I started my 30 projects in 30 weeks challenge with two goals. The first was to get better — technically, strategically, and as a builder. The second was to make money. Twenty-seven weeks later, I've shipped 27 real projects and made under $200 total. I'm holding both of those facts at the same time right now, and I want to talk about what that actually means.
For most of my career, I worked in IT and information security. I understood the software development lifecycle from the outside — I knew the stages, I'd worked alongside developers, I'd seen how it all moved. But there's a difference between observing a process and owning it end to end. I was always either granted partial access, brought in for specific pieces, or watching from the edge of the cycle rather than standing in the middle of it. This challenge changed that. Twenty-seven weeks of shipping projects from idea to deployed product gave me something I genuinely couldn't have gotten any other way: real, hands-on experience with the full SDLC. Planning, building, debugging, deploying, maintaining. All of it, every week, entirely mine to own.
🧠 What the Technical Side Actually Gave Me
From a skills perspective, this challenge delivered more than I expected. I understand agentic coding now in a way that only comes from repetition. I've developed an eye for where agents consistently fail — authentication, database logic, security edge cases — and I've built systems specifically to catch those issues before they become real problems. I've shipped consumer apps, quietly worked through business dashboards and inventory systems on the side, and gotten genuinely fast at building. The kind of fast that only comes from doing something over and over until the friction disappears.
I also didn't talk about this much publicly, but a lot of those weeks I was running experiments on company-side tools — dashboards, internal systems, things more complex than anything I'd share under the 30-in-30 banner. They were harder to finish in a week and harder to talk about cleanly, but they were part of the learning too.
💸 The Part I Have to Be Honest About
I spent money on Claude Code that I genuinely shouldn't have spent. There were weeks where I convinced myself that if I just shipped one more project, something would click. It didn't. And looking back, I know exactly why: I built things and barely told anyone about them.
I did some Reddit posts. A few threads. But real, consistent, intentional outreach? I avoided it almost entirely. Part of it was fear — putting something you've built in front of people and asking them to care about it is genuinely hard, and I underestimated how much that fear was quietly costing me. I've watched other people ship apps that weren't as polished, with less technical depth, and make money simply because they went and told people about it relentlessly. That stings a little to admit. But it's also the clearest lesson this whole challenge has given me.
🏁 What Finishing Actually Means to Me
Sticking with something long-term is hard for me. Staying consistent across consecutive weeks — especially when life is also happening — is something I genuinely struggle with. Completing this challenge, even imperfectly, means something. I'm going to finish all thirty weeks. And beyond that, I now have a real portfolio. Not concepts or half-finished experiments, but thirty actual projects I can demo, talk about, and build on.
🔮 If I Did This Again
I wouldn't change the challenge. I'd change the constraints around it. I'd make sure I had the budget to run infrastructure without stress, I'd build agents to handle more of the execution so my human hours could go toward sales and outreach, and I'd treat marketing as non-negotiable from week one — not something to get to eventually.
Building is the part that comes naturally to me. Telling people about what I build is the skill I'm developing next.
