The idea, the plan and the journey so far

In my previous post I talked about my last project joblead. It was a small project in itself, but it was part of something bigger. I had been toying with the idea of taking a break as early as mid 2020. The world was on a lockdown that showed no signs of ending and it seemed like a good time to take the plunge. While I was attempting to implement my idea, my employer of the time announced an IPO and I put a pin in my idea. Finally towards the end of 2022, I pulled the trigger.

The origins of the idea

It was around 2015–16 that I first came across levels.io and his 12 startups idea. I immediately identified with the idea. I had struggled to launch any of my side projects and felt the framework put together by Pieter had a lot of potential to overcome my own shortcomings. But it quickly went to the back of my mind as this was a time when I was heavily focussed on my own personal growth outside of my engineering interests. It was the time when I was deep into improv comedy and comedy writing but I will write more about that in a future post. As time went on, I continued to work on side projects on and off. None of my projects saw the light of the day and simply faded into oblivion. But even then, I persevered for reasons even I cannot explain. This would have probably gone on forever if it had not been for the lockdown of 2020. The pandemic was in full swing and I was comfortably holed up in my spacious apartment in Oakland. I had a lot of free time and not much to do with it. It was at this time, that I decided to try out levels.io’s idea. I modified it to fit my needs. After some thinking, I came up with the following simple modifications to the original idea.

1. I would do it for 5 months instead of 12 months and consequently build 5 projects. This is mostly because I do not want to commit to the longer timeline. I am open to continuing for a year if it feels right. But I do not want to start with a year. Anything less would mean that I might not have enough time to do substantial work in terms of the number of projects or the their size.
2. Launching the project is a key goal same as the original idea but I would also focus on improving on my non-techical skills. This is extremely important for me. I have been honing my skills as software professional for the more than a decade but have mostly glossed over a lot of the non-technical aspects of software building. Working in a product team in my last job made me highly aware of the non-technical challenges of building and maintaining software. But beyond awareness, I also found myself excited by these challenges and want to learn to tackle them.
3. Make money. This is key. This experiment would be a failure, if I am unable to earn from it. Being a developer at heart, I find immense pleasure in writing code and building software systems but it also leads to me not caring about the financial outcome of my projects. This is something I consciously want to remedy. This does not mean, that every project I work on needs to make money but instead I want to work towards figuring out on how to monetize the project I am working on. It also means that the project I am working on should be useful for more than just myself. Because if it does not provide value to others, it cannot be monetized.

The plan

With these basic modifications to the original idea, I formulated my plan.

1. Release 5 projects for public usage in 5 months.
2. Learn the non-programming aspects of running software.
3. Build projects that can be monetized.

This was the first version of my plan and even though it still holds true, in my own mind it has expanded further. As I started implementing the plan, the following addition became apparent.

1. Build projects that provide some value to end user and consciously identify it.
2. Focus on launching quality products not just products.
3. Budgeting saves cost but is also an input paramater for various technical and non-technical decisions.
4. Quality can be subjective but it can be made somewhat objective by calculating the value to effort ratio.
5. Keep a short term focus on launching quickly and a long term focus on maintainability.

These keep changing as I continue my work but so far they seem to provide an appropriate guardrail for my work.

The journey so far

As of this writing, my first project is chugging along slowly. On an average day with no marketing it tends to get around 5 new users. Every once in a while, I am able to bump it up to 20 by discussing it in various forums. Though those are not great numbers, the real key outcome of this have been the following

1. Exposure to various tools that I was aware of, but had not used.
2. A deeper understanding of OpenAi.
3. A basic FE and BE framework for future projects.
4. Introduction to various online communities.
5. Networking with people online that might lead to interesting future opportunities.

The second project is also coming along nicely. At the time of publishing this, I am a week away from starting testing. It is social deduction game built around OpenAI. If you find that interesting and would like to try it before the world, please leave a comment with your email id and I will reach out. You can follow me here or on twitter and stay tuned for my next post.