12 ms·

How to Ship Side Projects

424 points by nickfrost 10y ago

lowglow 10y ago
I'd like to add be transparent with your audience. It naturally leads to organic conversations about what works at what doesn't. We built our own tool (sort of the dogfood method of development) to help get our audience involved with what we're building https://baqqer.com/projects/baqqer https://baqqer.com/projects/baqqer
urs2102 10y ago
I really like the idea of approaching rapid development like writing an essay or a blog the first time. Just getting all the words out on the paper goes a long way; same thing goes for programming.
- blackflame7000 10y ago
  I understand your mindset, but sometimes a little bit of planning upfront can save so much time in refactoring. I'm not sure code is analogous to writing save for maybe a choose your own ending type novel. An Essay is essentially a sequential flow of ideas where as a program is more like a tree. Perhaps what you are referring to is rapidly developing the nodes(classes) of that tree without concerning yourself to much with the connective branches between classes. If that's the case then I can see the benefit.
  - Drdrdrq 10y ago
    From purely technical viewpoint that is correct and engineer in me agrees with you 100%. However: if you look at the bigger picture you will notice that the feature list is not known in advance. Which means the nice abstraction you made are probably unsuitable and will make repurposing software more difficult, not less. Because nobody knows what the end product will look like, so it pays to ship fast, iterate on product design and refactor / rewrite later. But I know what you are saying, I have struggles with that inner engineer daily and he just won't shut up. :)
arthurjj 10y ago
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.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  So basically, try to group anything into smallest possible self-contained utilities, until you grow a pile of them big enough that your next project can be basically assembled from them...
  - ofcapl_ 10y ago
    exactly! MVP FTW!
  - majewsky 10y ago
    Ironically, my current side project evolved exactly the opposite way: I tacked on more and more features, and later broke everything apart into plugins once the correct abstraction had emerged.
- weavie 10y ago
  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?
ticktockclock 10y ago
Scope creep is the enemy. I'm a big fan of the minimum viable product idea. What is the smallest thing you can build that lets you quickly make it around the build/measure/learn loop.
p0larboy 10y ago
Aggresive scope cutting while maintaining the usefulness of the app is tricky but will payoff for that elusive launch day
Swizec 10y ago
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. :)
- 20years 10y ago
  I agree with this sentiment. Nothing motivates me more knowing there is potential to make money on it. Then again there are those side projects you do just for fun but those are ones I also don't invest tons of time on.
  - Swizec 10y ago
    Those don't need to be shipped, though.
- fogleman 10y ago
  If all you have is a form, what am I paying for?
  - Swizec 10y ago
    I've paid for products that were literally just a form and someone doing shit manually.
    - katkattac 10y ago
      Examples? I can't really think of anything I've paid for where at least a solid prototype didn't already exist.
      - Swizec 10y ago
        Why can't someone doing it manually be a solid prototype? If it provides value it's valuable no matter how it's done. One such product I bought was https://mastermindjam.com https://mastermindjam.com
- wwalser 10y ago
shortoncash 10y ago
This was a good blog post. I have shipped side projects before. What helps me the most is to always have some really, really tiny incremental goal every week that's achievable. This way, there's always some momentum of sorts, even if some weeks are far less productive than others. It's when momentum dies completely that projects don't come out of the abyss.
- ehnto 10y ago
  I have found the same. Stressing to make massive progress or sneak in a 6 hour session makes me burn out super quickly, and the inertia of starting a bigger feature makes it less likely that it will happen. I have shipped a few web projects this way and found it's been just as useful for game development. In the rush to see progress I burnt out learning last time, but this time I am making serious progress with just a small task each day or every couple of days. Also adding minor bugs that are turning into rabbit holes to a backlog for later helps keep me motivated.
- joshontheweb 10y ago
  Same here. I use a trello board and discipline myself to complete at least one task a day. No matter how small. This usually leads to me getting in the zone and completing a bunch of other tasks. If not, its ok. There's tomorrow.
skbohra123 10y ago
One big issue with working on side projects is that you get emotionally attached to it and sometimes it takes over your mind, more than it should. Learning to balance that would help you be at peace at slow speed of the side project, after all it's called side project for a reason.
- kchauhan 10y ago
  How you manage in that case?
logicallee 10y ago
I'm going to go ahead and disagree. I suggest that instead of this approach, you take an approach of starting by overengineering it and making it absolutely perfect in every way - then just ship the part of that you manage to actually do. Sometimes the best way to write a short story is to write a three-volume epic.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  No, that's how you end up with a bad short story.
  - logicallee 10y ago
