The topic for today is how I view my project ideation and my project initialization and
getting my ideas. So there are different approaches that people doing in the acting or solo entrepreneurs,
they do have different approaches to the topic.
There is a philosophy that says, hey, first think of an idea and by thinking of an idea,
you go into a certain space on a Reddit or on a different community and you try to find
the problems that often are mentioned there or often occur there.
And the idea that you will then have will be a solution to that problem.
The next step when you thought of the problem or the solution that you’re going to build
is that you do validation. So you build a landing page, you collect email addresses there and in the community where you found the problem and other similar communities on a similar topic, you share your landing page and share your idea and you mention, hey, if you’re interested, sign up and that’s how you can measure how good the idea resonates with the audience.
And what is important there, at least in my opinion, this is not my approach, but I have
read about it.
What is important there is that the topic or the audience or crowd that you’re in should
also be something that resonates with you. If you’re really into podcasting, for example, you could go into a podcasting niche or because that’s something that you get enthusiastic about.
But if you, for example, don’t have any feeling with sports, I would recommend against doing
something related to sports, even though you might have found a problem you can solve.
But if the topic doesn’t resonate with you at some point in time, it will get difficult to get enthusiastic about the idea about continuing because the topic doesn’t really
resonate with you.
So after you’ve collected the email addresses, and I think you should set some kind of limits
saying, hey, if I get more than six email addresses, I deem this idea to be validated.
And then you start creating building the first MVP could be using a node code solution.
You could be building something yourself.
You could just do the business part and have somebody else implement the ID for you.
The exact process of implementation is not that important, but at least you validated
the ID and you continue.
And if the ID does not get validated because two little people sign up, you just continue
on and you repeat the process with a different idea.
That’s not really my approach. However, I did attempt it one time with teletron.
I did one time I created a landing page and attempt to collect email addresses, but that
was when I was already building the product and I was just getting close to an MVP and
I tried to generate some traction related to the product. But I kind of flunked on getting the landing page out.
I did collect two email addresses, but in the end, I never used those and never emailed
the people saying, hey, it’s already because I never felt that it was ready enough to satisfy
the curiosity of those people. And at some point I might even email them, but that’s more than two and a half years ago. So it kind of also feels weird to be emailing them.
My process is different.
So my own personality, my persona is I’m a pretty technical guy.
I’ve been doing programming and developing software professionally for a job, for a boss
more than almost 20 years, 19 years into months for the same boss, worked for a nice company
and I’ve always been building side projects. Mostly for me and only the last couple of years, I shifted to trying to also market those side projects, finding an audience instead of only building it from each. And so I do the more technical approach. So at some point I created a project from that.
I derived a boilerplate, which allowed me to get started pretty quickly. Also with logging in password reset, having the database ready, exposing an API, that kind of stuff. So that’s already there when I start a project.
And what I try to do is I tried to solve my own problems. So at some point I’m busy with something and I think, hey, it would be great or it would be nice if I had X or Y. Then I tried to find a solution for that. How would I solve that? Could I productize that? Can I build a SaaS from it?
I’ve also built some open source stuff thinking, hey, this is not something I can build a SaaS
off, but if I do this open source, I would use it in one of my products, but I could
also perhaps help other people. But I don’t think any of my open source projects have been really used by other people, but at least I make them available.
So that’s what I do. And in the beginning, when I first started doing it, I would really do the boilerplate step. I would really start building out the product.
So I would also be relatively fast with implementing and completing the solution itself.
So the problem has been solved. But then I spend a relatively large amount on getting unusable by somebody else. Building a management interface and making stuff visible, managing things that are related to the product. And I found that that might not even be necessary because I’m not always 100% sure that other people will be using it.
So I’ve also shifted to a different approach. That’s what I did for the log software that I built.
That is able to load pages and blog posts from Notion. So what I found that when I build my products, I also need some steady content pages, like a blog or like a documentation page or other explanation, terms and conditions, for example. And I figured, hey, I don’t want to build that in the project itself and deploy it when I need to change content.
With what I did, I did something else. I figured, hey, I am using Notion at the time.
Or I am using Notion currently also to keep track of to-do’s and project notes and similar
stuff. I figured, hey, I might be using Notion as the content engine for my blog or pages.
And I just set up a product or a project that would, based on the URL, get the page.
And it would then render that as part of the site itself. So I use a reverse proxy and get everything that’s prefixed with /pages or /slash blog. I would send to that Notion project.
And what I did there, I only built the solution.
I did build it using the same stack as my boilerplate, but I only built a solution.
And I figured, hey, if that’s really usable, I’ll flesh it out.
I’ll copy it over to the boilerplate and I’ll really start doing a project there.
So configuration, et cetera, is currently still maintained by just a JSON file on disk.
And it works for all the projects that I have.
I’m getting into some annoyances that trigger me to say, hey, maybe I want to build something
more out of it.
Because now if I have a new page, I need to find the ID, I need to update the JSON file,
and then I need to restart the project, which is annoying.
So I’m always there at steps thinking, hey, for me, it works.
It’s really beneficial. I’m still using it, which is also important.
It could be that I think I’m solving a problem, but I don’t, resulting in the project not
being used. But I’m still using it. I’m actively using it. All my new projects also use it.
That’s good. And at some point, I will probably build a product out of it.
Then I need to think of a name, get the domain name, because now it’s just on a subdomain.
Something else, since it’s not public.
So that’s the different approach that I’m now doing.
But the most important thing is I try to solve problems that I encounter in my own space.
And by doing that, I find that I am also, well, the ID also resonates with me.
So it’s something that I am passionate about because it’s also a problem that I encounter.
I hope to also solve that problem for other people. I can talk and explain it in passion with passion, for example. So for me, that really helps in getting passionate about something, talking about it,
communicating about it. And since I’m very technical, I can relatively easy, relatively fast get out the product itself.
So building a landing page and collecting email addresses kind of takes a day to set
up, I guess, if you’re doing something like that.
But for me, getting something else working, I can also do it pretty fast.
So for me, that’s okay. And I also don’t, if I build something and it doesn’t turn out to be something, it’s also not lost time for me because I did build it to solve something that I, myself,
encounter. And because I encountered it myself, I will probably still be using it. And if I’m no longer using it, at least it helped me to some degree. And it also helped me gain insight in, hey, this didn’t work. And I can also learn from that when I come up with the next project or the next idea.
So for me, what often is the case is that I have a lot of ideas. I’m not really a completionist.
So I find it difficult when I start building something to really get it ready and done that it’s usable by someone else. And that’s something that I often struggle with.
Also taking then the approach that I did for the Notion blog project is then I really get
to the core and then it can continue on. So it’s very easy to determine whether it’s ready or done because it works. And it does what it needs to do. And I also find it more difficult to determine when it’s done, when it’s also about user interface, interactivity, user experience.
I’m not that good in visual stuff. So I always use one CSS library and I have very little custom CSS also in terms of color and stuff like that. And for me, this ideation approach for a project that works for me. So I’m definitely not saying that having a different approach like the landing page
scenario with collecting interest and validating the ID is worse or it’s just different than
what I do. And for me, this works.
And that’s what I wanted to share today with you.
If you have any questions or comments, just let me know.
It’s DebuggingDan on Twitter and I’m interested in hearing what you think.