Has anyone done the startup a month thing?
Hey Indie Hackers,
I'm curious if anyone here has done the startup a month thing?
I remember seeing the post from Pieter Levels on how he was going to create a startup a month. https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/ and it made me wonder how many other people have approached
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yes I have, and Im still waiting to strike gold :)
Haha nice! :) Care to share what you've shipped so far?
Hmm I’m aiming for 6 in 12 months, 12 seems a lot to me, i launched 1 I have about 400 revenue so far, and working on the 2nd one, it’s getting easier cause I can reuse a lot of things from the first one
Yeah I did think less might be better, but I like the rapid validation you could achieve with 12... Hrm I'll have to see how the first month goes. What's the project making money if you don't mind me asking?
https://www.tunnelhero.com/ -> this is the one making money at this stage :)
So cool! :) Thanks for sharing!
I am trying it out and this guy too :
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/5310dbfab3?commentId=-LgIa0FsRhWpnzFHgE_H
Awesome thanks for the post. How have your projects/startups been going so far? What are the main struggles you have had with this challenge? And would you care to share any links? :)
I'm trying to work on one side project a month. On month 3 right now with 2 tiny sites up and running since April, working on one more in June. Not sure I'll last a year, but it's been fun. I like the limited time commitment (because work and family besides this) and the time-boxing of projects forces me to keep the scope to the minimum, so that each project doesn't seem like I'm climbing Everest.
Awesome, I thought there had to be some others out there that have done it! I'm thinking of giving it a try myself, to hopefully execute on all the small ideas I have had in the past.
What are the main challenges that you've come into when trying to create these side projects?
Would you mind sharing the projects that you have made? It'd be great to see!
Main challenges:
I have a long running list of product ideas, so the main issue is to choose what to work on: I try to align the choice of product with my own needs, the technologies I want to learn, and to find a theme that it fits with.
The two projects that I've completed MVPs for are listed on my IH page https://www.indiehackers.com/kirobaito
Nothing really impressive there, nothing that I'm charging money for, nothing that has business potential, yet. But it's been a joy to work on them.
I can see those being challenges for sure...
The main way I managed to overcome some of those issues, is to wake up early every day. I've started to get up at around 4:30am - 5:00am, this forces me to make time. Once I've made the time, the only reason is to work, it forces you to focus on your work.
I am planning on doing a similar challenge of a product every x months, not sure what the number is yet, but I like the idea of one a month.
I have no idea how it'll go, but I just want to make some fun things and hopefully get some users along the way.
Your projects are cool, just had a look! What's the next project you have planned?
I love the "wake up early with only one purpose, to work" method - I hope it works for you! I've used to be a night owl, then I got into waking up early, then family+children happened, so now I'm on a schedule that's largely controlled by a day job plus other human beings in my home :-)
Current side project: a calendar app for parents to coordinate child care schedules. Target audience: my family. Prototyping it now using Airtable. Liking Airtable a lot.
What are thinking of working on? Solving your own problem or targeting someone else's?
Yeah I find it pretty damn effective. I'm exactly the same... Used to stay up to 3am and wake up stupid late, but it's not a productive sleeping schedule for me haha... I can imagine having a family definitely changes things though!
Ah that sounds sweet! Airtable is awesome, I was going to use it as a backend to my next project, but it didn't have all the editable forms fields I wanted. Nonetheless it's pretty awesome!
And I'm thinking of rebuilding and improving a local website for my area. Essentially a way to collate all tech events and meetups in my area, all jobs, freelance projects, and to have a community section. Should be fun to make.
The main reason I thought of the startup a month thing is that I'd like to record the process and document what I do from the start so others looking to start almost have a tutorial for creating a complete startup.
Ideally I'd cover:
Ideally I'll create a series of videos to help people... That's the plan and what I'm looking to do.
Sorry for the wall of text! :D
Hi Soluxos,
I think you are missing a critical point. Test & validate your idea. That would be step two, right after finding your idea.
Some ideas can be abandonned faster if you can't gather any kind of traction for it. I think one week of promotion and data gathering right from the start can be a good indicator.
There are many ways to do this. I suggest looking into the book The Right It but Alberto Savoia
https://www.albertosavoia.com
Hi @valtrem, I was actually going to slightly cover that in the first step. For my first idea I was actually going to use a proven business that is very dated and needs improving, thus no need for validation. For the other ideas not based on existing businesses then yes I'll definitely be validating the idea.
Either way that book sounds like really helpful stuff, I'll be picking it up on payday! :)
Thanks!
I didn't do 12 a year or once a month but I was able to deploy 13 simple web applications in 3 months.
https://kriptode.com