    The title is "how to ship", so, I rest my case.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  I think I'd need to see some evidence that that is a more effective strategy than starting small. My biggest enemy is always analysis paralysis. The bigger the project, the less likely I am to ever even start, much less finish anything. Likewise, when I do start, if the scope is too big, I'll flit from concept to concept never really finishing any of them. But, when I have a very small, concrete, and actionable item, I can knock it out in no time...it almost doesn't even feel like work sometimes. I don't think the "overengineer it" approach could ever work for me.
  - logicallee 10y ago
    >I think I'd need to see some evidence that that is a more effective strategy than starting small. "To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including on-line and hardcopy documentation." Looks like he did all that. (Mostly in the form of Emacs). Anyway it's hard to get more ambitious than a list like that. Other early announcements of effective projects were the same - very large vision.
kalid 10y ago
Shameless plug, I just launched an overhaul to a side project today (https://instacalc.com 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 :).
- otoburb 10y ago
  InstaCalc is great! Love the natural language oriented input for calculations. Tangentially related to the article, did BetterExplained itself start out as a side project, or did you double-down from the start?
  - kalid 10y ago
    Thanks! BetterExplained started as a collection of notes on my university website: Sadly after a decade the CS department shut down my alumni account :(. But I have a cached backup here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150708043012/http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~kazad/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150708043012/http://www.cs.pri... https://betterexplained.com/~kazad/ https://betterexplained.com/~kazad/ I started BetterExplained about 10 years ago exactly (wow), just taking some of the notes online. Thankfully they were on evergreen math topics (divergence, flux, gradients... stuff I desperately wanted intuitions for) and it grew from there. I had been thinking of doing a decade year retrospective on what's worked/not worked in terms of keeping motivation and momentum for the projects (so far, so good). Thanks for the reminder!
    - sharmi 10y ago
      Looking forward to the retrospective post! Motivation tends to be highly fluctuating. Perseverance is the key to success. Would love to hear how you maintained a decade long streak.
- rokhayakebe 10y ago
  Super awesome. You can save Calcs. Ways to 1Million in Yearly Recurring Revenue: https://instacalc.com/50021 https://instacalc.com/50021
reedlaw 10y ago
Sorry but those animated gifs distracted me from reading. Normally I will scroll things like that off the page but when they come so close to each other all I see is the movement.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rcdmd 10y ago
  We're now coming full circle [1]... Chrome's inspect element followed by the Delete key works wonders though. [1] http://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/ http://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/
  - anchpop 10y ago
    There's a chrome extension I find very useful that adds this to the right click menu called "f*ck overlays" [1] [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fck-overlays/ppedokobpbdajgiejhnjfbdjlgobcpkp https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fck-overlays/ppedo...
- jamescostian 10y ago
  Personally, I found them to be topical and slightly more engaging than text. They appear at the top of each section, so I thought of them as helpful summaries of each section as well as comic relief. I felt like they encouraged me to finish the next section instead of leaving the page early.
- woogiewonka 10y ago
  I just read the titles and looked at the gifs, didn't bother with the text :)
- facorreia 10y ago
  Me too, I had to actually cover the moving memes with my hand to be able to read the text.
codingdave 10y ago
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.
- leeoniya 10y ago
  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".
  - Clubber 10y ago
    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.
    - Twisell 10y ago
      Or maybe you could actually just ship a FOSS product so that if people are interested they can hire you or pay you (or your company) to get more good stuff ?
      - Clubber 10y ago
        FOSS folks probably wouldn't like my stuff. It's Windows based.
huan9huan 10y ago
I agree "Ship it" part. My previous side projects is always by this styles: "good idea" (1 week) => develop it (2 week) => "not satisfaction" （several days） => abandon => next idea .... The passion always dispears after one month, so in one month, need ship it. BTW, the Show HN is really really good channel for every early shipping.
sumanthvepa 10y ago
The biggest problem I've had with side projects in my past jobs was that my employment agreement was all encompassing and I would require my employer's explicit permission to release the project. So I pretty much stayed away from them except as purely throwaway learning exercises.
Pyxl101 10y ago
I wanted to read this post but I couldn't get past the light grey font which was very hard to read. Illegibly thin and light fonts like this are borderline hostile to users, and frustrate me every time I encounter them. I'm sorry I have nothing more constructive than that to contribute.
garysieling 10y ago
To add another shameless plug, I built a search engine for lectures (https://www.findlectures.com https://www.findlectures.com). A great thing about this is that there is no point where it's "done", as long as it has enough content to be useful. As I get more data, it unlocks tons of opportunities for mini-projects. Writing a blog has been a good side-project for the same reason.
