Everything I've Built and Killed: A Timeline of Fikrago's Failed Projects
Written by Ayoub Zinani, Founder of Fikrago
Most of what I've built doesn't exist anymore. Not because it failed loudly — most of it just quietly stopped mattering, one unused tool at a time, until I finally admitted it and took it down. I think that timeline is more honest, and more useful to anyone starting out, than the highlight reel Fikrago usually shows.
So here's the real list.
The real estate calculator that never found its audience
I built an AI-powered real estate calculator meant to help people evaluate property investments quickly. The build itself worked fine. What it never got was distribution — no existing audience of real estate investors to bring it in front of, and no realistic way for a single tool to compete for that attention on its own. It sat there, technically functional, practically invisible. Eventually I stopped maintaining it.
The influencer marketplace that assumed a two-sided problem was one-sided
I built a platform meant to connect influencers with brands. What I underestimated was that a marketplace needs both sides showing up at the same time to have any value at all — a few brands with no influencers isn't a marketplace, and a few influencers with no brands isn't either. Solving that chicken-and-egg problem needed resources and time I didn't have as a solo builder. It never got past a thin, mostly-empty version of itself.
The AI interview platform that solved a problem I didn't fully understand
This one taught me the most, honestly. I built a tool meant to help people practice job interviews using AI. The technical build was fine. What I hadn't done enough of was actually talking to the people who'd use it before building it — understanding what would make someone trust an AI's feedback on something as personal as a job interview. Building the answer before fully understanding the question is a mistake I don't think I fully recognized until this one quietly failed to gain traction.
The chatbot SaaS that was ahead of my own ability to support it
I built a multi-tenant chatbot platform meant to let multiple businesses run their own chatbots through one system. The idea wasn't wrong — chatbots for businesses is genuinely where a lot of my current client work lives. But running a SaaS product means ongoing support, uptime, and maintenance in a way a single case-study article doesn't. I wasn't set up to support that as a solo operator yet, and rather than let it decay into something unreliable for real users, I shut it down.
The pattern underneath all of it
Looking back at this list together instead of one at a time, the actual pattern is clear: the technical build was rarely the failure point. Distribution, timing, and my own capacity to support what I'd built were the real reasons each of these stopped. That's a very different lesson than "I wasn't skilled enough," and it's the one I actually needed to learn.
Why I'm writing this instead of hiding it
Fikrago's whole approach is proof over polish — real case studies instead of a highlight reel. That has to include the failures, not just the wins, or it's not actually honest. These projects aren't embarrassments to me anymore. They're the actual tuition I paid to understand what I'm doing now.
If you're building something and it's not working the way you hoped, I'd rather talk through why honestly than pretend everything I've built has worked. Message me — sometimes an outside read on why something's stalling is worth more than pushing harder on the same approach.
See what I've built and kept on the Products page, the tools I currently use on the Tools page, or browse resources on the Digital Market page.