The Idea That Started Everything
I was a graduate student at Zhejiang University when I read a short story in a computer magazine that changed the direction of my life. A developer named Zhou Yi had built a small shareware program, sold it online, and made real money from it. That was it. That was the whole story. But for me, reading it felt like a switch being flipped.
I thought: I can write software. Why not me?
Two Failures. Then a Third.
My first product was an image viewer called UniView. I put it on the market and almost nothing happened. A handful of sales. I told myself it was the wrong product, and moved on.
My second product was a developer utility called DLL to Lib. Same result. Silence.
Then came my third attempt: Advanced Zip Repair. The idea came from a frustrating personal experience — I had spent hours downloading a large ZIP file, only to find it wouldn’t open. I opened it in a hex editor and saw that most of the data was actually fine. The damage was minor, fixable. So I built a tool to fix it.
Six months after launch, I had sold three copies.
Three.
I decided I was done. The software business wasn’t for me.
One Small Change. Everything Changed.
Before I walked away, I made one last adjustment. A small one. Almost an afterthought. It was a simple change to the business model — nothing dramatic, a change that took one hour to implement.
That month, sales jumped to over $600. The month after, they kept climbing. By the time I graduated, I was earning a stable $2,000 or more every month from Advanced Zip Repair alone.
I hadn’t changed the software. I hadn’t rewritten a single line of code. One small adjustment to how I was doing business — and everything shifted.
What That Moment Taught Me About Purpose
For a long time, I thought finding your purpose meant discovering a passion and chasing it relentlessly. But that’s not what happened to me. I didn’t choose data recovery. The market chose it for me.
When people could actually try my product before they paid for it, they discovered a genuine need they didn’t know they had. That invisible hand — the market responding to a real problem being solved — pointed me toward something I hadn’t consciously planned.
I went on to found DataNumen, which now serves customers in over 150 countries, including Fortune Global 500 companies. But none of that would have happened if I hadn’t made one almost-accidental change right before giving up.
Purpose, for me, didn’t come from a vision. It came from paying attention to what worked — and being willing to still be there when it did.
If You’re Feeling Stuck Right Now
Here is what I would tell my younger self, and what I’ll tell you: don’t mistake silence for failure. Sometimes the thing you’re building is right. The way you’re offering it is just slightly off.
Stay curious. Keep adjusting. And don’t quit just before the market finds you.
Have you ever come close to giving up on something — only to have it work right after you made one small change? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.
By Chongwei Chen
About the Author
Chongwei Chen is the founder, President, and CEO of DataNumen, a data recovery software company he has built over the past 24 years. DataNumen’s products are used in over 150 countries and by Fortune Global 500 companies including Toyota, IBM, GE, and Procter & Gamble. He holds a Master’s degree from Zhejiang University.