- monksy 10y ago
  That's pretty cool. I would love to see the JVMLS or JavaOne videos to be listed there. J1: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdDhYMT2USoLdh4SZIsu_1g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdDhYMT2USoLdh4SZIsu_1g JVMLS https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX8CzqL3ArzUY6rQAQTwI_jKvqJxrRrP_ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX8CzqL3ArzUY6rQAQTwI...
  - garysieling 10y ago
    Thanks! I'll add these to the list.
epynonymous 10y ago
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.
- brechtm 10y ago
  But what's an MVP? That's very subjective. I'm working on a DITA (to PDF) renderer [1] based on rinohtype [2]. About a year ago I was in a startup coaching project. I was advised to put out an MVP ASAP. Since then, I've worked full-time on the project and only now I'm releasing what I believe is an MVP. One year ago, my product was functional, but it didn't allow easily styling the output PDF. I believe this is the feature that differentiates it with the competition. I feel that, without this feature in place, my product wouldn't offer anything interesing. I could have also released an "MVP" much earlier, but say it couldn't render tables. Who would've taken it seriously then? Even if I added this feature at a later point, how many of the people that tried the first version would bother checking it out again? For some (new) markets, I'm sure you could crank out an MVP in a month. But for existing markets, there's the established competition that sets the bar, no? [1] http://www.opqode.com/rinoh http://www.opqode.com/rinoh [2] http://www.mos6581.org/rinohtype/ http://www.mos6581.org/rinohtype/
flippant 10y ago
Maybe the "tenth callback" is just a bad example, but I would emphasize not doing anything that will sap your motivation on the path to shipping. For me, that's having to deal with brittle code when I'm constantly reevaluating the requirements.
amorphic 10y ago
I wrote this a while back which touches on some similar points: https://jimter.net/open-source-the-journey-from-project-to-product/ https://jimter.net/open-source-the-journey-from-project-to-p...
bharani_m 10y ago
I am working on a side project called Metriculator (https://www.metriculator.com https://www.metriculator.com). This is my personal experiment to see if I can build and market a full-fledged SaaS tool. It has also been a nice way to pick up a new programming language (Elixir). I have a lot of unfinished projects. I start working on a new idea, build out some functionality and then the interest fizzles outs and the project is left unfinished. This time, I decided to take a different approach - I decided to keep publishing the app incrementally. I started off with just a landing page first, last week I added the demo survey. There are a LOT of things left to be done before I can roll out public access to this project, but getting a few beta users has been a nice inspiration to keep me going.
adamgamble 10y ago
I've really enjoyed this comment thread because I started feeling like everyone was shipping their side projects but me. Turns out I was only seeing the highlight reel. Weirdly, the fact that everyone seems to have problems with this, encourages me to keep trying to work on it.
ThomPete 10y ago
As a designer this become even more problematic. I have been depending on developers to do the hardcore development (I can do web-coding myself well enough) and are therefore depending on convincing developers to help me. After a number of attempts at starting various products/services with various levels of success but ultimately fizzling out. Ex. Weekendhacker have around 8K designers and developers subscribed but it kind of died out, because the time i spent vs. any income I made was not making sense. I haven't killed it but it's basically in hibernation until I figure out what to do with it. It was a really frustrating to see something like that die out with such high hopes of starting an actually community. However I finally managed to launch something that is generating growing side income for me year over year, which I can control the progress of and which allow me to expand slowly but surely. https://www.ghostnoteapp.com https://www.ghostnoteapp.com Now GhostNote is only the start of something much bigger I am building but it allow me to control the scope and slowly expand what I am doing while still enjoying it as an added bonus I am making good money. You should ask yourself the questions like. Why am I building what I am building? Is there a simpler way to do what I want to do. (Ex. could it just be email to start with? Weekendhacker was.) Is this really what I want to spend my time on? Does the world really need this? But most importantly you should never give up, sooner or later you you wil find something as long as you make sure you don't spend too much time on each. I have literally hundreds of ideas, a whole graveyard of almost implemented projects Just keep trying new stuff, make new alliances with developers. Do several things at once if you have to. But if you want to make money with your side project don't be too attached.
Tarlen 10y ago
