Why I chose to build instead of grind Leetcode — and what happened

I'm 18. BTech CS student in India.

Everyone around me is grinding Leetcode, preparing for placement season, optimizing for offer letters.

I made a different choice.

I spent the last 4 months building XEdge — an AI tool discovery platform — completely solo, zero budget, while attending college.

Here's what that choice produced:

500+ users from 0

160+ curated AI tools

15 business execution playbooks

2,420 LinkedIn impressions on a single post

A Gumroad store ready to make first revenue

A pitch deck submitted to a VC fund

A skill set no placement interview ever tested

I'm not saying placement is wrong.

I'm saying it's not the only path and for a lot of people it's not even the best one.

The skills I learned building XEdge:

— How to validate an idea before building

— How to acquire users with zero budget

— How to price and sell digital products

— How to write content that reaches thousands

— How to build in public and turn struggle into marketing

None of that was on my syllabus.

If you're a CS student reading this — you don't have to choose between placement and building. But if you're only doing one of them, make sure it's the one that still matters in 5 years.

xedge.tech — built by a student, for builders.