He quit Apple to sell honey jars and learn sales | Ep- 64

From building apps at Best Buy to getting into Techstars, this episode is a masterclass in startup grit. Our guest, a Toronto-based founder and ex-Apple/IBM engineer, walks us through building 35+ projects, what failed, what made money, how he learned sales from scratch, and why he’s now obsessed with solving go-to-market problems for B2B startups. We go deep into: - How to know when to kill an idea - Lessons from making $0 to 5-figure MRR - The truth about VC pressure vs bootstrapping - Building SaaS + service hybrid models - Staying sane while building solo Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro: From On Deck to 35 Ideas 01:00 - Why most technical founders fail at sales 04:00 - Best Buy hack: Gaming ad revenue with Android apps 06:30 - First “real” win: Canada Top 10 apps 08:00 - Building “Spotify for News” (and shutting it down) 10:30 - When to kill your startup 13:00 - Side hustle to 1k MRR → quitting full-time job 16:00 - Why learning sales changed everything 18:00 - Selling blueberry honey to learn sales 21:00 - Cold email agency that failed — what went wrong 24:00 - SaaS vs. service models: What scales? 28:00 - “My platform did 10 things. Users wanted 1.” 31:00 - Mission-driven idea testing 35:00 - The 5K/month rule & building in public 38:00 - Should you raise VC or bootstrap? 41:00 - Burnout, support systems & staying sane 45:00 - AI tools stack: Cursor, Claude, Replit & more 50:00 - What actually keeps him going after 35+ tries