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 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 taken this approach as I set out to compete with companies with 100s of millions in funding and 100s of employees who had built out very feature rich and elaborate product platforms. In my specific case, it went something like 1. build a shitty live chat plugin 2. make said shitty live chat plugin good 3. extend previously shitty live chat plugin with shitty automated messaging capabilities 4. make those shitty automated messaging capabilities good 5. and so on.. In between each step you should try and get people to use it, be shameless. You'll often be surprised that you can find users already at step 1, despite competitors already rocking well-established and mature solutions. Doing this long enough (I have been going hard for 9 months), all of a sudden you'll find yourself with your own platform, built slowly by stacking one brick on top of another, and sticking to it.
- aembleton 10y ago
  I just visited resend.io and got the following message: Message: TypeError: e.srcElement is undefined URL: https://resend.io/ https://resend.io/ Line: 75 Column: 28317 Stack: R</<.value@https://resend.io/:75:28317 https://resend.io/:75:28317
  - Tarlen 10y ago
    Shame on me for testing on an outdated FF version. Deploying fix now.
- glennbot 10y ago
  Or just shamelessly ripping off intercom's product is another quick way to iterate and test your assumptions.
  - Tarlen 10y ago
kaa2102 10y ago
This is smart. Start by developing the smallest and most essential solution to a problem, get feedback, and incrementally improve the solution.
gejjaxxita 10y ago
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.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
repeek 10y ago
If you need some additional motivation, I recommend Just F*cking Ship (https://unicornfree.com/just-fucking-ship/ https://unicornfree.com/just-fucking-ship/). It helped me get out of a rut and focus on what's most important.
midhir 10y ago
I find aggressive scope-cutting to be one of the most compelling things about building side projects. I'm shopping for computer parts at the minute so built a quick app to scan UK shop deals, threw it up at a subdomain of my personal site (plug: http://slackfriday.jhope.ie http://slackfriday.jhope.ie) and let it go. Over cyber monday and later it got loads of traffic and watching a stupidly simple app do it's job was thrilling and liberating. Even doing agile and lean MVPs every day at work nothing quite matches the level of focus you can reach when you know your own capacity and have a time-limit. I kind of disagree with the OP in that even if you use tech that you're familiar with and have a fleeting idea it's still worth doing every once in a while to remind yourself why and how people use things.
- rogerdpack 10y ago
  how did it get loads of traffic, from where?
swalsh 10y ago
I used to be the kind of guy who started a lot of things, but never finished them. I got angry at myself, and built a project with the sole goal of finishing it. The challenge of “just get it done” really put me in the right mindset. Since then I’ve started finishing what I started. Here’s some tips. If you’re going to try a new to you tech, only use 1 new to you thing at a time. There is nothing wrong with using a technology that’s old. In fact, that’s the best way to finish something. Old technology is googleable, stable, and usually has libraries for everything you want to do. New tech might let you do in 3 lines what old tech will do in 20… but getting those 3 lines of code to work might take more time than just writing the extra code. The next point, elegance does not matter. NO ONE cares about your project. They aren’t going to review the code, so why spend time doing something elegantly? Just get it done. As mentioned in the article, you really have to realize your limits. At work, when you have a large team, the definition of MVP can expand. When it’s just you, you REALLY need to think about what value you’re building. I’m constantly asking myself “is this thing I’m going to spend today on actually going to be the difference between my product being useful and not working at all”. “Is there a way I can get away with faking, or doing this thing manually”. If you only have a few users, you might not need to automate right away. One more personal preference, I don’t talk about what I’m working on with friends and family until I’m near done or done. For a few reasons, first if you talk to other engineers, they’ll discourage you. When you propose an idea to another engineer, they’re shoot it down pointing out minor flaws. I used to think, oh that’s useful… they’re preventing me from going in the wrong direction. Upon reflection though, I’m not sure the advice I’ve gotten has always been “useful”, it has made me give up on ideas. Maybe I’m weak willed, but this is what I need to see my ideas get done. If you really believe what you’re building will work, the only person worth talking to are your future customers, if your future customer isn’t interested… that’s actually worth something.
netrap 10y ago
I just want to say it is OK to give up from time to time. I had a serious side project I worked on for 2 years. Sometimes you need to cut your losses. I was able to use a product that cost me $100, though it doesn't work exactly as I want, it does the job. So just ask yourself, is this worth it?
rogerdpack 10y ago
I like it, except for the part about "refactor later" in my mind the best way is refactor "first" so that adding your feature is "easy"...though I don't always follow my own advice with hobby projects LOL. Don't let technical debt subsume you, though, fight back eventually.
- rogerdpack 10y ago
  I do like the part about focusing on "the next feature for your customer" though, customer centric can take you far, that's good...most/many hobby projects focus on only the next "feature for me" and never get around the marketing/polishing side of things, whereas focusing on customer-ish stuff encourages the latter, the latter being 80% of success typically overall (or get a partner to do that part, the common successful way there...)

