I did a startup at night in the early days of React (2014), using React and golang for the backend. Building the whole stack from scratch gave me the confidence

I did a startup at night in the early days of React (2014), using React and golang for the backend. Building the whole stack from scratch gave me the confidence to form a web team within a larger company later some 7-8 years later, even though i had focused on iOS / mobile development only up until that point for my day job. So the project didn't get me a job. But it helped me expand my role. I went from iOS engineer to now engineering manager of a full-stack web team. And I probably would not have been able to do so without the confidence from that startup (whichever never reached PMF). These days I should probably do something similar with LLMs if there's time.