Entrepreneur & Speaker

From 25 failed projects to 22 million downloads

I'm an entrepreneur who spent 8 years building projects with zero success. All that failing prepared me for when the real opportunity finally came.

Now I share that real journey with students, founders, and anyone who wants the honest story—the failures included, not just the wins.

Today

What We Build At KallosSoft

Today, I run KallosSoft, a successful business with a remote team.

We build AI-powered mobile apps for photo and video processing, powered by our own self-hosted data center with 24 GPUs.

Photo restoration is our most popular feature—here's how it works:

Before

Damaged & faded

AI Processing

GPU computers at work

After

AI restored

Self-hosted GPU

100,000+

Photos processed daily

22M+

Total downloads

Our Apps

We built 40+ apps—9 of them over 1 million downloads and our top app reaching 10 million.

BlurBuster

Sharpen blurry photos with AI in seconds

10M+ downloads

FixMyPics

Restore and colorize old photos

Avatarro

Transform selfies into AI avatars

Blurito

Blur faces and backgrounds in photos

Video to Photo

Extract frames from videos with carousel

#1 for keyword

Shaky Video Stabilizer

Fix shaky footage like a gimbal

#1 for keyword

But it wasn't always like this. The path to success was long, full of failures, and taught me everything I know today.

Where it started

How It All Began

Programmer since 2007. Full-time employee from 2014. Entrepreneur since 2021. Before running my own business, I spent years at Morgan Stanley, Squla, and Nedap—getting paid to learn how to build great products.

Morgan Stanley

2014-2017

Budapest

Fintech software

Squla

2017-2020

Amsterdam

Educational games for kids

Nedap

2020-2021

Groenlo · Remote

Healthcare software

You know that movie The Social Network? Where Mark Zuckerberg codes furiously for a week, drinks some beers, and wakes up to find everyone using his site? Yeah, I wanted that.

Since second year of university, I built side projects obsessively. After work. On weekends. While keeping my full-time job. Every single one was supposed to be my ticket out—my excuse to finally quit and do my own thing.

25 projects. 8 years. All failures. But I loved building, so I never got tired. Each failure taught me something new (the hard way). The dream? Still burning. The motivation? Stronger than ever.

I kept thinking: "The next one will be it." Spoiler—eventually, I was right.

The Side Project Graveyard

Every failure became a lesson worth sharing

The Graveyard

25 Projects That Failed Spectacularly

Here are 6 highlights. Each one was supposed to be "the one"—and each one taught me exactly what not to do.

MyFreeBin.com

The Online Give-Away Community

A platform to save the planet from trash - instead of throwing things out, give them to someone who needs them. This was my first big project, but I underestimated the marketing efforts it would take to succeed. After one year of working on it, I tried Facebook ads with no experience and even went out to the city spreading flyers on the metro, but it was too little for such a big project. The website no longer exists.

Lesson learned

Marketing is as important as the product itself

Bed Boat

The Motorized Inflatable Mattress

View archive

An inflatable mattress with engines underneath - I wanted to sleep while moving on water. Initially tried with my own mattress and boat, but police stopped me because it was illegal. They said if it's a standalone boat, it's legal. So I went back to the garage, attached engines under the mattress and a PlayStation controller under the pillow to control the whole electric boat. I took it out four times and found myself in social media - 500+ photos and videos were taken of me each time. But I still didn't know how to make money from it, winter started, and I began my digital nomad lifestyle. The project is still in my friend's basement in Amsterdam.

Lesson learned

Viral attention doesn't always equal a business model

MeMelody

Lip Syncing Automation

View archive

The main reason I started building mobile apps. I wanted to recreate the success of a video that got me 2 million views on YouTube, but that video took four months to create because of the lip syncing details. I wanted to automate this and create similar videos in hours instead of months. The project took a lot of time - I created it, I finished it, but at the end, it was not successful. However, this accidentally started me on the path to creating successful apps.

Lesson learned

Sometimes 'failures' lead you to your true calling

LED Light District

Music Reactive Wearable LEDs

A music reactive LED project with motion sensors attached to my body that lights up the stage as I move. I worked on it for several months and got it to a prototype phase, but I was never satisfied with the results. I always wanted more and more perfection. The moral of the story: I didn't really know what the end result should be, and my perfectionist mind didn't want to let me finish and try it out. I wanted to travel the world and made this for myself - if I didn't get a remote job, I would go to city centers and dance with this invention to sustain my travels. But because it didn't reach the perfect level I wanted, I never finished the product. Only one prototype exists in my friend's basement.

Lesson learned

Perfectionism can be the enemy of done

YouDidNotKnow.com

Scientific Articles & SEO Dreams

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A website about interesting scientific topics. I started writing articles based on the assumption that I would defeat SEO. Before this project, I had literally just learned about SEO, and stupid me thought I could beat this science with keywords and articles. I mainly focused on making this project successful and profitable by defeating SEO because I'm smart (at least that's what I thought). But I quickly realized that writing articles is hard and time-consuming, and copying them would downgrade me in SEO. After a few months of being a copywriter and article journalist, I stopped. The website no longer exists, but the Instagram page is still up.

Lesson learned

There are no shortcuts to mastering complex systems

TechMeMe - Idea To App

YouTube Channel for App Promotion

View archive

This project connected to my crazy apps that nobody was searching for. I was thinking that if I create fun videos about them, they will spread. I released 4 videos so far - every time I released a video, it spiked the app downloads for those few days, but then still nothing. Each 5-minute video took me 1 week to produce as I focused on high quality. So eventually I stopped and continued creating apps. It was also a lot of time to go to Reddit communities and promote the hard way, getting kicked out of groups all the time. Not so sustainable. Maybe one day I'll continue.