424 points by nickfrost 10y ago

I'd like to add be transparent with your audience. It naturally leads to organic conversations about what works at what doesn't. We built our own tool (sort of the dogfood method of development) to help get our audience involved with what we're building https://baqqer.com/projects/baqqer https://baqqer.com/projects/baqqer

urs2102 10y ago

I really like the idea of approaching rapid development like writing an essay or a blog the first time. Just getting all the words out on the paper goes a long way; same thing goes for programming.

blackflame7000 10y ago
I understand your mindset, but sometimes a little bit of planning upfront can save so much time in refactoring. I'm not sure code is analogous to writing save for maybe a choose your own ending type novel. An Essay is essentially a sequential flow of ideas where as a program is more like a tree. Perhaps what you are referring to is rapidly developing the nodes(classes) of that tree without concerning yourself to much with the connective branches between classes. If that's the case then I can see the benefit.
- Drdrdrq 10y ago
  From purely technical viewpoint that is correct and engineer in me agrees with you 100%. However: if you look at the bigger picture you will notice that the feature list is not known in advance. Which means the nice abstraction you made are probably unsuitable and will make repurposing software more difficult, not less. Because nobody knows what the end product will look like, so it pays to ship fast, iterate on product design and refactor / rewrite later. But I know what you are saying, I have struggles with that inner engineer daily and he just won't shut up. :)

arthurjj 10y ago

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.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
So basically, try to group anything into smallest possible self-contained utilities, until you grow a pile of them big enough that your next project can be basically assembled from them...
- ofcapl_ 10y ago
  exactly! MVP FTW!
- majewsky 10y ago
  Ironically, my current side project evolved exactly the opposite way: I tacked on more and more features, and later broke everything apart into plugins once the correct abstraction had emerged.
weavie 10y ago
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?

ticktockclock 10y ago

Scope creep is the enemy. I'm a big fan of the minimum viable product idea. What is the smallest thing you can build that lets you quickly make it around the build/measure/learn loop.

p0larboy 10y ago

Aggresive scope cutting while maintaining the usefulness of the app is tricky but will payoff for that elusive launch day

Swizec 10y ago

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. :)

20years 10y ago
I agree with this sentiment. Nothing motivates me more knowing there is potential to make money on it. Then again there are those side projects you do just for fun but those are ones I also don't invest tons of time on.
- Swizec 10y ago
  Those don't need to be shipped, though.
fogleman 10y ago
If all you have is a form, what am I paying for?
- Swizec 10y ago
  I've paid for products that were literally just a form and someone doing shit manually.
  - katkattac 10y ago
    Examples? I can't really think of anything I've paid for where at least a solid prototype didn't already exist.
    - Swizec 10y ago
      Why can't someone doing it manually be a solid prototype? If it provides value it's valuable no matter how it's done. One such product I bought was https://mastermindjam.com https://mastermindjam.com
wwalser 10y ago

shortoncash 10y ago

This was a good blog post. I have shipped side projects before. What helps me the most is to always have some really, really tiny incremental goal every week that's achievable. This way, there's always some momentum of sorts, even if some weeks are far less productive than others. It's when momentum dies completely that projects don't come out of the abyss.

ehnto 10y ago
I have found the same. Stressing to make massive progress or sneak in a 6 hour session makes me burn out super quickly, and the inertia of starting a bigger feature makes it less likely that it will happen. I have shipped a few web projects this way and found it's been just as useful for game development. In the rush to see progress I burnt out learning last time, but this time I am making serious progress with just a small task each day or every couple of days. Also adding minor bugs that are turning into rabbit holes to a backlog for later helps keep me motivated.
joshontheweb 10y ago
Same here. I use a trello board and discipline myself to complete at least one task a day. No matter how small. This usually leads to me getting in the zone and completing a bunch of other tasks. If not, its ok. There's tomorrow.

skbohra123 10y ago

One big issue with working on side projects is that you get emotionally attached to it and sometimes it takes over your mind, more than it should. Learning to balance that would help you be at peace at slow speed of the side project, after all it's called side project for a reason.

kchauhan 10y ago
How you manage in that case?

logicallee 10y ago

I'm going to go ahead and disagree. I suggest that instead of this approach, you take an approach of starting by overengineering it and making it absolutely perfect in every way - then just ship the part of that you manage to actually do. Sometimes the best way to write a short story is to write a three-volume epic.

