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What I learned from getting my side project acquired
- andyl 13y agoWhat was the acquisition price (range) ?
- mathattack 13y agoI was wondering the same. My guess is it's "Enough to finance the next project" rather than "Enough for a new life" but Im' interested in the outcome. Good story no matter what!
- aquark 13y agoSounds like the author was acquired as well: "I’ve accepted a Software Engineer position at Planetary Resources starting in November"
- bfe 13y agoSounds like not at the same time, though. He said the site was acquired in May 2013 [1], while this post says he is starting there in November, and his front page still says he works at room77.com [2]. Makes me curious. 1. http://www.asterank.com/about http://www.asterank.com/about 2. http://www.ianww.com http://www.ianww.com
- S4M 13y agoI do believe getting a position at Planetary Resources itself is worth having done the project.
- mathattack 13y agoIndeed. Really the story could be, "How my side project landed me my dream job."
- typpo 13y agoI'm the OP/author, and you are pretty much right. It's probably not the sort of deal you'd read about in TechCrunch or the WSJ, but it made the work I did in the past year totally worth it. And it got me my "dream job," which counts for a lot.
- mathattack 13y agoAnd it got me my "dream job," which counts for a lot. I think that's the true lesson of the story. Thanks for sharing it!
- kilroy123 13y agoThanks for this post, very interesting. Personally, I badly want to get out of the software / "tech" industry, and get into the space industry some how. I have no idea what I'll do, how I'll do this, or what I can offer. Only time will tell.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoThere are a lot of similarities though, rocket ships run on software. That said, there are huge challenges in robot manipulators, signals management (space is noisy) and vacuum operations. One of the things I've been noodling on is a self contained mineral extraction pipeline. You know you suck in raw material on one side and pull out some useful mineral or minerals out of the other. There are several challenges here, one being that many existing extraction processes rely on either an abundance of water or power or both, and often were designed assuming gravity worked :-). So for grins and giggles I've been noodling on "The Mosquito" which is a cross between a well auger and a science payload. It combines three things I find fascinating, robotics, space, and systems design so it is a lot of fun.
- kilroy123 13y agoInteresting. Do you have a blog or website showing off what you have so far? I'd love to learn more. I think 2 main things will drive space "exploration": - mining resources from astroids - solar arrays for more efficient power generation
- ChuckMcM 13y agoActually its just notes in my notebook and stuff clipped into an Evernote notebook but it I'll see about putting something up on my robotics page.
- nether 13y agoA software job in aerospace (avionics or analysis) can be worse than a pure software position, because your managers understand your work even less. Also, there are huge gulfs between reading about X, studying X at the university level, and working in X industry. I see a lot of people entering aerospace programs with dreamy ambitions from Reddit, Neil Degrasse Tyson, SpaceX articles. Then they can't hack the physics and math and 200 page design reports. It's a bit like kids going into CS because they like playing video games. Most aerospace jobs are pretty Dilbert/Office Space. At the megahuge defense contractor where I used to work, we had Office Space characterizations for many of our managers/coworkers. If you ever want your space dreams dashed, read Glassdoor reviews. We just hired an ex-SpaceXer who loved the mission but hated sacrificing his life as a 20-something to working 70-hour weeks.
- bfe 13y agoThis post reminded me of pg's advice for how to get startup ideas. Compare: "I have 5+ side projects. I’d like to make businesses out of them, but I often lose interest after a couple weeks. Asterank was the only project that I’ve stuck with for over a year, and it paid off even though there wasn’t a clear path to monetization... It’s hard to predict what will be valuable as a side project. For hobbies, working on what you’re most passionate about is the best way to get a return." [1] "Live in the future and build what seems interesting. Strange as it sounds, that's the real recipe." [2] 1. http://www.ianww.com/blog/2013/10/08/lessons-from-getting-my-side-project-acquired/ http://www.ianww.com/blog/2013/10/08/lessons-from-getting-my... 2. http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
- qznc 13y agoI still have to figure out how to stick with something for over a year. :(
- nyrina 13y agoI'm not even past the 1 month bump yet.
- thejulielogan 13y agofind collaborators. If you can't, that's usually a sign the project is not interesting/challenging enough to keep YOU working on it for a year. Don't just ping your friends because they're your friends, collaborators should share the passion that got you to start the project. Sometimes that's best found outside your normal network.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoBut he did not treat it as a throwaway side project - he mailed, he built community and products, he pushed for a year. That massively increased his chances of a profitable outcome - my lesson here is even treat your side projects as in need of proper marketing
- thejulielogan 13y agoThat's the difference between a 'hobby' and a 'side project.' One is a professional job you're just not paid for (yet). The other is something you happen to enjoy doing, on occasion.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ernestipark 13y agoThis might be a stupid question, but what is the point in acquiring a side project that is MIT-licensed? Was it just a means of acqui-hiring?
