s most important problem.

For someone else, automatic writing may be the biggest need. For this customer, another problem was closer and more urgent.

That experience changed how I understood the importance of a target customer. People in the same industry do not always have the same problem. A feature I call important does not automatically become the customer’s priority.

That was when my interest moved toward travel, maps, and personal records.

I wanted to build around time that matters, even without AI

I also chose a personal direction for the second service.

I wanted AI to fit naturally into daily life, but the service did not have to be about productivity. Instead of only helping people do more work faster, I wanted to support experiences that are valuable because people spend time on them.

Travel was one example.

Travel means moving through the physical world, spending time in a place, and experiencing it yourself. I believe that process has value. The way people plan and record travel may change, but I do not think the wish to experience a place directly will disappear.

Virtual reality and new kinds of content may offer much richer experiences in the future. Even so, for now I am more interested in the time people actually spend and the records that time leaves behind.

I wanted to help people care for something that is already valuable, not build something that has value only because AI exists.

Attracting visitors and building a business are different

I offered the map service in Korean, English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.

I ran small Google Ads campaigns. I also used the social media automation from my first service to post content on Pinterest, Instagram, and Threads.

Doing the marketing myself taught me that consistency was not enough. I had to think about who would see the content, what they cared about at that moment, and how clearly the content connected with that interest.

Interest around BTS concerts brought visitors to the site. At one point, between 10,000 and 30,000 people visited in a month. The numbers showed me that people outside Korea were interested in Korean content.

But traffic was not the same as business validation.

Getting attention, giving people a reason to return, and giving someone a reason to pay are three different questions.

The difference became more real when I studied map costs. Features such as displaying maps and finding routes cost money depending on the product and the number of requests. I had to think about what costs would grow with the number of users. Google Maps Platform pricing

I could change the technology or build more of it myself to reduce those costs. But my time for that work was also a cost.

In the end, I returned to the same questions.

What value do people receive? Who will pay for which part of it? Can I keep providing that value?

I am still learning how to run a business

The first service taught me that building is not the whole business. With the second service, I am learning how to understand a customer’s problem, attract people, and think about cost and revenue together.

One failure does not make every next decision correct. Even when I try to start small, I keep seeing more things that seem necessary. I still have to decide how far to go.

That is why I am writing this now.

I do not want to become successful later and explain every past choice as a necessary step. I want to remember why I made those choices, what I missed, and which questions I still cannot answer.

I am still on my way from developer to business owner.