At some point, a lot of developers think about becoming entrepreneurs. Some end up taking the jump. So what happens when it turns out that nobody wants your product?

Cara Borenstein, co-founder at Stashpad, ended up in this exact situation. After a two year stint as a software engineer at Twilio, she saw an opportunity to create a notepad for developers to stay on top of context switching and manage knowledge-related tasks. V. 1 was a wiki that didn’t quite catch on.

Embracing this reality, Borenstein and her team decided to dig deeper by talking with target customers. That process catalyzed a transformation of the core product into something people need and love, a second brain for busy developers that helps them stay focused and retain those stray thoughts that can add up to something big later on.