Have someone there to keep you accountable
I started close to a dozen side projects over the years. Some didn't make it much past a weekend of hacking, some made it to a Heroku server and one even had professional designs and mocks done for it.
However, none of those ever saw a single user outside of myself.
I couldn't seem to stay motivated or have any drive to keep working through any of these side projects over the years. I would work on them for a few days, a few weeks, and if I was lucky a few months. But they always seemed to fizzle out.
Something interesting happened when I brought in my closest friend to partner with me on my current project. I've been coding almost daily, or at least every few days, on our SAAS going on 7 months.
We've got 1 Alpha user providing TONS of valuable feedback and we've got 18 people and counting on a beta launch waitlist.
The simple act of having someone outside of myself to talk to, bounce new ideas off of, think through ideas, and poke holes in features before jumping straight into code made a world of difference for me. Just the act of talking about new features with my now co-founder helps keep me motivated to show up and move the needle forward.
Have others had similar experiences? Or maybe the opposite, where you've excelled after breaking away and doing something on your own?
Would love to hear others' thoughts and perspectives on this!
I think that finding a need before committing to delivering a product is also a good way to approach it. If you already know people need something, it gives a high amount of confidence that it might be used.
A lot of times we have a personal need or a perceived need, but we might be the only one with that. In which case, you could end up with a product with no adoption.
so true.
The fact we knew we were building it for us and that we'd be using it made a world of difference.
Every time we think about building something knew we can always as, "do we need this" or "will this make our lives easier?"
I'm writing a post about scratching your own itch or solving your own problem, shortly, so keep an eye out for that too.
Exactly agreed.
Conversely, there is a lot of value in building something for yourself. Something you need, and something you love. And if others happen to need it and love it as well then great! But if you set out to solve your own problem, anything else that comes would just be an added benefit.
Keeping someone accountable definitely works. For those of us who cannot get anyone, 'Build in Public' is a good way to keep us on our toes. While there's nothing as good as having a close friend with whom one can bounce ideas off of, building in public makes the people following you accountable and can also get your first set of alpha users. We've been building in public for the last 8 weeks, and have our MVP launch on the 1st of April, but we already have about 10 alpha users willing to try out our product when we launch, and that means a lot for us.
that list of 10 alpha users might be as exciting as making your first dollar IMO. nice work!
It's always fun and exciting to see that people are actually interested in the thing you've built.
thanks for sharing!
What's your co-founder's mail, asking for a friend. :)
jake@adventureplane.com :D I confirmed with him and said he'd love to connect!
I can highly relate to the first part of your post. I also get very motivated when starting something new, but very often, sooner or later, my desire to work on it fades out.
I tried having a partner on some projects but it never worked out. Maybe because I was usually the one having way more knowledge or putting way more effort which undoubtedly ruins my drive to work and be creative.
However, I worked alone on my most recent project for more than a year, and I kept it a secret for the whole time believing that any external input could potentially disrupt my motivation. But around the same time I told some people about it, my motivation fizzled out.
Even tho my experience is completely different than yours, I do believe that having THE RIGHT partner is better than having no partner at all. And hopefully one day I start something again with the right partner.
It definitely helps to surround yourself with other bootstrappers and people building their projects. In the WBE Space we have a channel called #what-i-am-doing-today and it's interesting to see that most of the members write there on a daily basis (including weekends)! It really helps to have people cheering for you!