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5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

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Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#161

Post by jhoechtl »

zeroc8 wrote: post #71
prox wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Guy Kawasaki once said in Art of the Start : “You want to be high and on the right.” You make something everyone wants and is of great value, and only you can make it. The worst place is making something that 50 others do and is of no value to the customer.

The only problem is that pretty much anything I can do has been done a zillion times by others.

With the internet economy enabling perfect markets, everyone is competing with good enough monopolists so tiny niches remain to become successful.

perfect market = Market with a perfect allocation between demand and supply, because of no information deficiencies.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#162

Post by antykodon »

kjksf wrote: post #91
zepolen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That list really drives home the 'ideas are cheap' phrase. I guess the good ideas are expensive.

I very much agree that ideas are cheap. I don't agree that "good ideas are expensive". The issue is: we don't know which ideas are good or bad. The stats from Venture Capital markets are showing that clearly. Before someone even gets a meeting with a good VC firm the idea is already filtered 100-1 if not 1000-1. Of those who get the meeting, maybe 1 in 100 get an investment. Of those that get an investment, out of 10…

Could you please share the source of these VC stats?

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#163

Post by brabel »

herval wrote: post #106
kjksf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "just stick with it" is a good advice in general and especially not for his projects. He was smart to abandon his minimal time tracker, minimal metronome and jobs website. BTW: he didn't get 5 users for minimal time tracker, he got 5 people who signed up for a mailing list based on screenshots of non-existing product. Even smarter would be to not do such projects in the first place. With jobs websites y…

“Stick with it” is by no means what I said. A time tracker isn’t an end-all product - you start with it, then spiral out based on customer feedback. I’ve seen plenty of companies start that way and succeed, even time tracker and job posts. High competition is also not a red flag by definition. It’s a strong indication that the market exists, and as a solo or bootstrapped founder, that’s a HUGE time & money saver. Low…

> I’ve seen plenty of companies start that way and succeed, even time tracker and job posts.

That would be a good argument if you mentioned which ones.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#164

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

StevePerkins wrote: post #68

Maybe I'm just old and cranky and this is a generational thing, but when did "side project" become mixed up with "side hustle"? I think the dead horse has been beaten already in this thread, with what the author "should have done" in terms of market research, A/B testing, MVP, etc. No need for me to pile on further there. But what strikes me is that the author really seems to draw no distinction between personal side…

What I get from this post is how out of touch the world of silicon valley, tech investments and startups have become with reality. Almost anything can "make you rich" in the loop that goes: Idea -> Startup -> Impressing investors -> sell out and move on.

In that world, the presentation of your idea/product is everything, and the idea/product only plays a minor role, because you have to impress rich people that often don't know anything about it. Once you succeed you can pump so much money into it that even the worst idea is able to create some success.

Back to the post: It feels like this kind of sentiment is what spawned the feeling behind it. The projects very much seem straight out of a "new app to change the world" presentations aimed towards investors.

I do not doubt that they could generate profit, but I doubt that they have all that much value.

Add to that the startup sentiment of "if it's not an immediate huge success it's basically a failure" that the post radiates.

Even the conclusion of the post gives me the vibes that the takeaway should be to churn out more, any projects faster, until something eventually sticks.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#165

Post by brabel »

jjeaff wrote: post #98
human wrote: post #10

I find this kind of post very interesting. The key takeaways from my point of view is that none of these projects actually created value. Most of them didn’t solve a problem that other software hadn’t already solved. The most interesting one I think was the appartment notitication one. Especially that today there is such a race if you want to find a good and affordable appartment. It’s just too bad the author wasn’t…

Regarding solving a problem. I think there is always room for a better way to solve a problem. Really, there is room for multiple companies to solve the same problem the same way. If I would have been pitched Airbnb in its early days, I likely would not have given it much thought. After all, VRBO has been doing basically what Airbnb does for 25 years.

Airbnb is a good example of "success" by doing nothing new, just pushing past law or other external difficulties that no one else managed before.

Like you say, there had been similar apps for several years. CouchSurf-style websites were common, and the transition to paid accommodation provided by normal people is obvious from there, but no one could get past the difficulty of getting people to pay for something that was commonly done for free, and getting this done without legal issues.

AirBnb, to my knowledge, was likely illegal in most places it worked, but similar to Uber, was on perhaps a gray area that allowed it to continue working until it was so big it cold lobby politicians to acommodate it within the law.

Only a handful of successes can happen this way, and I think all that could, have already happened.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#166

Post by brabel »

unobatbayar wrote: post #147
guessbest wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He needs to make ten times as many applications/solutions at least in the same time frame. His ratio comes to less than one project a year and across different markets. In fact he doesn't even release but two of the projects mentioned. The product startup world moves a lot faster than that. "How I failed 5 side projects in 6 years"

Exactly. It needs to become a habit so that he can release at greater velocity. Regulary thinking about new ideas and the writing code 1-2 hours everyday is ideal.

Spamming startups!? Yeah, I don't think the world needs more of that.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#167

Post by a_c »

Did you get better at evaluating ideas? Did you get faster in building MVP? Did you get better at listening to customers? Did you get deeper understanding at any of the business domain you worked at? If any of these is yes, then I think you time is well spent. (Financial) Success don't usually arrive suddenly. Keep crushing it!

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#168

Post by BatteryMountain »

Oof. I have something similar as other stories posted here.

I have about 30 pet projects from the past 10 years or so, not released to the public and I treat them as utterly private. A few of them have gotten me through job interviews when I would have failed otherwise. I think some of them exist as a form of therapy. I can probably "productize" 2 or 3 of them but then the world will be the judge of my work. The code I write at home is much different from what I do at work, where we supposedly follow best practices and at home.. I just express myself. I'm so utterly pleased with some of the things I've come up with that would make development easier (not a new framework, don't worry) but I cannot take it to work since it would mean blasphemy and it would most likely make our architect have another meltdown.

My favourite project of the bunch is a code/platform generator. After that one it is probably the small storage engine I've built cause I got frustrated with sql + object mapping - it works so nicely but the entire community/industry will take a dump on it, as relational/sql db's are supposedly god.

I maybe want to share some of my work with the world, not as side-projects to earn money, but perhaps just for the fun of it and to contribute yet another shape of doing something - even if it is to educate how not to do something, that is fine too.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#169

Post by xunn0026 »

martincmartin wrote: post #25
herval wrote: post #15

All these have a thing in common: he gave up because they weren’t immediate successes. Some even had traction: 5 users in 3 months isn’t the incredible outlier story you hear time and time again, but it’s 5 people you can talk to, listen to what they want (and why they signed up anyway), then you gear up from there. We’re too conditioned to believe in the stories of immediate success and MVPs making tens of thousands…

Reminds me of "Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it." by Joel Spolsky. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/21/good-software-take...

It would be an absolute disaster if people would stick to their dead-end side projects for 10 years before calling it quits.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#170

Post by kahon65 »

Gigachad wrote: post #112
martincmartin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of "Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it." by Joel Spolsky. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/21/good-software-take...

This seems true of small scale things but companies like google have been able to release good software on the first try. I don't remember it vividly but I used google docs and drive on the first year and I don't remember having a single issue with them and I can't even think of anything it does now almost 10 years later that I would have wanted back then.

Wtf your pseudo dude, "Gigachad"?
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