moron4hire 10y ago
No, that's how you end up with a bad short story.
- logicallee 10y ago
  The title is "how to ship", so, I rest my case.
SwellJoe 10y ago
I think I'd need to see some evidence that that is a more effective strategy than starting small. My biggest enemy is always analysis paralysis. The bigger the project, the less likely I am to ever even start, much less finish anything. Likewise, when I do start, if the scope is too big, I'll flit from concept to concept never really finishing any of them. But, when I have a very small, concrete, and actionable item, I can knock it out in no time...it almost doesn't even feel like work sometimes. I don't think the "overengineer it" approach could ever work for me.
- logicallee 10y ago
  >I think I'd need to see some evidence that that is a more effective strategy than starting small. "To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including on-line and hardcopy documentation." Looks like he did all that. (Mostly in the form of Emacs). Anyway it's hard to get more ambitious than a list like that. Other early announcements of effective projects were the same - very large vision.

kalid 10y ago

Shameless plug, I just launched an overhaul to a side project today (https://instacalc.com 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 :).

otoburb 10y ago
InstaCalc is great! Love the natural language oriented input for calculations. Tangentially related to the article, did BetterExplained itself start out as a side project, or did you double-down from the start?
- kalid 10y ago
  Thanks! BetterExplained started as a collection of notes on my university website: Sadly after a decade the CS department shut down my alumni account :(. But I have a cached backup here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150708043012/http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~kazad/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150708043012/http://www.cs.pri... https://betterexplained.com/~kazad/ https://betterexplained.com/~kazad/ I started BetterExplained about 10 years ago exactly (wow), just taking some of the notes online. Thankfully they were on evergreen math topics (divergence, flux, gradients... stuff I desperately wanted intuitions for) and it grew from there. I had been thinking of doing a decade year retrospective on what's worked/not worked in terms of keeping motivation and momentum for the projects (so far, so good). Thanks for the reminder!
  - sharmi 10y ago
    Looking forward to the retrospective post! Motivation tends to be highly fluctuating. Perseverance is the key to success. Would love to hear how you maintained a decade long streak.
rokhayakebe 10y ago
Super awesome. You can save Calcs. Ways to 1Million in Yearly Recurring Revenue: https://instacalc.com/50021 https://instacalc.com/50021

reedlaw 10y ago

Sorry but those animated gifs distracted me from reading. Normally I will scroll things like that off the page but when they come so close to each other all I see is the movement.

deleted 10y ago
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rcdmd 10y ago
We're now coming full circle [1]... Chrome's inspect element followed by the Delete key works wonders though. [1] http://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/ http://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/
- anchpop 10y ago
  There's a chrome extension I find very useful that adds this to the right click menu called "f*ck overlays" [1] [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fck-overlays/ppedokobpbdajgiejhnjfbdjlgobcpkp https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fck-overlays/ppedo...
jamescostian 10y ago
Personally, I found them to be topical and slightly more engaging than text. They appear at the top of each section, so I thought of them as helpful summaries of each section as well as comic relief. I felt like they encouraged me to finish the next section instead of leaving the page early.
woogiewonka 10y ago
I just read the titles and looked at the gifs, didn't bother with the text :)
facorreia 10y ago
Me too, I had to actually cover the moving memes with my hand to be able to read the text.

codingdave 10y ago

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.

leeoniya 10y ago
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".
- Clubber 10y ago
  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.
  - Twisell 10y ago
    Or maybe you could actually just ship a FOSS product so that if people are interested they can hire you or pay you (or your company) to get more good stuff ?
    - Clubber 10y ago
      FOSS folks probably wouldn't like my stuff. It's Windows based.

huan9huan 10y ago

I agree "Ship it" part. My previous side projects is always by this styles: "good idea" (1 week) => develop it (2 week) => "not satisfaction" （several days） => abandon => next idea .... The passion always dispears after one month, so in one month, need ship it. BTW, the Show HN is really really good channel for every early shipping.

sumanthvepa 10y ago

The biggest problem I've had with side projects in my past jobs was that my employment agreement was all encompassing and I would require my employer's explicit permission to release the project. So I pretty much stayed away from them except as purely throwaway learning exercises.

