# Introduction

How many times do you need to step on the rake before changing your behavior? How many times do you need to see zero metrics to realize that your product is more dead than alive? How many times do you need to move your project folder to “Completed Projects” before you start doing things differently?

# The Startup

No word has ever evoked such a strong reaction as the word “startup.” We won’t even mention the word “chilly,” but it, too, can sometimes drive you up the wall.

I’ve attempted to build a “startup” numerous times instead of creating a business. A startup is when you rush to investors with a pitch and a semi-idea, maybe a moderately ready MVP, seeking those who will assemble your team, find managers, and depending on their expertise, you’ll either be coding or schmoozing at networking breakfasts, conferences, and inundating audiences through various channels.

If your strengths lie in marketing and sales—create waves of hype and bring in clients. If your skills are limited to writing code in WebStorm, that’s not enough. You can stubbornly pound your fist into your chest, but unless you have someone on your team who can charm and communicate with people, you’re unlikely to succeed.

In my distorted view, long transformed into a smoothie from constant reading of articles and successful startup stories, lies the misconception that a “startup” is all about “bang, bang, production, and investors.”

There, there, constantly tweaking products, conducting surveys, drawing CJMs, calculating ROI, worrying about your CPC, and often asking about CPL or CPS.

But none of this matters if, after 3-6 months, you’re trying to revive a miscarriage that, once accessible via IP address, refuses to show signs of life.

It turns out that reading smart books and listening to smart people isn’t enough… what’s needed is to close your IDE, open tools like XMind, Miro, FreeForm, and any other where you can finally think about your target audience and ask yourself a few questions: What am I going to sell them? How am I going to sell it? And why the hell do they need it? To be precise, the questions should be in reverse order… then there’s a higher chance that you won’t even need to create a new project in your IDE.

# Pitfalls

Who better than IT professionals to step on rakes the most? Seriously, have you ever seen a salesperson stepping on rakes?

If a good salesperson can sell any product, not every IT professional can create a good product. The only thing that connects us to this world is the keyboard our fingers tap out letters, words, and sentences in Telegram chats, which are much closer to us than constant calls, attempts not to hurt believers’ feelings, and displays of our barely-there soft skills like empathy.

Rakes—their one true belief is that we will be appreciated when we create something, but that appreciation will come later. Deferred gratitude. Deferred rewards we will receive later, later… when we execute. Meanwhile, we’re stuck in our prod and dev environments, tinkering with Webpack, linting, and minifying, while someone focused on sales is building landing pages on Tilda, posting articles on forums or Telegram channels, already getting the first feedback, assembling a base of alpha-beta testers, and building a picture of what’s happening—whether to engage in this or not.

Never has the belief of IT professionals in their product and themselves treated them so harshly, bringing about disappointment, lowered spirits, and thousands of lines of code that, if written on A4 sheets and by hand, could be angrily thrown into a burning fireplace.

# The Illusion

IT professionals need to become illusionists.

A hacker is the same IT professional who decided to use their knowledge and skills to steal money from people (if we’re talking about a black hat hacker) and earn a living that way… the same code, but with less disappointment—no need for gratitude and approval from others. Why would you need approval when you’ve stolen 150 bitcoins from wallet A and already praised yourself for the job?

IT professionals need to become illusionists, but only those who dive headfirst into this smoothie theme and don’t lose their desire to program along the way… I fully understand those who reluctantly close their IDEs and start writing articles, fully aware that without articles, there won’t be metrics tracking that one visitor who sees the product. Without visitors, there won’t be praise, gratitude, or money.

Yesterday’s IT professional writes articles, occasionally interrupting their programming to receive questions, some feedback that diverges from their sacred vision of their product.

If at this moment the IT professional were to become an illusionist, everything would be different… but what is an illusion?

Illusion—an distortion of reality perceived by a person as real.

Now, we as programmer-illusionists, coder-illuminati, need to engage our thinking abilities to create the illusion of product existence for the user and immerse them in another reality—the product exists, it works, it exists, and it’s tangible.

We must visualize this product in our minds as clearly as we see our code on the IDE screen, and with our eyes closed, navigate the user’s labyrinth, distorting their worldview and instilling BELIEF that our product is real.

IT professionals need to become preacher-illusionists who, with their own belief in the product, can ignite others and carry this fire to the first payments and MVP realization.

Belief is blind, and sometimes belief is so strong that money can come significantly before even the MVP is realized. The life of an IT professional is short, unpredictable, and full of incredible events from the digital world, but the time allotted to us—which we don’t dedicate our gaze away from the screens of our MacBook Pros 15/17 inches—is our mission to bring as many of our products, ideas, and innovative solutions into this world as possible, for which, of course, believers will pay us money… believers in us, our product, our vision. Greetings from Elizabeth Holmes.

IT professionals should become the new preachers of their own, yet-to-be-born products, and the belief with which they carry the good news to the masses will pour out more and more because it won’t be locked away for an extended period in WebStorm modals, Git consoles, and servers running CentOS Stream.

# Instead of Finishing

IT professionals have Faith… and this Faith is much stronger than the Faith of any other person in the digital community that their product will be a hit, that their product will change the world, that their product will be liked by users and will bring them fame, money, peace, and freedom.

Sometimes (though whom am I fooling? Often!) buried on the time graveyards are hundreds of hours of IT professionals’ lives, bright minds who could weather any storm and have the strength to overcome failures, if only they were illusionists.

Take care of yourselves, take care of your time, and take care of your Faith.

---