How I Made a Million Dollars Vibe Coding a Vibrator

The moment I knew I had made it was when a man in a Patagonia vest hugged me too hard in a hotel lobby and said this was destiny. Not his destiny, mine. I had just signed a term sheet for more money than I had ever seen, more money than I deserved, and it felt immediately wrong, like winning a raffle for a crime I did not commit. I smiled anyway. I always smile at money. Money loves that shit.

The product was an accident. The success was an accident with better lighting. I tell people I hacked my way into a gap in the market. What actually happened is that I followed a trend, copied a tone, used the word community like it was holy water, and got lucky at the exact moment everyone else was tired and horny for hope. Not sex, hope. Hope with a recurring subscription.

The vibrator was never the point. It could have been a meditation app, a crypto wallet, a meal kit, a fucking scented candle. The object was just a vessel. The real innovation was confidence delivered at speed. I learned early that if you move fast enough, no one asks whether you know what you are doing. They assume you do. Speed is a costume. Genius is just someone running while everyone else is tying their shoes.

I did not have a mission. I had a deck. The deck came first. The mission came later, like a caption retrofitted onto a blurry photo. When investors asked why I was building this, I said empowerment. When they nodded, I added agency. When they leaned back, I said reclaiming intimacy. I watched their faces relax, relieved that I had done the moral math for them. Everyone wants permission to feel good about wanting money. I was happy to sell that permission wholesale.

Founders love to say they stumbled into success. Accidentally successful is the favorite fairy tale. It absolves us of intention. It makes the checks feel cleaner. I leaned into it hard. I told the story of late nights and scrappy breakthroughs, of intuition and grit, of listening to users even though I barely listened to my own voicemail. Each retelling sanded off another edge. By the tenth version, the lie was aerodynamic.

The rituals helped. Pitch days felt like church, rows of anxious faces waiting for revelation. Mentors spoke in parables about focus and grit, most of them having made their money before the internet melted everyone’s brain. I nodded, took notes I would never read, and learned the real lesson, confidence is contagious even when it is completely full of shit. Especially then.

Customers blurred together fast. Personas replaced people. I talked about them like weather patterns, volatile, emotional, easily influenced. I said we were building for them, which really meant around them. Validation came in numbers, signups, growth curves, charts that went up and to the right like they were escaping something. Every spike felt like proof that I was right all along, even though I had no idea what right meant anymore.

Money changes ethics in real time. It does not announce itself. It whispers. Suddenly corners look rounder. Trade offs feel strategic. Ignorance becomes focus. I told myself we were moving fast to help more people. I told myself the complaints were edge cases. I told myself the team would catch up. I told myself a lot of things while refreshing my bank app like it was a prayer wheel.

Investors were worse than I was, and that helped. They were anxious animals pretending to be sages. They asked about moats and defensibility, words that mean please do not let someone else get rich off this instead of me. I fed them timelines and narratives and a vision that evolved every quarter. When one asked about long term impact, I said cultural shift. He smiled like I had passed a test. None of us believed it. Belief was optional. Momentum was mandatory.

I started getting invited to panels. That is when the philosophy solidified. Nothing sharpens bullshit like an audience. I talked about intuition as if it were a muscle, about taste as if it were moral. I used phrases like building in public and learning out loud. I watched people write it down. I felt powerful and vaguely nauseous. This is how thought leaders are made, by saying obvious things confidently while standing near a logo.

There were moments, small and inconvenient, where the spell cracked. An email from a user who thought we were something we were not. A teammate asking why we were pushing a feature no one wanted except the board. A late night staring at a dashboard that looked impressive and empty at the same time. I almost slowed down. Almost asked harder questions. Then a payout rumor would circulate, or a competitor would get press, and the panic would return. Panic is productive if you pretend it is vision.

The truth is I was rewarded for confusion. The system loves a founder who does not know enough to be embarrassed. I confused arousal with validation, validation with innovation, innovation with meaning. Each confusion paid out. Each check made the next lie easier to tell. By the time I could see the shape of the mess, it was already profitable.

I did not ruin anyone’s life. That is the bar now. I did not fix anything either. The company exists. The money is real. The story is polished. People still ask how I did it. I say timing. I say listening. I say luck, like it is a spice and not the whole meal. They nod, hungry for a method. I feel generous and tired.

The office is clean now. White walls, plants that do not die, a faint smell that never quite goes away. Panic, lubricant, ambition, whatever it is, it lingers. I sit at my desk and try to feel something like closure. The numbers say I won. The philosophy says I meant to. The truth is quieter, and still unresolved, like a device left humming after everyone has left the room.