April 10, 2025

We won a hackathon for prototyping a simplified signup flow that could earn up to $1,000,000 over the next two years. But my million-dollar idea never shipped. 💔

The project quietly died once the hackathon fever wore off. In retrospect, I lacked three critical things: ownership, influence, and advocacy.

1️⃣ Ownership
After the hackathon, I needed to carry the torch. But I didn’t.
🔴 I didn’t write a proposal.
🔴 I didn’t follow up with leadership.
At the time, I didn’t have the psychological safety 🛡️ or leadership skills 🧭 to step forward.

2️⃣ Influence
To get buy-in, I needed strong relationships with the PM and engineering leadership.
🔴 But I’d focused so much on technical contributions that I hadn’t built much trust beyond my immediate team. My tech lead was in the same boat.

3️⃣ Advocacy
Even with buy-ins, I would’ve needed to rally cross-functional partners—UX, frontend, backend, mobile, QA, customer support—to bring it to life.
🔴 That required self-advocacy 📣, backed by the very skills I didn’t yet have.

There was no mentorship or coaching to help me figure this out. So the project never made it past the prototype stage. 🪦

But the experience stayed with me—and shaped how I coach engineers today. It inspired the 𝗙𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗘𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗧𝗠, my framework for helping engineers turn ideas into real impact and career growth.

💬 You don’t need to wait for a title to start making Staff-level impact.

If you’ve got ideas worth shipping but feel stuck on how to get them across the finish line—let’s work together to turn your potential into real momentum.