How to Ship Side Projects • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#81

Post by glennbot » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 1:36 PM UTC

Tarlen wrote: post #71

I will agree with the strategy of separating your product into sub-products, and working on and releasing them one at a time. A single, well-executed feature is often better than many mediocre ones. Especially as a solo founder (shameless plug: I run https://resend.io ), I think this is the best way to both test your assumptions early, and to consistently ship improvements without spreading yourself too thin. I've ta…

Or just shamelessly ripping off intercom's product is another quick way to iterate and test your assumptions.

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#82

Post by Tarlen » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 1:41 PM UTC

glennbot wrote: post #81

Tarlen wrote: post #71

I will agree with the strategy of separating your product into sub-products, and working on and releasing them one at a time. A single, well-executed feature is often better than many mediocre ones. Especially as a solo founder (shameless plug: I run https://resend.io ), I think this is the best way to both test your assumptions early, and to consistently ship improvements without spreading yourself too thin. I've ta…

Or just shamelessly ripping off intercom's product is another quick way to iterate and test your assumptions.

If you can execute well and if the demand is there, that's definitely a viable strategy to get you off the ground - Ride the wave

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#83

Post by gejjaxxita » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 1:44 PM UTC

I really enjoyed reading this. I have been stalling on a side project for some time and this article has given me some ideas with how to proceed. Specifically narrowing down the requirements.

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#84

Post by hawski » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #77

soft_dev_person wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling with finding a problem I have myself that isn't already solved a thousand times. As a software developer it's not so easy, as software developers tend to solve their own problems very quickly =) My hobbies so far haven't translated neatly into side projects, but I guess I just need to get more creative.

Solution: create a platform where users can submit their problems, and developers can take inspiration and build solutions :)

The main problem of such a platform would be the signal to noise ratio. I imagine majority of submissions would go in the direction of "faster horses" and "X, but better".

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#85

Post by ookblah » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

Tarlen wrote: post #71

I will agree with the strategy of separating your product into sub-products, and working on and releasing them one at a time. A single, well-executed feature is often better than many mediocre ones. Especially as a solo founder (shameless plug: I run https://resend.io ), I think this is the best way to both test your assumptions early, and to consistently ship improvements without spreading yourself too thin. I've ta…

i think the drawback to this approach is that maintenance and just "staying in place" starts to become a nightmare. development is circular in that you have to loop back around and make sure your good live chat plugin even better as time goes on.

it's not just lay a brick and you're done. my experience has been that you either solve a problem that is very single minded (bonus if it's in the consumer space) and tries to solve for one or two problems, or be prepared to face reality in hiring and scaling.

you might be able to compete on some level with the well funded companies, but you aren't going head to head with intercom or hubspot without more resources. not to mention that businesses don't want to deal with companies that don't seem like they have the capacity to support them.

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#86

Post by Tarlen » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

ookblah wrote: post #85

Tarlen wrote: post #71

I will agree with the strategy of separating your product into sub-products, and working on and releasing them one at a time. A single, well-executed feature is often better than many mediocre ones. Especially as a solo founder (shameless plug: I run https://resend.io ), I think this is the best way to both test your assumptions early, and to consistently ship improvements without spreading yourself too thin. I've ta…

i think the drawback to this approach is that maintenance and just "staying in place" starts to become a nightmare. development is circular in that you have to loop back around and make sure your good live chat plugin even better as time goes on. it's not just lay a brick and you're done. my experience has been that you either solve a problem that is very single minded (bonus if it's in the consumer space) and tries…

Definitely. You will reach a point where perhaps you will be spending 70% of your time building out novel features, while the remaining time is spent reiterating on your existing features to make sure they stay relevant.

And the beauty of being a solo founder (even more so a digital nomad living sparingly) is that you don't have to go head to head with the giants, even if you were to just tickle them with a stick and steal 0.1% of their customers, you'd be doing very well for yourself.

And since you cannot match their wallet, try to beat them in efficiency. With smart technology decisions, you can maintain incredibly low operational costs, while ensuring massive scalability (shout out to Elixir).

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#87

Post by SonicSoul » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 2:11 PM UTC

Tarlen wrote: post #71

I will agree with the strategy of separating your product into sub-products, and working on and releasing them one at a time. A single, well-executed feature is often better than many mediocre ones. Especially as a solo founder (shameless plug: I run https://resend.io ), I think this is the best way to both test your assumptions early, and to consistently ship improvements without spreading yourself too thin. I've ta…

hey your product looks good! any way you could share some info on how long first version took and if you made any money with it (or how long it took to start making money etc)? I find these side project cases very inspirational.

for example my friends brother created http://www.mailaletter.com/ and its always great to talk to him about it. (it was not making him much for the first year or so, but then it kind of exploded when people started using it in a way that he has not predicted. I forgot what it was exactly but something to do with companies needing to mail letters internationally and it being cheaper for them via his site)

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#88

Post by weavie » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

arthurjj wrote: post #4

Limiting the scope can't be emphasized enough if you're married with kids. I've failed to ship 6-7 side projects because of limits to my free time. The best side project I've successfully shipped, besides blogging, was limited to 2 "features" one of which I already had from a failed project.

Devils advocate here, it sounds more like your problem was constantly moving to another side project before completing the last. If you had spent all that time on a single project, how far would it have gone?

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#89

Post by Tarlen » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

SonicSoul wrote: post #87

Tarlen wrote: post #71

I will agree with the strategy of separating your product into sub-products, and working on and releasing them one at a time. A single, well-executed feature is often better than many mediocre ones. Especially as a solo founder (shameless plug: I run https://resend.io ), I think this is the best way to both test your assumptions early, and to consistently ship improvements without spreading yourself too thin. I've ta…

hey your product looks good! any way you could share some info on how long first version took and if you made any money with it (or how long it took to start making money etc)? I find these side project cases very inspirational. for example my friends brother created http://www.mailaletter.com/ and its always great to talk to him about it. (it was not making him much for the first year or so, but then it kind of expl…

If I remember correctly, I pushed the barebones chat plugin out (it was embarrassingly bad at this point) after 1-2 months of development. At that point I was also working part-time and finishing my CS degree, so the amount of time I had to work on it was limited.

Somehow I still managed to convince a few people to use it though

Re: How to Ship Side Projects

#90

Post by pc86 » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 2:35 PM UTC

Tarlen wrote: post #86

ookblah wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the drawback to this approach is that maintenance and just "staying in place" starts to become a nightmare. development is circular in that you have to loop back around and make sure your good live chat plugin even better as time goes on. it's not just lay a brick and you're done. my experience has been that you either solve a problem that is very single minded (bonus if it's in the consumer space) and tries…

Definitely. You will reach a point where perhaps you will be spending 70% of your time building out novel features, while the remaining time is spent reiterating on your existing features to make sure they stay relevant. And the beauty of being a solo founder (even more so a digital nomad living sparingly) is that you don't have to go head to head with the giants, even if you were to just tickle them with a stick and…

> even if you were to just tickle them with a stick and steal 0.1% of their customers

Just be careful with this line of thinking. This is the fallacy of "it's a $2 trillion market, so if we get .001% of .001%...!"