Too often do I think of cool ideas and then nothing comes of them. I want that to change, so I'm creating a goal for myself.
My ultimate goal is to make products that others find useful and enjoy. The ability to create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) quickly is an essential skill to have in this world of solopreneurship, and I want to be better at it.
Learning from the past month's project will be essential, and good note taking will definitely be a beneficial tool. Also, being that I actually have a full time software engineering job, this will all be done on the side. Time will be limited, so efficiency will be crucial.
I don't know about you, but I often find myself spending too much time on a problem I get stuck on. Being that each project will have such limited time, I'll have to really adhere to the 80/20 rule. I'll need to get the essential things done, and if I get stuck, either figure out a work around or find a better solution asap.
I am already a software engineer, so I have a good amount of information that I'm starting with. However, the goal of this giant project is to learn even more about things that work and things that don't. My plan is to help others fast forward their careers by being able to learn from my experiences.
Of course, watching one or more of these future projects take off and become something big is my goal. I'd love to just be able to do this kind of thing for the rest of my life. Operate on my terms. Work when I want to work, and stay creative! We'll see how it goes :)
Goal: Create a piece of software (app/website/program) that people will pay to use
It's time to switch to the monetization portion of the project. I want the next project to be something that people will pay to use. It could be a subscription plan or a one time payment. Ideally, I'd like to solve a problem that people have in their business and/or everyday lives.
The motivation for this one was that there is a card game that my family
and I frequently play whenever we get together and the last time we were playing my step Dad
mentioned that it would be nice to have an app that could handle the scoring. (It's kind
of a pain to do manually). So, now it's not!
Try it out. Rules are in the app, so if you
haven't
played it before you shouldn't have any problems.
Get it here:
Up the River (Scoring App) (iOS)
/ Up the River (Android)
Up the River (Web)
This one took a bit longer than expected, but not due to technical difficulties. I was just having a tough time finding the time to work on it. I like it though, and I think it'll be pretty useful moving forward. Plus, I implemented an iOS version, so I'm pretty excited to see how that goes.
Get it here:
My MVPs (iOS)
/ My MVPs (Android)
This was actually a long time project that I'd created at least a couple of times. This time, however, I decided to set a due date that I was really going to hold myself to. I got version 1.0 published in the Google Play Store in about a month. Now I'm doing a bit of outreach to some online groups and friends to see if the app gains any traction.
Get it here:
Ultimate BJJ Timer
I needed a hub to update everyone on my project status and I didn't want it to be on a social media platform that I don't control. I figured a website that I have full control of would be a good option, both now and for later when this is all (hopefully) a lot bigger.
See it here (you're on it): TaufLife.com
I figured there's probably a lot of people who come up with ideas for tools that will help their lives but either don't know how or really don't care about it enough to build it. The goal was to find those people, and get them to write down that idea for a potential engineer to build in the future.
See it here: SomebodyBuildIt.com
I'll send a weekly update of what I've done, things I've learned, tools I've used, and tips that I think would be useful for someone else.
If you'd like a litte preview of what you can expect, here is a link to
the first weekly update
Tauf
Life Weekly Update #1