Hackademy Creation Journey
Last 11 years, I focused my career on creating startups. I started providing technology services to clients and later evolving into creating my digital products. Last year, I changed my entrepreneurial life and was hired by the largest petrochemical company in Brazil to develop new digital ventures. Throughout this year, I always wondered what it would be like to create a side project that could be sustainable with my job.
Hackademy (http://hackademy.pro/) was born from my own experience as an entrepreneur. Everything I learned about technology, product, software development, digital marketing, and more was 100% online and free!
My goal was clear. Create a simple product that should be easy-to-use and has the potential to be global. I want to launch the beta version within three months.
In many projects, I was responsible for front end development (HTML and CSS), but it would take a lot more to launch an entire application in a short time. At that point, I decided to learn to code to be completely free to make system improvements over time, but I realized that the path would be far more complex.
I spend weeks browsing courses, tutorials, videos, templates, etc. I just wanted to launch my MVP lean, but that wasn't the case, because the learning curve is long, how to make it a little smaller?😅
As I had designed several websites and startups over the years, my first step before coding was to create the entire site architecture with its essential functions and modules, and later I started to prototype using AdobeXD, I didn't want anything sophisticated, the focus on Hackademy is high-quality content and 100% free. With the first version designed, it was time to code, but as I mentioned earlier I was blocked by the lack of knowledge and time to apply my studies, at this time, a friend (developer) at work asked me the following question: “Why don't you outsource this version to any freelance site? ”. 🤔That's what I did!
I quoted the job in Fiverr and UpWork, in less than 24 hours had more than 20 proposals! My goal was to create an MVP with up to $ 150.00 in 20 days, performing 100% remote management. I ended up using the UpWork platform to hire the professional and defined the following process for validation and approval of project phases:
- Briefing the technical specifications of the system.
- I decide to use MEAN stack.
- BitBucket setup for code management.
- Delivery of the first functional modules without UI.
- Daily quick skype management meetings/chats about the day/week deliveries
- Test and validation of each module
- UI final improvements
- Approval and Payment
The experience was perfect! In 20 days, I had the prototype! I need to make some improvement because of the ideas that came up during the process but doing reverse code engineering my learning curve in MEAN stack might be easier.
My next goals with Hackademy:
- Bring high-quality content daily to the platform.
- Seek maximum user feedback for future releases.
- Write about the evolution of the project and the challenges I will encounter daily.
- Improve my English writing by sharing articles weekly (after all, my native language is Portuguese). 😃
- Make the first sales! $$$
Did you like Hackademy? Got ideas for new features? Feel free to leave your comment!
Cheers,
Johnny
