The Slow-Cooked Side Project

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The Slow- Cooked Side Project Turn your hobby project into a smashing success* @andrewhao 1 / 78

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* success 2 / 78

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* success 3 / 78

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* success 5 / 78

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* success 6 / 78

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* success 8 / 78

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* success 9 / 78

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* success The satisfaction of learning & self-improvement 10 / 78

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* success The satisfaction of learning & self-improvement The joy of creating something valuable 11 / 78

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Part I: How to start 12 / 78

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How to start Find a problem Find your problem 13 / 78

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My task: Coordinate signups for a vigil event across several campus groups 14 / 78

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My task: Coordinate signups for a vigil event across several campus groups Highly manual process. 15 / 78

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How to start Find a solution Can it be solved with technology? Aggregate information from disparate sources? Digitize a previously-manual work ow? Automate a tedious task? 16 / 78

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My solution: Build an online signup sheet for the event! 17 / 78

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My tech stack: PHP, MySQL, and a little technology known as AJAX 18 / 78

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How to start Make it useful ASAP Otherwise it sits in a corner, gathering dust. 19 / 78

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Coded in a sleepless evening 20 / 78

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Tons of ugly code. 21 / 78

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And Googled to hack together everything else. 22 / 78

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The signup process went smoothly and the event was successful! 23 / 78

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How to start Success metrics Did it solve your problem? Are other people interested? Who else needs to know about and use your project? 24 / 78

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Feedback: "Can we use it?" - other campus groups 25 / 78

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Part II Sustaining your project 26 / 78

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Fast forward to 2006... ⏳ 27 / 78

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Hello Rails! Very hip! Insanely productive! 29 / 78

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Reframing the problem: Coordinating volunteers is dif cult! 30 / 78

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Coordinating volunteers is: Paper- or email-based Highly manual & error-prone Unidirectional No single source of truth 31 / 78

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Round 2! Solve a more general problem 32 / 78

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Round 2! Solve a more general problem ...in a technology I want to learn 33 / 78

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Sustaining your project Find a partner Misery loves company Align your values 34 / 78

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hack 35 / 78

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hack hack 36 / 78

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hack hack hack 37 / 78

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hack hack hack launch! 38 / 78

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Unsupported viewing environment Your system is having trouble playing this video. For more information, see our Help Center. 39 / 78

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Sustaining your project Launch strategically Reddit. Hacker News. Craigslist. Product Hunt. The local coffee shop. 40 / 78

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Launched within our networks With the friends and groups we were a part of 41 / 78

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Sustaining your project Have low expectations You'll never be disappointed 42 / 78

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"If we get 100 users, this will have been worth it" 43 / 78

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Yay success! We launched Something That Is Kinda Useful! We learned while we were at it! Our friends like it! Maybe 10 users like it too! 44 / 78

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Sustaining your project Viral loops Does your product have a pathway to organically grow? 45 / 78

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(Oh my goodness, we have users) 46 / 78

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Users have wants! "Can you add Feature X?" "This would be perfect if you just did Y" "I would pay money if you did Feature Z" 47 / 78

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P-R-E-S-S-U-R-E 48 / 78

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You have a choice: Do you want to run this as a startup and work hard and actually maybe make money? 49 / 78

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You have a choice: Do you want to run this as a startup and work hard and actually maybe make money? If so - read "Lean Startup" by Eric Ries 50 / 78

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This is not that talk. 51 / 78

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Life goes on We're full time students. 52 / 78

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Life goes on We're full time students. Maybe you're a parent, 53 / 78

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Life goes on We're full time students. Maybe you're a parent, or work multiple jobs, 54 / 78

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Life goes on We're full time students. Maybe you're a parent, or work multiple jobs, or have relational commitments, 55 / 78

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Life goes on We're full time students. Maybe you're a parent, or work multiple jobs, or have relational commitments, or life is just crazy 56 / 78

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Sustaining your project N-O 57 / 78

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Sustaining your project Do one thing, excellently Keep a laser focus on your little product. 58 / 78

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Vision "the easiest way to build a signup sheet" 59 / 78

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That means: Always free No ads (initially) Prioritize experience Be good. 60 / 78

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Sustaining your project Be cheap Stay on the "free" side of freemium 61 / 78

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Service Cost Linode $35/mo Google Analytics $0 New Relic $0 Sparkpost $0 Bitbucket $0 Slack $0 Cloud are $0 Bugsnag $0 62 / 78

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No money no problems Not charging money relieved us of pressure to perform for users 63 / 78

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No money no problems Not charging money relieved us of pressure to perform for users That means we can work on our own terms 64 / 78

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Sustaining your project Guard your time Rule of thumb: No more than a couple hours a week. 65 / 78

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Sustaining your project Keep your job Most things fail. You need your Real Job. 66 / 78

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Sustaining your project Guiding principles Are we having fun? Are we learning? Do we still have a life? Are we proud of the work we've done? Do we have at least one passionate user? 67 / 78

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Part III: The future 68 / 78

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Fast forward 11 years... ⏳ 69 / 78

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We kept it running with minimal effort! Rails 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 upgrade(s) Rewrote test suite, full functional test coverage Wrote our own CI deployment pipeline Traf c more or less slowly grew each year Built Elm, React components of the system 70 / 78

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If you're not doing well... Say goodbye You had a good run. Put the product to rest. 71 / 78

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We made the decision to put up ads and test a freemium model Support this for the long haul 72 / 78

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The future Pay for things you can't do yourself We contracted out design to a real designer 73 / 78

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The future Find out what the users think Software analytics, customer interviews. Are you solving their problems? 74 / 78

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Customer interviews Calls, in-person interviews Chat widget/Slack chat 75 / 78

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The future We had a few interns! Giving back to the community 76 / 78

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In conclusion Find a problem - yours! Get it in front of people Say no - so you can say yes! Always be learning ❤ being creative 77 / 78

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Thanks @andrewhao wejoinin.com With inspiration from: Re:work: Jason Fried and DHH The Lean Startup: Eric Ries 78 / 78