💡 I Launched a New Substack Venture — And It Flopped

Dispatches from the lab on failure, false assumptions, and why I’m still betting on freelance as the future.

Hey Sutoscientists,

I’m writing to you from the ashes of a failed experiment.

Test tubes cracked. Beakers still bubbling. Whiteboard full of crossed-out theories.

This was supposed to work.

We had the formulas. The momentum. The team.

We’d done it before — and done it well — with ✍️ Make Writing Your Job. So why not spin up another? Why not bring the same magic to the world of freelance devs?

What we created was 💻 Make Coding Your Job, a brand-new Substack community and job board meant to connect freelance developers to cool, high-paying projects — especially from startups that didn’t want to go through the gatekept world of recruiters.

We launched fast. Branded beautifully. Curated the listings. Brought on team members from the dev world. Set up our publishing rhythm.

And then?

The silence was loud.

Here’s a look into my notebook of failures, and why we ended up shutting down 💻 Make Coding Your Job just two weeks after launch:

🤖 The Assumptions That Broke

From the jump, this was personal.

Kyle Cords

and I have been hiring for technical roles — fullstack engineers, backend folks, other amazing builders — and still have a few specialists on our hiring wishlist. We figured, if we’re struggling to find great technical freelancers, maybe others are, too.

And we were seeing headlines everywhere about developers getting laid off and struggling to find work. The NY Times even ran this piece about recent CompSci grads getting hired to work at Chipotle due to shrinking job market in the tech world.

Surely there was a need, right?

But that assumption didn’t hold under pressure. Once we started sharing our new Substack with more freelance devs in our extended network, the feedback was clear and consistent:

“Why would I pay for a job board when I get recruiter emails all day?”

“Cool idea, but unless it comes with a recruiter, I don’t really need it.”

We weren’t offering the white-glove recruiter experience they were used to. We were building a community — a place to find great leads, share wisdom, and build a career on your own terms.

But that’s not what they were looking for.

They wanted pipelines. High levels of client vetting. Handholding. A concierge.

In other words: they didn’t want what we built.

💻 Two Weeks, Zero Traction

Even in the early days, there were red flags in the petri dish.

We got a few early paid signups — mostly from people in our extended audience who trusted us (which we deeply appreciated). But the second week brought no growth. No traction. No signal from the dev communities we’d hoped would jump in and rally.

We’d hired a small, smart team of freelance devs to help us build the community and curate listings. We set up systems. We were ready to scale. But the momentum just wasn’t there.

And when we looked at the numbers and the feedback, the diagnosis was obvious: no product-market fit.

Not even close.

🧬 Why We Pulled the Plug

Here’s the thing about running creative experiments in public:

You don’t get to hide the flops.

And 💻 Make Coding Your Job was a flop.

We built something no one asked for — at least not in the way we thought they would want it. We misread the market. We solved for a problem that didn’t exist in the way we imagined.

And that’s not a tragedy. That’s just… science.

We’re refunding everyone who paid. We’re thanking our team of freelancers for taking the leap with us. And we’re shelving the project with no bitterness — just a slightly singed lab coat and a deeper understanding of what doesn’t work in this space.

🔬 Why I’m Still Betting on Freelancers

Failure is inevitable when you’re building weird, ambitious things.

This wasn’t our first failed experiment — and it won’t be the last.

But here’s what’s not changing: our obsession with helping freelancers thrive.

Whether it’s writers, editors, marketers, or the rare hybrid unicorns who wear all those hats — I’m still betting on you.

I still believe there’s power in connecting top-tier creative talent to the founders and teams who actually value what we bring to the table.

And that’s where our next venture comes in.

📣 Next Up: Make Marketing Your Job

If you’ve been around the Sutoscience orbit, you know we work with marketers constantly.

PR teams, book marketers, launch specialists, social media strategists — we hire them, we refer them, we collaborate with them on nearly every big project we touch.

We know the marketing world. And more importantly, we know the struggles freelance marketers face when it comes to finding legit opportunities that pay well, respect timelines, and don’t expect you to be an entire agency in one human.

So: 📣 Make Marketing Your Job is our next field test.

We’re going to build it slowly, carefully — in conversation with our network of marketing freelancers and creative ops folks. We’re going to see what sticks. We’re going to validate before we scale.

And we’re going to be transparent about the whole messy process.

🧪 The Final Report

This isn’t a cautionary tale.

It’s a data point.

💻 Make Coding Your Job didn’t work — and that’s okay. Not every formula yields gold.

But every experiment teaches us something. And this one taught me that just because a solution worked in one industry doesn’t mean it transfers wholesale into another.

Different industries, different dynamics, different buyer psychology.

But the mission stays the same.

Find the people doing exceptional work — and help them get hired.

That’s what ✍️ Make Writing Your Job is all about.

That’s what 📣 Make Marketing Your Job will aim to do next.

Thanks for being in the lab with me.

Here’s to building smarter, failing faster, and staying curious.

—Amy