Month long project

Discussions
#1

Okay so here’s an idea I’ve been kicking around.

I kind of want to just work on something brand new with a buddy for a month or so. I would put my business into maintenance mode where I’m spend maybe an hour or two per day to keep things running (and now that I have some help with support that would be easier to do). But I wouldn’t be building new features during this time.

Maybe I’d even run a little paid ad campaign during that time - I have a paid campaign that did fairly well which I could just turn on.

So it’s basically a shiny object thing but couple of key differences. I’m not really under any illusion that I’m going to start something new and it’s going to take off in a month. It takes 2 years to get anywhere with a new business. So I would be going into it knowing that it was just purely for the purposes of taking a break for a month.

At first I was thinking I could team up with a buddy but most of my friends are busy doing their thing and wouldn’t really be able to take a month to work on something new.

So I was thinking maybe I could work with someone that’s just getting started on their product. I could bring a few things to the table - experience of having built/marketed/sold a SaaS app as well as probably some cash.

Maybe I take a little stake in the product in exchange.

Anyone ever done this kind of thing before or have any thoughts?

#2

Oh I dream of doing this. But that “one hour per day” to maintain my current product tends to last more than an hour and drain my creative energy for the rest of the day. Sigh.

#3

Cool! I was sure that the first response was going to be “rah rah shiny object you are crazy”. :smile:

Yeah one thing that has definitely helped has been getting some help with support and batching my support activities even more than I was before (once per day instead of two/three times).

#4

Hey Kalen!

I just launched a new business called http://planda.co/. Have you ever heard of it? If you want to help out I’d love for you to help! :slight_smile:

^ Y’all that’s a joke. Calm down I’m not that big of a jerk.

Have you ever seen this: http://lob.com/

I think it’d be cool to make lots of integrations with this and other apps… Magento, Shopify, Wordpress, etc. BUT that’s kind of similar to magemail, quite literally. Hahaha.

#5

But… I am that much of a self promotor. Sorry guys! I’m new to this shameless plug thing.

#6

Hmmm… a month of time spread over 3 months ( 1/3 time x 3 months) would be plenty to TEST an idea, ala the Lean Startup or the 7 day startup.

I know the conventional wisdom is that there is no magic idea, but that doesn’t means there aren’t TERRIBLE ideas.
A good idea is necessary but not sufficient.

And, since you’ll need to test the idea, it makes sense to test it before you fully development.

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#7

@dev_gar Ha! :slight_smile: Yeah I kind of had you or people in a similar stage in mind. No I hadn’t seen https://lob.com/ - that’s cool and could definitely make for a fun little project.

I find it a liiiiitle hard to get excited specifically about 24x7 support but who knows maybe you can sell me on it :slight_smile: We can DM about it.

1 Like
#8

@Clay_Nichols that’s a good point! I feel like I would want to put more than 1/3 time’s worth of focus into it but you’re right that a 3 month period might be better than just a single month.

Thanks for the feedback!

#9

I do think there is a lot of benefit to picking something and “seeing it through”. But I would time-box it,as you’ve done, and also make sure there are metrics for success (or failure).

I just posted discussion on a great article on this very topic.

#10

Thanks Clay. Just read your post and started reading that article. Bit of a long read! I read about half way through :slight_smile: It’s a bit overly systematic for my taste but definitely packed a ton of ideas in there that would probably be useful for many people.

Completely agree that there is benefit to seeing it through - in fact I’d probably say that is the most important factor of anything else at the end of the day.

That was what I kind of liked about the idea of having an investment angle on this. At first I was thinking just a month long project pretty much for the fun of it, but then the idea of taking an investment stake in the company came to mind.

And that kind of gives you the best of both worlds - you find someone who is committed to seeing their business through, and you work with them intensively for an initial period of time (maybe a month, maybe 3, maybe a year would be necessary, who knows).

And you get the benefits of working on a shiny object while also hopefully getting some equity in something that is going to live on beyond that.

I’m not under any illusions that I could create something in a month that would have sustained value over time without putting blood, sweat, tears, and money into it over at least several years.

And aside from those (selfish) benefits, I actually would really like to help someone overcome some of those early hurdles in building a bootstrapped product. I know how hard it was for me and most likely would have loved to have someone a little further along take me under their wing.

The more I think about it, this is basically an incubator model at a (much) smaller scale. Incubators pick founders they think will do well, give them a bit of money, advice, accountability, and a network for a short period of time - and in return take a small % of the company.

Not to say that I’d bring anywhere near the level of value of an actual incubator, but hopefully I could bring some amount of value that was greater than zero :smile: