However, I've started feeling a bit burned out by the grind recently as I'm seeing a certain pattern play out more often than I like: For a product to be useful, I usually take roughly 3 months of time. That's not the total coding time: But usually within iteration, that's the time needed for everybody to really get on the same page with regards to what should be built and to iron out all problems.
Then, after these three months we put the product into action online and then that's where my resentment originates from probably. I'm a techy guy, and I work on the bleeding edge, so while many research and development projects truly motivate me to work because its original: When we release the product: usually none of the customers fully get it.
By no means is this supposed to be a humble brag: But in terms of technology, I'm living too far in the future and so the timing of my work is always at least a few months or even years off!
However, personally I can add to this drama by saying that I'd also feel pretty bored to not work on the cutting edge! I usually work with new economic mechanism design and unfamilar math, and this makes my job FUN. But I wouldn't say I'm engaged much in the mainstream tech dialog, I'm more on the fringes.
So e.g. working on a product like Twitter on like some arbitrary technical product like maintaining its database just wouldn't feel interesting to me: I'd want to study the algorithm and come up with a better mechanism to rank tweets or something.
But I also feel like this is now standing in my way of success as an entrepreneur having all of these skills to build actually nice products. Like I can build really well working products and all: The skills are all there but it seems to be a motivation problem!
I want to have success and one thing I'd like to aim for is that other people are actually using my stuff. E.g. in my last project, I targeted it towards reasonably well-up-to-date developers and I kinda found an audience there for my voice. But at the same time it felt I had outgrown that market pretty fast in that niche.
What I'm striving for is this sense of usage: I want to build a thing that visibly shows how people are using it, I think! I'm tired of building websites and products that look like they're dead. Maybe that's what I need to do. Or what do you guys think?
It sounds like you're feeling a bit frustrated with the disconnect between the cutting-edge technology you're working on and the readiness of the market to use and understand it. This is a common challenge for people working in research and development, especially in fast-moving fields like technology.
One way to address this issue is to focus on building products that are more closely aligned with the current state of the market. This could mean working on more mainstream tech projects, or targeting your products to a wider audience that may not be as technically advanced. This can help ensure that your products are more readily understood and used by a larger group of people, which can help you feel more fulfilled and successful.
Another option is to consider partnering with other companies or organizations that are better suited to bringing your products to market. This can help you focus on what you do best (developing cutting-edge technology) while leaving the task of bringing your products to a wider audience to those who are more experienced in doing so.
Ultimately, the key is to find a balance between your passion for working on cutting-edge technology and the need to create products that are useful and relevant to the market. By aligning your work more closely with the current state of the market, you can create products that are both technically advanced and widely used, which can help you feel more successful and fulfilled in your work.