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Six Months of Tiny Projects

tinyprojects.dev

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Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects

#101

Post by bluedevil2k »

agwa wrote: post #49
bluedevil2k wrote: post #5

> I believe there's a big advantage to this "micro-bet" approach of launching many tiny businesses These aren’t businesses. These are websites. Most people on HN can build a website. It takes some coding and some tech knowledge. Not everyone can build a business. That involves marketing, advertising, customer acquisition, cash flow management, legal, on and on. While what the author did was neat and fun for him, let’…

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.

Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects

#102

Post by bluedevil2k »

qw wrote: post #48
bluedevil2k wrote: post #5

> I believe there's a big advantage to this "micro-bet" approach of launching many tiny businesses These aren’t businesses. These are websites. Most people on HN can build a website. It takes some coding and some tech knowledge. Not everyone can build a business. That involves marketing, advertising, customer acquisition, cash flow management, legal, on and on. While what the author did was neat and fun for him, let’…

The full quote is: > I believe there's a big advantage to this "micro-bet" approach of launching many tiny businesses, and then sticking with the ones that become successful. The full quote changes the context. From what I understand, he sees it as a way to validate business ideas with small amount of effort.

Small amount of effort? He put 6 months into this. That’s not small. We see sooooo many articles on HN saying “know your customer before you write a line of code” or “find people who are ready to write a check”. Like a dozen of these articles a month from coders who are writing a post-mortem or telling us lessons learned. It’s like we all forgot those important lessons when we read this article.

Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects

#103

Post by x87678r »

aazaa wrote: post #64

From 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.

Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects

#104

Post by bluedevil2k »

aazaa wrote: post #64

From 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’m going to market it cause it’s cool now, I’ll add features when people ask for them” then he might enjoy it more and be surprised to find people who will use it and pay for it as is.

Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects

#105

Post by lallysingh »

This is great! You should put out a book.

Also a meta-site on 'minimal way to do X' on all the random tech you've had to setup and assemble would be useful.

I guess that's 2 more tiny projects. Hmm, I guess they'd be tiny meta projects.

Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects

#107

Post by justinlloyd »

All of these projects (even the failures and the flameouts) are 100% fantastic. Some I look at and think "That looks like shit!" Some I look at and think "I don't see the point." Some I look at and think "Wish I'd thought of that." But every single one of them, the shit ones, the pointless ones, the really neat ones, they all have value. Massive learning opportunities, the fact you published something, the fact you experimented. I cannot commend you enough for what you have achieved.

I get involved in "weekend projects" (sometimes they go a little longer than a weekend), and I find that without the pressure to deliver something useful it lets me explore whimsical ideas and learning opportunities I don't get in my day job.

Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects

#108

Post by Impossible »

franl wrote: post #86
Impossible wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good that he built some side projects and seems like he learned a lot. And the process and write ups are entertaining, but I understand some of the negativity. He comes off as peak tech bro, instead of talking about how he's making the projects for fun or for learning everything is about monetizing or getting views on (admittedly!) poor quality hackathon projects. Dialing down some of the tech bro and the focus…

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

Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects

#109

Post by gilli »

oli-g wrote: post #73
krm01 wrote: post #62

Job 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…

> There isn't really something like that for tiny software projects IndieHackers seems close enough to me

Yeah I was going to suggest IndieHackers, plenty of tiny projects going on there.
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