Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#11

Post by levimaes »

ezekg wrote: post #2

I haven't launched, so I hope this is okay. I'm 7/mo into developing a side project called https://keygen.sh , and am finally wrapping things up to launch a beta in early January. I have a few hundred people on my mailing list, so that's a plus. Challenges I've faced: - Getting carried away with automation: emails after certain events, marketing to users who don't convert, billing features; all of these are things I…

This looks like a demanding project! I hope you make good headway, and get a lot of traction this new year. I'm curious, since I'm convinced consumers are deviating away from licensed native software towards web-accessible, web-authenticated product subscriptions, who your target audience/market is supposed to be? If it's targeted at native Electron and NW.js developers, can I ask what problem(s) your product might solve? I am new to product development, and I am just curious about what I'm missing.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#12

Post by levimaes »

aminozuur wrote: post #4

3 months to build a new video chat platform. The first release was very naked, live video chats worked, but there was no text chat on the side. Since then, we've fixed a lot of connection bugs, added Twitter login, and had to scale to a new server with 15 times capacity. It's called Harf, would love to hear anyones opinion: http://harf.io

Hi, can I ask what features you're going to implement next? Also, is harf.io's main advantage supposed to be that it's essentially a committment-free, platform agnostic videochat service? Who do you think would use it most; Craigslist patrons requesting remote, "hand-on" previews of listed products with constraints to iOS' facetime or Google's Duo?

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#13

Post by Stanleyc23 »

I started playing with computer vision toolkits like OpenCV in the late summer, took a couple months to play with different tutorials, then it took another couple months to launch a simple iOS game with face and mouth detecting. As an MVP, I avoided any features that might turn into a time sink and didn't even include in-app purchases.

Working with the libraries was unexpectedly easy since I looked at a lot of sample code and tutorials.

The challenges are to come when I have to dig deeper into combining different image processing techniques to boost my particular tracking needs. Additionally, I'll have to learn about 3D graphics from scratch if I want to make the game more immersive and dynamic. Lastly if I want to add stuff like an in-game economy, that will take time away from experimenting on the computer vision stuff.

Check it out and send me feedback! https://appsto.re/us/hhcxfb.i

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#14

Post by aminozuur »

levimaes wrote: post #12
aminozuur wrote: post #4

3 months to build a new video chat platform. The first release was very naked, live video chats worked, but there was no text chat on the side. Since then, we've fixed a lot of connection bugs, added Twitter login, and had to scale to a new server with 15 times capacity. It's called Harf, would love to hear anyones opinion: http://harf.io

Hi, can I ask what features you're going to implement next? Also, is harf.io's main advantage supposed to be that it's essentially a committment-free, platform agnostic videochat service? Who do you think would use it most; Craigslist patrons requesting remote, "hand-on" previews of listed products with constraints to iOS' facetime or Google's Duo?

Harf.io's main difference is that everything is public. I cannot watch other people's conversations on Facetime, Skype or Duo. Let alone call in and interact with them. But I can on Harf.

We are pushing code every day, though it's not always visible to the user. A lot of features are coming soon, most importantly moderations tools.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#15

Post by ezekg »

perfmode wrote: post #3
ezekg wrote: post #2

I haven't launched, so I hope this is okay. I'm 7/mo into developing a side project called https://keygen.sh , and am finally wrapping things up to launch a beta in early January. I have a few hundred people on my mailing list, so that's a plus. Challenges I've faced: - Getting carried away with automation: emails after certain events, marketing to users who don't convert, billing features; all of these are things I…

When I view your landing page, the graphics spaz out. Is that intended?

Yes. I wanted to try something a little different for the design. It's meant to give off a 'hacker' vibe (complete with a few Mr. Robot references).

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#16

Post by pesfandiar »

I had an idea of a static JavaScript practice website with little to no maintenance required. It took me about a month of part-time work from idea to having the website up. I took a month or so to add more content to it.

It was never meant to make any money, so maybe your definition of side project is more specific than mine. I got about tens of clicks on the affiliate links and made a grand total of $0.00.

The website is at https://javascript.onl/ and I wrote a high-level blog post about how I did it at http://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/2016/05/12/javascript-online-...

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#17

Post by ezekg »

levimaes wrote: post #11
ezekg wrote: post #2

I haven't launched, so I hope this is okay. I'm 7/mo into developing a side project called https://keygen.sh , and am finally wrapping things up to launch a beta in early January. I have a few hundred people on my mailing list, so that's a plus. Challenges I've faced: - Getting carried away with automation: emails after certain events, marketing to users who don't convert, billing features; all of these are things I…

This looks like a demanding project! I hope you make good headway, and get a lot of traction this new year. I'm curious, since I'm convinced consumers are deviating away from licensed native software towards web-accessible, web-authenticated product subscriptions, who your target audience/market is supposed to be? If it's targeted at native Electron and NW.js developers, can I ask what problem(s) your product might s…

I don't see native software going anywhere anytime soon. There are things that will never* be able to be done in a web browser, such as a GUI for certain things, or a Terminal app that runs commands on your machine. (*don't quote me on that.)

My product was developed because I've written more or less the same licensing API logic for a few different desktop applications. I figured I couldn't be the only person who didn't want to write licensing logic, especially when it starts getting more complex with add-ons, user accounts, etc. so I've been creating a solution for myself and everybody else.

Keygen solves that issue by making licensing simple for desktop applications (not only limited to Node/JavaScript, of course), as well as some web apps (most notably in my mind would be gaming or other SaaS apps, but really it could be used for many different types of web apps). I've tried to provide a better UX than current solutions, such as not requiring a license key but rather having your users login and then checking their account for a specific license.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#18

Post by panorama »

We started working on customer development in May part-time (full-time starting July). It wasn't until mid-September that we actually knew what we wanted to create, and that's when we bought our domain. From there it took til early November to get our first paying customer.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#19

Post by jasonkester »

I had the idea for the feature that would eventually turn into Unwaffle [1] back in July. It was initially just going to be an internal tool to track trial user actions for S3stat so that I could detect trends to predict who would convert on their own and who would need intervention.

But it quickly became apparent how useful it would be as a product, so I built it that way from day one, with its own domain and API for collecting data. The idea was to build the pieces I needed to do my thing, and if it didn't work amazingly well, to shoot it in the head and move on.

So:

  - Idea in July
  - Prototype in August
  - Decided to move forward in September
  - Public site live in September
  - Fully functional by around October
  - Some minor promotion in November
  - Just went live with real customers in December
No paying users yet (and no means of processing payment). With luck, and assuming the first round of trials go smoothly, it should get a proper "Launch" in January.

Naturally, feedback is always welcome.

[1] https://unwaffle.com

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take to release your side project in 2016?

#20

Post by soared »

Less than a day.

I had been thinking about it for weeks/months and knew exactly how it would work. Having mentally worked out all the problems simplified the creation so much. While putting things off is usually bad, sometimes continuously thinking about it solves problems before they come up. The only challenges I had were with learning new tools and not execution.

Wrote a hn post (on an alt acc) and sent a few emails and it had a couple nice traffic spikes and news/blog articles. I haven't touched it since though. I won't link it because I don't want my name attached to it.

Post reply on HN