Pyxl101 10y ago

I wanted to read this post but I couldn't get past the light grey font which was very hard to read. Illegibly thin and light fonts like this are borderline hostile to users, and frustrate me every time I encounter them. I'm sorry I have nothing more constructive than that to contribute.

garysieling 10y ago

To add another shameless plug, I built a search engine for lectures (https://www.findlectures.com https://www.findlectures.com). A great thing about this is that there is no point where it's "done", as long as it has enough content to be useful. As I get more data, it unlocks tons of opportunities for mini-projects. Writing a blog has been a good side-project for the same reason.

monksy 10y ago
That's pretty cool. I would love to see the JVMLS or JavaOne videos to be listed there. J1: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdDhYMT2USoLdh4SZIsu_1g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdDhYMT2USoLdh4SZIsu_1g JVMLS https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX8CzqL3ArzUY6rQAQTwI_jKvqJxrRrP_ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX8CzqL3ArzUY6rQAQTwI...
- garysieling 10y ago
  Thanks! I'll add these to the list.

epynonymous 10y ago

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.

brechtm 10y ago
But what's an MVP? That's very subjective. I'm working on a DITA (to PDF) renderer [1] based on rinohtype [2]. About a year ago I was in a startup coaching project. I was advised to put out an MVP ASAP. Since then, I've worked full-time on the project and only now I'm releasing what I believe is an MVP. One year ago, my product was functional, but it didn't allow easily styling the output PDF. I believe this is the feature that differentiates it with the competition. I feel that, without this feature in place, my product wouldn't offer anything interesing. I could have also released an "MVP" much earlier, but say it couldn't render tables. Who would've taken it seriously then? Even if I added this feature at a later point, how many of the people that tried the first version would bother checking it out again? For some (new) markets, I'm sure you could crank out an MVP in a month. But for existing markets, there's the established competition that sets the bar, no? [1] http://www.opqode.com/rinoh http://www.opqode.com/rinoh [2] http://www.mos6581.org/rinohtype/ http://www.mos6581.org/rinohtype/

flippant 10y ago

Maybe the "tenth callback" is just a bad example, but I would emphasize not doing anything that will sap your motivation on the path to shipping. For me, that's having to deal with brittle code when I'm constantly reevaluating the requirements.

amorphic 10y ago

I wrote this a while back which touches on some similar points: https://jimter.net/open-source-the-journey-from-project-to-product/ https://jimter.net/open-source-the-journey-from-project-to-p...

bharani_m 10y ago

I am working on a side project called Metriculator (https://www.metriculator.com https://www.metriculator.com). This is my personal experiment to see if I can build and market a full-fledged SaaS tool. It has also been a nice way to pick up a new programming language (Elixir). I have a lot of unfinished projects. I start working on a new idea, build out some functionality and then the interest fizzles outs and the project is left unfinished. This time, I decided to take a different approach - I decided to keep publishing the app incrementally. I started off with just a landing page first, last week I added the demo survey. There are a LOT of things left to be done before I can roll out public access to this project, but getting a few beta users has been a nice inspiration to keep me going.

adamgamble 10y ago

I've really enjoyed this comment thread because I started feeling like everyone was shipping their side projects but me. Turns out I was only seeing the highlight reel. Weirdly, the fact that everyone seems to have problems with this, encourages me to keep trying to work on it.

ThomPete 10y ago

As a designer this become even more problematic. I have been depending on developers to do the hardcore development (I can do web-coding myself well enough) and are therefore depending on convincing developers to help me. After a number of attempts at starting various products/services with various levels of success but ultimately fizzling out. Ex. Weekendhacker have around 8K designers and developers subscribed but it kind of died out, because the time i spent vs. any income I made was not making sense. I haven't killed it but it's basically in hibernation until I figure out what to do with it. It was a really frustrating to see something like that die out with such high hopes of starting an actually community. However I finally managed to launch something that is generating growing side income for me year over year, which I can control the progress of and which allow me to expand slowly but surely. https://www.ghostnoteapp.com https://www.ghostnoteapp.com Now GhostNote is only the start of something much bigger I am building but it allow me to control the scope and slowly expand what I am doing while still enjoying it as an added bonus I am making good money. You should ask yourself the questions like. Why am I building what I am building? Is there a simpler way to do what I want to do. (Ex. could it just be email to start with? Weekendhacker was.) Is this really what I want to spend my time on? Does the world really need this? But most importantly you should never give up, sooner or later you you wil find something as long as you make sure you don't spend too much time on each. I have literally hundreds of ideas, a whole graveyard of almost implemented projects Just keep trying new stuff, make new alliances with developers. Do several things at once if you have to. But if you want to make money with your side project don't be too attached.

