Everyone's first website is terrible. Mine was no exception.
In early 2020, I pushed a repository called cizgi-dizi - a fan site for a Turkish cartoon. It was basic HTML, some CSS that I thought was clever, and absolutely zero JavaScript. The design was questionable. The code was messier. But when I opened that index.html in Chrome and saw something I had built rendered on screen, something clicked.
The First Line of Code
I didn't start coding because I had a business plan. I started because I was curious. That first website was pure experimentation - tables for layout (yes, tables), inline styles everywhere, colors that had no business being next to each other. But it taught me the most fundamental lesson of software development: you learn by building, not by reading.
Within weeks, I was rebuilding it. Then rebuilding it again. Each iteration was slightly less terrible. I discovered CSS Grid, then Flexbox. I learned that float: left was not, in fact, the only way to position things side by side.
From Hobby to Hustle
The jump from "I can build websites" to "I can build products" happened faster than I expected. Once you realize that code can solve problems - real problems that real people have - you can't unsee it. Every frustration became a potential project. Every manual process became an automation opportunity.
I started building tools for Discord communities because that's where I spent my time. Server moderation was painful. Invite tracking was nonexistent. Spam was rampant. These weren't abstract problems I read about in a textbook - they were problems I experienced daily.
The Discord Era
My first serious project was a moderation bot for Discord. Basic commands: ban, kick, mute, warn. Nothing revolutionary. But it worked, and server admins needed it. Word spread. Within months, there were users I'd never met relying on software running in my bedroom.
That was when I understood product-market fit - not as a concept from a startup book, but as a lived experience. When people you don't know start depending on your software without you asking them to, you've found something.
Building HMD
By the time I founded HMD Corporation, I'd shipped enough projects to know two things:
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I could build things that scaled. The early projects were handling real traffic. I wasn't guessing about architecture anymore - I was making informed decisions based on real operational experience.
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Building alone has limits. The best software comes from collaboration. A company isn't just a legal entity - it's a commitment to building something larger than what one person can do.
HMD Corporation started as a way to formalize what I was already doing. But it grew into something much bigger - a multinational holding company with subsidiaries across Technology, Finance, Entertainment, and Commerce. HMD Developments became the technology arm, with its own team of developers building enterprise-grade software.
What That First Website Taught Me
Looking back at cizgi-dizi, I don't feel embarrassment. I feel gratitude. That terrible little website taught me:
- Ship early. The first version doesn't need to be good. It needs to exist.
- Learn in public. Every repository, every commit, every ugly first draft is a step forward.
- Problems are opportunities. The gap between "this is broken" and "I could fix this" is where startups are born.
I went from a fan site to a multinational corporation in about two years. Not because I had some master plan, but because I kept building. Each project was slightly more ambitious than the last. Each failure taught me something the previous success hadn't.
The distance between your first website and your first startup is shorter than you think. You just have to keep shipping.
If you're considering building your first project, stop considering and start building. The code will be bad. Ship it anyway.