Lesson learned

High-quality content takes time, and viral marketing isn't always sustainable

The Breakthrough

The First Sign of Success

I started building Android apps in 2020. Over the next 1.5 years, I released more than 15 apps by myself. Three of them accidentally became successful: Video Stabilizer, Video to Photo, Blurito.

I told myself: "Once I hit $1,000 a month, I'll quit my job and double down on my own projects." And I did! After 8 years of failures, it was time to go all or nothing.

All or Nothing

The Plan

My partner was doing keyword research. She found a gap: only two AI photo enhancers on the Play Store. We could be the third.

Perfect timing. She loved market research, I loved building apps. We had six months of savings and a backup plan—if it failed, I'd find another job or move back with my parents.

In 2021, we both quit our jobs and built the AI photo enhancer and AI photo restore.

The Launch

Right Place, Right Time

First month? 80,000 downloads. All organic. Zero ads. Zero marketing budget.

My savings ran out before I could take dividends from the newly created company. I had to borrow from a friend. But the apps took off, and I paid him back within months.

That launch changed everything.

Scaling Up

Building a Real Company

For the next year, we ran everything ourselves. But we hit a ceiling—there was too much work, and we couldn't scale anymore. So we made our first hire.

Then we partnered with a third co-founder, a master Product Owner. He ran over 100 A/B tests on our apps over 1.5 years. Result? 5x revenue increase.

With that growth, we started paid marketing. The apps maxed out—we moved into maintenance mode and started building new projects to diversify our portfolio.

Along the way, I learned to hire. And to fire. Managing people, delegating work—skills I never needed as a solo developer, but essential for running a company.

Zsolt Kallos with students after a speaking engagement in Thailand

Thailand · Community session

Mission

Giving back to the next generation

I dreamed about doing work that helps a lot of people. Now I dedicate part of every month to speaking with universities, high schools, and entrepreneurial communities—always pro bono.

The goal is to equip students, aspiring founders, and digital nomads with the practical insights I wish I had earlier: how to pick the right problems, move fast, and stay resilient when things fall apart.

Talks mix stories, memes, and frameworks you can apply the same day. Whether you're designing your first app or scaling a team, you'll hear the unfiltered lessons behind 25 failed experiments.

Global sessions

Speaking engagements

From classrooms to founder meetups, I tailor the story to the room while keeping it practical and energetic.

Entrepreneurial community

NomadFest · Bansko, Bulgaria

Private school

Bamboo School · Buriram, Thailand

High school

Lamplaimat Pattana School · Buriram, Thailand

Entrepreneurial community

NomadBase · Croatia

Community organisation

PDA · Bangkok, Thailand

University

University · Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand

Tech community

Vibecode Meetup · Bansko, Bulgaria

Tech academy

Apple Developer Academy · Surabaya, Indonesia

High school

High School · Satu Mare, Romania

Media appearance

Podcasting

YouTube interview

Interview with Samson Volves (200k subscribers)

Entrepreneurial community

Malta Digital Meetup

...and many more. Each stage is a chance to help someone ship their next idea faster.

Free for education

Sharing the playbook is part of the mission. Talks for schools and student communities are always on me.

"Every failure gets you closer to success. Let me help your audience skip a few of mine."

All sessions for educational institutions, universities, high schools, and entrepreneurial communities are delivered free of charge. It's the easiest way I can give back to the people who remind me why I started.

Talks

Keynote topics

Pick the story that fits your audience—or blend a few into one high-energy session.

The 25-failure recipe for success

I break down my 8-year struggle with 25 failed projects and share the simple 3-step "recipe" for finding a viable idea:

Find what people are already searching for
Ensure there are fewer than ten competitors
Read 1-star reviews and build what they missed

Don't chase unique ideas unless you're ready for marketing. Nobody searches for a rapping robot even if it's brilliant.

Practical business skills that matter

Beyond coding—we go deep on the business moves learned the hard way:

A/B testing frameworks that took us from thousands to millions
Product ownership decisions rooted in user behaviour
Marketing without a budget: 80,000 downloads in month one
Infrastructure trade-offs and why I built a self-hosted AI data centre

The leap: quitting your 9-to-5

Leaving a safe salary for an unproven idea, living on savings, and working 12-hour days with no guarantee of success—this is the honest behind-the-scenes story.

Creator vs. entrepreneur mindset

Programmers love to build everything themselves. I share how I shifted from the "creator" mindset to empowering teams and shipping faster.

Problem first, technology second

Cool tech doesn't matter if nobody needs it. We'll explore methods for spotting real problems worth solving.

Tech for good: beyond downloads

Stories from the Mechai Bamboo School in Thailand and creating the "AI for Teachers" guide to reach communities who need it most.

Invite me

Book Me For Your Event

I speak with students, founders, and communities about turning failure into momentum. Talks are always free for educational organisations.

Keeping the room laughing while learning

What you get

100% free talks

Student-approved energy and memes

Practical skills: A/B testing, marketing, product ownership

Transparent stories of failure and success

Lessons beyond tech—entrepreneurship for any field

Flexible schedule when I'm in your timezone

Topics

EntrepreneurshipProgrammingRapid prototypingCoding with AIDigital nomad lifeVideo storytelling

Perfect for

UniversitiesHigh schoolsStartup incubatorsEntrepreneurship programsComputer science departmentsBusiness schoolsInnovation labsDigital nomad communitiesTech meetups

Ready to inspire your audience?

I'm travelling full-time as a digital nomad and available worldwide for in-person or virtual sessions.

Connect with me

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