Tarlen 10y ago

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 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 taken this approach as I set out to compete with companies with 100s of millions in funding and 100s of employees who had built out very feature rich and elaborate product platforms. In my specific case, it went something like 1. build a shitty live chat plugin 2. make said shitty live chat plugin good 3. extend previously shitty live chat plugin with shitty automated messaging capabilities 4. make those shitty automated messaging capabilities good 5. and so on.. In between each step you should try and get people to use it, be shameless. You'll often be surprised that you can find users already at step 1, despite competitors already rocking well-established and mature solutions. Doing this long enough (I have been going hard for 9 months), all of a sudden you'll find yourself with your own platform, built slowly by stacking one brick on top of another, and sticking to it.

aembleton 10y ago
I just visited resend.io and got the following message: Message: TypeError: e.srcElement is undefined URL: https://resend.io/ https://resend.io/ Line: 75 Column: 28317 Stack: R</<.value@https://resend.io/:75:28317 https://resend.io/:75:28317
- Tarlen 10y ago
  Shame on me for testing on an outdated FF version. Deploying fix now.
glennbot 10y ago
Or just shamelessly ripping off intercom's product is another quick way to iterate and test your assumptions.
- Tarlen 10y ago

kaa2102 10y ago

This is smart. Start by developing the smallest and most essential solution to a problem, get feedback, and incrementally improve the solution.

gejjaxxita 10y ago

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.

deleted 10y ago

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repeek 10y ago

If you need some additional motivation, I recommend Just F*cking Ship (https://unicornfree.com/just-fucking-ship/ https://unicornfree.com/just-fucking-ship/). It helped me get out of a rut and focus on what's most important.

midhir 10y ago

I find aggressive scope-cutting to be one of the most compelling things about building side projects. I'm shopping for computer parts at the minute so built a quick app to scan UK shop deals, threw it up at a subdomain of my personal site (plug: http://slackfriday.jhope.ie http://slackfriday.jhope.ie) and let it go. Over cyber monday and later it got loads of traffic and watching a stupidly simple app do it's job was thrilling and liberating. Even doing agile and lean MVPs every day at work nothing quite matches the level of focus you can reach when you know your own capacity and have a time-limit. I kind of disagree with the OP in that even if you use tech that you're familiar with and have a fleeting idea it's still worth doing every once in a while to remind yourself why and how people use things.

rogerdpack 10y ago
how did it get loads of traffic, from where?

swalsh 10y ago

I used to be the kind of guy who started a lot of things, but never finished them. I got angry at myself, and built a project with the sole goal of finishing it. The challenge of “just get it done” really put me in the right mindset. Since then I’ve started finishing what I started. Here’s some tips. If you’re going to try a new to you tech, only use 1 new to you thing at a time. There is nothing wrong with using a technology that’s old. In fact, that’s the best way to finish something. Old technology is googleable, stable, and usually has libraries for everything you want to do. New tech might let you do in 3 lines what old tech will do in 20… but getting those 3 lines of code to work might take more time than just writing the extra code. The next point, elegance does not matter. NO ONE cares about your project. They aren’t going to review the code, so why spend time doing something elegantly? Just get it done. As mentioned in the article, you really have to realize your limits. At work, when you have a large team, the definition of MVP can expand. When it’s just you, you REALLY need to think about what value you’re building. I’m constantly asking myself “is this thing I’m going to spend today on actually going to be the difference between my product being useful and not working at all”. “Is there a way I can get away with faking, or doing this thing manually”. If you only have a few users, you might not need to automate right away. One more personal preference, I don’t talk about what I’m working on with friends and family until I’m near done or done. For a few reasons, first if you talk to other engineers, they’ll discourage you. When you propose an idea to another engineer, they’re shoot it down pointing out minor flaws. I used to think, oh that’s useful… they’re preventing me from going in the wrong direction. Upon reflection though, I’m not sure the advice I’ve gotten has always been “useful”, it has made me give up on ideas. Maybe I’m weak willed, but this is what I need to see my ideas get done. If you really believe what you’re building will work, the only person worth talking to are your future customers, if your future customer isn’t interested… that’s actually worth something.

netrap 10y ago

I just want to say it is OK to give up from time to time. I had a serious side project I worked on for 2 years. Sometimes you need to cut your losses. I was able to use a product that cost me $100, though it doesn't work exactly as I want, it does the job. So just ask yourself, is this worth it?

rogerdpack 10y ago

I like it, except for the part about "refactor later" in my mind the best way is refactor "first" so that adding your feature is "easy"...though I don't always follow my own advice with hobby projects LOL. Don't let technical debt subsume you, though, fight back eventually.

rogerdpack 10y ago
I do like the part about focusing on "the next feature for your customer" though, customer centric can take you far, that's good...most/many hobby projects focus on only the next "feature for me" and never get around the marketing/polishing side of things, whereas focusing on customer-ish stuff encourages the latter, the latter being 80% of success typically overall (or get a partner to do that part, the common successful way there...)