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How to Ship Side Projects

blog.andyjiang.com

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Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#41

Post by epynonymous »

i think reid hoffman's quote (linkedin founder) sums it up best, "if you're not embarrassed with the first version of your product then you've launched too late."

i have seen many posts about mvp and narrowing scope here--all right on the money.

some other things that have worked for me, i'm the world's biggest procrastinator and i have literally 20-30 side projects that i've started for some time, was extremely passionate about, and then moved onto the next big thing, but i've recently had a few projects that i went deep on and actually got out, even hoping to build a business out of.

i've also found that the technology stack is not that critical, as a perfectionist i want to create a kickass platform that's easily maintainable, beautifully coded, using all the right tools that can meet billions of requests per day from the start, easy to deploy, automated, etc, but that typically just leads me down a huge rat hole. if your energy is finite (for me it is), you should focus all of it on getting your stuff out the door as quickly as possible, getting it in front of potential users because often times what you think is a great idea is raw and will need tuning. make things functional, able to showcase your main idea (or a particular use case), don't have to have all use cases fully done. get it out there and iterate. i'm certain that there are people that can make all the right technology decisions from the get go to support billions of requests per day, fully automated (if you are one of these, please email me right away!) but you're solving the wrong problems, if you want to get a side project or business out there, go build it, get it out there and then iterate, and iterate fast.

for the sake of argument, probably side projects like tools or libraries, these are a bit different in nature, you probably want to choose the right technology stack, etc. but if you want to build a business out of your side project, then don't dwell on this too much, use what you're familiar with that can give you the quickest turnaround, there will be pains with whichever tech stack you choose, some more than others, but it will pale in comparison to the roadblocks in front of you to build something into a business.

for one of my recent projects, i use sqlite3 for my relational database, i don't even want to spend all the 30 minutes or whatever to set up postgresql, it's to that level of scope reduction. when users grow, then i'll spend the time to upgrade and add backups, etc.

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#42

Post by leeoniya »

codingdave wrote: post #27

My trick has always been to solve one of my own problems, and be my own first customer. Then I know it works, and meets the goals of the audience. I figure that if I need the problem solved, so do other people, but even if nobody else ever shows up, I got my own value from it.

The problem is polish, documentation, marketing, promotion.

There's plenty of stuff that i've made that's useful in the form of an inelegant API that i don't mind using. But to build a polished product with documentation, a marketable presentation, analyze what you offer that the competition does not, getting people interested, blogging about it, is quite a lot more perspiration.

Writing a useful MVP is necessary, but often the easiest part. Most ideas dont fall under "if you build it and they will come".

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#43

Post by katkattac »

Swizec wrote: post #23
fogleman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all you have is a form, what am I paying for?

I've paid for products that were literally just a form and someone doing shit manually.

Examples?

I can't really think of anything I've paid for where at least a solid prototype didn't already exist.

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#44

Post by Clubber »

leeoniya wrote: post #42
codingdave wrote: post #27

My trick has always been to solve one of my own problems, and be my own first customer. Then I know it works, and meets the goals of the audience. I figure that if I need the problem solved, so do other people, but even if nobody else ever shows up, I got my own value from it.

The problem is polish, documentation, marketing, promotion. There's plenty of stuff that i've made that's useful in the form of an inelegant API that i don't mind using. But to build a polished product with documentation, a marketable presentation, analyze what you offer that the competition does not, getting people interested, blogging about it, is quite a lot more perspiration. Writing a useful MVP is necessary, bu…

Totally agree. Building a usable, shippable, commercial grade product and actually getting people to pay you money for it is quite an ordeal. An enormous amount of attention needs to be paid to get a product nobody cares about installed, even for free. Even after the sale, you have to provide support which will run at a loss until you reach a customer threshold.

The SaaS and subscription model evens out the revenue spikes, but you still have to make the sales.

A salesman, I am not. I suppose I should learn how to do it, but I don't have much passion for the sales side of business.

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#45

Post by wwalser »

Swizec wrote: post #7

Start with a credit card form. If nobody would pay for it, why would you invest precious time building it? You have better things to do. :)

If your goal is to eventually make money from the project then sure. There is value in shipping things only that they get used, open source comes to mind.

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#46

Post by leeoniya »

Clubber wrote: post #44
leeoniya wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is polish, documentation, marketing, promotion. There's plenty of stuff that i've made that's useful in the form of an inelegant API that i don't mind using. But to build a polished product with documentation, a marketable presentation, analyze what you offer that the competition does not, getting people interested, blogging about it, is quite a lot more perspiration. Writing a useful MVP is necessary, bu…

Totally agree. Building a usable, shippable, commercial grade product and actually getting people to pay you money for it is quite an ordeal. An enormous amount of attention needs to be paid to get a product nobody cares about installed, even for free. Even after the sale, you have to provide support which will run at a loss until you reach a customer threshold. The SaaS and subscription model evens out the revenue s…

This is usually why you need 2 people. Someone to build the product and someone to sell the product. There'd be no Jobs without Woz and vice versa. Exceptions to this are unicorns. It's not surprising that the presence or absence of co-founders is a strong signal to investors.

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#48

Post by xiaoma »

Swizec wrote: post #7

Start with a credit card form. If nobody would pay for it, why would you invest precious time building it? You have better things to do. :)

And if everyone followed this advice, we'd have no Kahn Academy, no Wikipedia, no Linux and a much poorer world.

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#49

Post by kalid »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #38
kalid wrote: post #12

Shameless plug, I just launched an overhaul to a side project today ( https://instacalc.com ). The biggest impetus was having a friend using the old version who pinged me with some feature requests. It reminded me that the service can help people I know directly and gave me a huge boost of motivation. If friends and family are using it, you'll want to help them out :).

Super awesome. You can save Calcs. Ways to 1Million in Yearly Recurring Revenue: https://instacalc.com/50021

Thanks! Yes, I wanted to make the "pastebin of calculators" :).

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#50

Post by [deleted] »

kalid wrote: post #12

Shameless plug, I just launched an overhaul to a side project today ( https://instacalc.com ). The biggest impetus was having a friend using the old version who pinged me with some feature requests. It reminded me that the service can help people I know directly and gave me a huge boost of motivation. If friends and family are using it, you'll want to help them out :).

[deleted]
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