If anyone is thinking of replicating this challenge, I would recommend focusing on building tiny projects within a specific domain or set of customers, to boost creativity.
Six Months of Tiny Projects
111–120 of 151 posts
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#112From the author's description of the One Item Store: > Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the final product, I think its actually really cool. But building it.. it was just a bit boring. There were lots of bugs, and I started to get a bit burnt out thinking about the endless list of things required for a good online store builder. https://tinyprojects.dev/projects/one_item_store This is a fascinating observation. In…
I get that with every project though, the first 90% takes 10% of the time and is the most enjoyable.
This makes a lot of sense, and I've recently experienced the same thing. You start out with a blank canvas, everything's easy, you can code what you want and you move fast. As your product evolves, so does its complexity. Suddenly you're no longer just 'quickly going add this', because the constraints of what you already built hold you back. This is especially true for supposedly small projects without a lot of planning.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#113The gist of the article is: The OP created a tiny project, launched it on Product Hunt/Hacker News, and moved to creating another project. I'm glad he acknowledges the problem with this: "A Product Hunt launch can easily get you a spike in traffic, but afterwards I really don't know what I'm doing". Here are some tips to help with this: 1) Explore more "steady" acquisition channels. Yes, PH/HN are "spike-y" channels…
Please stop spamming HN with your link. We just asked you about this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25128211
It's amazing you are able to discover this kind of not-so-submarine-spamming.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#114The gist of the article is: The OP created a tiny project, launched it on Product Hunt/Hacker News, and moved to creating another project. I'm glad he acknowledges the problem with this: "A Product Hunt launch can easily get you a spike in traffic, but afterwards I really don't know what I'm doing". Here are some tips to help with this: 1) Explore more "steady" acquisition channels. Yes, PH/HN are "spike-y" channels…
Please stop spamming HN with your link. We just asked you about this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25128211
Oh, sorry, I haven't seen it. Saw it now. Is there a way to get in touch?
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is your definition of “tech bro”? The post comes off to me as someone who is humble, introspective, interested in technology, interested in testing out new ideas, and interested in getting better. Not sure what’s “tech bro” about any of that, but maybe that means I’m a tech bro, bro! /joke
You're right, it appears that tech bro is insulting to the HN audience. Too late to delete or edit my comment, but maybe future readers can ignore the offensive parts of the post. I still stand by the focus on product and selling for projects that were largely about learning could lead to negative comments. I attempted to get some balance in my original comment but it seems like using tech bro negated any of that
No offense taken here! I asked from a place of trying to learn what you meant. Part of why I like HN is because I can find posts that go deep in the technical aspects of things, posts that delve more into the product/business side of things, and lots of stuff in between. I think I understand the spirit of your original reply better now!
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#116From the author's description of the One Item Store: > Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the final product, I think its actually really cool. But building it.. it was just a bit boring. There were lots of bugs, and I started to get a bit burnt out thinking about the endless list of things required for a good online store builder. https://tinyprojects.dev/projects/one_item_store This is a fascinating observation. In…
There are a dozen articles a month on HN from founders or coders with websites that all say “know your customer before you write a line of code” or “find customers ready to write a check” before you start. “Sift through fool’s gold” - that’s what that advice is helping you avoid, time wasted coding a website that has no business validation. Adding features no one wants. If the author pushed One Item Store and said “I…
Talk about misunderstanding.
GP said nothing about customers. They said to align your work with your life. I'd re-phrase what you said as: align your work with the lives of your customers. That might be fool's gold for somebody, nevermind how many HN posts assume otherwise.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#117I don't understand why the other comments are being so negative, this is awesome . There's a Jony Ive quote along the lines of "when you build something, you get the actual thing, but even more valuable is how you've grown and changed from building that thing. Best of luck on your future projects, great on you to make awesome stuff and grow as a person!
> I don't understand why the other comments are being so negative, this is awesome . This is the contrarian dynamic at work: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... The first posts in a thread are usually negative because negative reactions are the easiest to feel and fastest to write. Also, most internet comments are objections to something, and when the thread is blank, the only thing there…
In one comment you said that the contrarian dynamic works on HN threads and to internet comments in general.
I just went and opened 10 random Reddit threads on the front page to read the top comments, and found only 2 where this was true, and 8 where this was totally false, most notably [1].
The main reason for negative comments here on HN (IMO) is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People have learned that usually the #1 comment is a negative one, so you have a bunch of people "competing" to be #1 by trying to nitpick whatever is wrong with the original article (even if there is none) in hope to win the popularity contest.
This is why I've seen some friends recently leave HN (their exact words: "couldn't hand the toxicity"). I hope that you, as a Head of Growth, can actively work to break this cycle.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/jw8xbe/if_w...
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#118imo I don't agree with the "buy domain name right away" since it may cause you to lose motivation/drive. Having the thought "build it first then when it's done buy a domain" is my thought. As I often buy domains and end up not using them/not finishing the project... still I can see the issue of securing a nice domain name. I think that would be great to make some project that has returns even a seemingly low sum of $…
I find it best to deploy something as soon as I buy the domain. I try to setup the CI/CD pipeline from day 1 with the framework of my choice and an ugly landing page. That first deploy is a fairly easy early win. And then I’m motivated to keep iterating.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the most disappointing comments I've read on HN. The patronizing negativity is bad enough, but it's not even accurate. Read the article about Earlyname. The author absolutely understands marketing, advertising, and customer acquisition. Oh, he also owns a real-life ice cream business with two locations and (as of 2018) three non-founder employees ( https://rippleandroll.com/ ), so I assume he knows abo…
I never said he didn’t know these skills, I said if he’s not willing to put the time to marketing and advertise each of these websites, then they’re not businesses. There’s nothing wrong with having a hobby of building web apps, I do it too. But a business is more than tech.
Read the Earlyname post. He is putting in the time to do those things.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#120Job well done. If anything, more people should build their tiny projects in public and document their journey like you did. Dribbble used to be this place for designers, where a community came together to show work in progress and get feedback from one an other. (then it turned into a marketing platform). There isn't really something like that for tiny software projects. If there was, I would be checking in on a dail…
My school has something called devgarden[0] although it is more of a curation of student built project repo than a detailed site like tinyprojects. [0] https://devgarden.macalester.edu
This is fantastic! Do you know if there's an open source project/framework powering this site? Seems really valuable for powering inner-source and private developer communities.