July 2026 - I Fell Into Burnout. Here's What Changed.
July was probably the most important month of the year for me.
July was probably the most important month of the year for me.
Not because of a hackathon win. Not because I launched something huge. But because I finally understood what kind of founder I want to become.
For the last few months, my life revolved around Cashflow. I was all-in. Every day was about building, polishing, applying to grants, submitting to hackathons, talking to accelerators, and trying to push the product forward.
From the outside, everything looked great.
Inside, I was slowly burning out.
I didn’t realize it until I suddenly had no motivation to open my laptop. I wasn’t excited about building anymore. I started asking myself a simple question:
“What happens if all of these grants, hackathons, and accelerator applications don’t work out?”
That question hit me much harder than I expected.
I optimized for the wrong things
Looking back, I made a classic founder mistake.
I started optimizing for external validation instead of users.
I wanted to win another hackathon. Get another grant. Be accepted into another accelerator. Those are all good things, but they’re not the business.
The business is users.
The business is revenue.
The business is solving a real problem.
When I received a few rejections almost back-to-back - from grants, accelerator programs, and other opportunities - I realized how much emotional weight I had attached to them.
That’s when I knew something had to change.
Back to having fun
I took a short break from building in public. Two weeks without daily videos.
During those weeks I kept thinking about why I started building products in the first place.
The answer was surprisingly simple.
Because I enjoy it.
I love opening IDE in the morning.
I love shipping features.
I love seeing the first user appear in analytics.
I love watching RevenueCat send me a notification that someone subscribed.
Somewhere along the way I had forgotten that.
So I decided to change my approach completely.
Instead of betting everything on one product, one hackathon, or one grant, I’m going back to experimenting.
I’ll still build Cashflow. It’s still my biggest project. But I’ll also build smaller apps, update old ones, and launch ideas quickly. Every experiment teaches something, even if it fails.
Cashflow became something bigger
The biggest product change this month wasn’t technical.
It was conceptual.
Cashflow started as a mobile yield app.
Then it became a wealth management app.
Now it’s becoming something much more interesting:
A Family Finance app.
The idea came from conversations with users and builders. More and more people in the Solana ecosystem have onboarded their spouses to crypto. Many are already saving for their kids onchain.
But none of the existing products are actually designed for families.
Crypto wallets are built for individuals.
Family finance is different.
Families need shared savings, approvals, inheritance, recovery, and simple onboarding.
That realization completely changed how I think about Cashflow.
This month I redesigned a large part of the architecture to make that possible.
I simplified onboarding, removed unnecessary recovery flows, made gasless transactions work, and started building family vaults with shared approvals.
It’s probably the biggest architectural change I’ve made since starting the project.
Small experiments are underrated
One unexpected thing I enjoyed this month was going back to apps I built years ago.
I updated my Alias game with subscriptions, localization, and analytics.
Then I did the same for another old game, 1010.
Financially, these aren’t life-changing projects.
But watching new subscriptions appear over the weekend reminded me of something important.
Shipping is fun.
Watching real people use your software is fun.
Running pricing experiments is fun.
I don’t need every project to become a unicorn.
Sometimes I just need to remember why I like building products.
Building in public changed my life
Another realization I had this month is that building in public is no longer just marketing.
It’s accountability.
When I disappeared for a few days because of burnout, I received dozens of messages asking if everything was okay.
I honestly didn’t expect that.
People were actually following the journey.
That made me realize these daily videos are no longer just updates about Cashflow.
They’re documenting my life as a founder.
From now on, that’s exactly what they are.
Not just Cashflow.
My entire founder journey.
Looking ahead
August is going to look very different.
I’m no longer chasing grants.
I’m no longer building features just because they’re technically interesting.
Every feature, every experiment, and every product has to answer one question:
Will this help me get more users or more revenue?
Everything else is a distraction.
I’m excited again.
And honestly, that’s probably the biggest win of the month.