The Button That Did Nothing

The first wall I hit on Top Corner Entertainment was not some grand technical disaster.

It was a button.

A simple “Create your account” button in the fantasy section.

I had already had that early rush you get when the AI makes something appear faster than your brain can process it. I started with a soccer trivia idea. My first prompt was not even “build this.” It was more like, “How would you suggest we build the greatest global soccer trivia game ever?”

The AI came back with a whole blueprint: daily quiz, career mode, head-to-head play, big soccer knowledge, the works. I said yes, picked a navy-and-lime look called “Stadium Night,” and within an hour there was a working trivia version live.

That part felt slightly magical.

Then, a few hours later, I asked the dangerous question: “Should we build a fantasy league?”

That turned the whole thing from a trivia game into something much larger. Multi-league. Season-long. Head-to-head. Salary-cap fantasy. Real soccer data from a paid feed.

I even said yes to a $25-a-month API bill. An API is basically a service that lets your app pull in information from somewhere else. In this case, soccer data.

This was the first time in my life I had agreed to pay a monthly bill for an app I had not launched.

So there I was, feeling brave and slightly ridiculous, clicking around this fantasy product that had barely existed a few hours earlier.

Then I tried to create an account.

Nothing happened.

I clicked again.

Still nothing.

Then I got red text telling me to wait 49 seconds before trying again.

That was the wall.

Not because it was the hardest problem in the world. But because it was the first moment where the shine wore off and I felt completely out of my depth.

I remember staring at the screen thinking, “Well, that’s it. I broke it. Or it was never really working. Or I have no idea what I’m doing.”

All three seemed possible.

The especially annoying part was that the app didn’t explain anything to me. No spinning wheel. No “creating account.” No “check your email.” Just silence. So I did what any calm, experienced, non-technical person would do.

I mashed the button like it owed me money.

And then the app scolded me with the 49-second message.

I felt genuinely stupid.

The AI eventually explained what was actually happening: the backend was working. The account creation was going through, and an email confirmation was being sent. But the page gave me zero feedback, so I kept tapping the button and hit the rate limit.

Rate limit is one of those phrases I had heard before but never really understood. In plain English, it means the system says, “You are trying too many times too quickly, please calm down.”

Which, honestly, was fair.

But in that moment, it felt awful. I was not thinking like a product owner. I was thinking like a confused user. And as much as I hated it, that was probably useful.

Because if I was confused, someone else would be too.

The fix was simple once we understood the problem: add a loading state and a clear message telling the person to check their email.

A loading state just means the button or screen shows that something is happening. It is the app’s way of saying, “I heard you. Please wait.”

That tiny bit of communication changed everything.

The strange thing about this first wall is that the app was not actually failing in the place I thought it was. The hidden part was working. The visible part was failing.

And for someone like me, who is learning as I go, that was a big lesson. I tend to assume the scary invisible stuff is where everything breaks. But sometimes the real problem is much more human: the app doesn’t tell people what’s going on.

I still felt embarrassed. I still had that little voice saying, “You’re 50 years old, what are you doing pretending you can build a fantasy soccer platform?”

But I also learned something I would not have learned from a perfect first try.

Small takeaway: if a button does nothing, the problem might not be the button — it might be the silence after the click.