- mindcrime 13y agoThe license on the code doesn't include trademarks on the name, or copyright on marketing materials, branding, etc. Depending on the project, the bulk of the value might actually be in that stuff and not in the code itself. Don't underestimate how valuable "brand recognition" is. Also, and while it might not apply in this specific case, a startup / side-project that has paying customers will have value in terms of acquiring the accounts and the relationships, even if the code is open source.
- wtracy 13y agoQuote from the article: "Asterank is almost entirely open source." That "almost" might be important.
- bliti 13y agoThey might see potential value in a commercial fork aimed at Enterprise or Business clients. There is also the potential yearly service contracts that may be negotiated. Getting the original developer of a program to maintain it is a good idea for Enterprise clients. They can also develop a training package and sell it with his help.
- thatthatis 13y agoMy bet is: talent + reputation + data.
- mikro2nd 13y agoI'd guess that the real value is in the data. They've presumably gathered a bunch of size/composition/value data about asteroids that would almost certainly have value to a company that plans to exploit said asteroids.
- nl 13y agoI've had an (Apache licensed) open source project acquired. In my case it was the userbase that was valuable.
- sideproject 13y agoLove the project! And of course, for those side projects that do get abandoned, you can find them at http://sideprojectors.com http://sideprojectors.com
- contextual 13y agoThanks for the vitamin C shot of inspiration. I'm working on a project to dramatically diminish the need for animal-testing in science experiments[1], and the process has been humbling. I know little about science. As you recommended in the article, I've been speaking with scientists from around the world (and anyone else who will listen) and learning as much as I can, as fast as I can. Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki was right, "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few". [1]http://selfexperiments.com http://selfexperiments.com
- nutjob123 13y ago"I'm working on a project to dramatically diminish the need for animal-testing in science experiments" That sounds straight up crazy since animal-testing is an improvement on human testing but big ideas are always intimidating.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- davidgerard 13y agoBlog about your technical issues! Yes!
- benjamincburns 13y agoCongrats Ian, and a huge thanks for blogging your experience building AsterRank. You definitely helped some friends and me out with a space game we're working on!
- qwerta 13y agoInteresting project. I had similar hobby project: MapDB database engine. It started as simple data store for astronomical application. I wrote first patch for JDBM (old name) while observing at Atacama desert 4 years ago. I never advertised much, but now its my full time job and it generates decent email traffic.
- broabprobe 13y agoFunny I'm listening to Peter Diamandis give a lecture in the next room over as I read this.
- ivanbrussik 13y agoyou earned a point from me, even if I have no idea what it is you do (ok, I know you catalog space stuff) most of all this little guide you posted is very transferable, thanks a ton.
- jonstjohn 13y agoLesson 7: You need to stick with it I'm trying to do this right now. I challenged myself to do 100 consecutive days of commits to my side projects and I'm currently at day 94. Unfortunately, my private repos don't show up in my streak unless I'm logged in, but most of them are here: https://github.com/jonstjohn https://github.com/jonstjohn . I've still bounced between about 3 projects in the past 3 months. I struggle with what seems like it should be the last 5-10%, although I'm looking at forcing myself to launch even if I'm not happy with everything.
- malcolmmcc 13y agoIf you want to make the challenge even more intense, you can try a service like Beeminder that'll charge you if you don't commit every day. It can hook into Github, I believe. https://www.beeminder.com/gitminder https://www.beeminder.com/gitminder The founders actually use this themselves, making a mandatory UVI (user-visible improvement) every day, inspired by pg's advice "startups rarely die mid-keystroke... so keep typing!" See here for more on that: http://blog.beeminder.com/rails/ http://blog.beeminder.com/rails/
- jonstjohn 13y agoThese are great! I think I've seen Bee Minder before. Honestly, it has helped me out tremendously to just keep committing. I have days where I commit some really trivial bit of code, just to keep things going, but first thing in the morning I'm thinking about what I plan to commit that day. It keeps me focused on my side projects.
- exo_duz 13y agoCongrats Ian. Perseverence is key!
- pahans 13y agothanks Ian. learnt a lot from your article.
- weames 13y agoThank you for the post. It is always helpful and inspiring to hear a another's success story.
- rs 13y agoIf no one notices your project but it is genuinely interesting, just blog about it until they notice. I posted Asterank Discover on HN and it got 5 points. Then I wrote a blog post about it that made the front page. Go figure. I think this might be that people tend to prefer reading about stories on products rather than a product landing page ?
- crucialfelix 13y agoQ: is it necessary to incorporate a side project like this from the beginning ? I'm planning to found a company that will build several products. If one of them achieves traction and revenue growth, I'm wondering if there are any issues in making it easily acquirable. I suppose shared code is an issue.
- toast0 13y agoIf you want it to be easily acquirable, the only thing that matters is simple ownership. If you as an individual own everything, there's no need to incorporate. You may want to incorporate for tax, liability, or employment reasons, of course; but you can usually wait for those to be a real issue (income tax treatment isn't a huge deal if you have no income)