A couple of months ago we started working on a little project of ours in our free time. It was mostly a weekend thing. Not connected with my professional work or my organization. Just a little fun service you can use for free.
On Saturday this little website of ours went live.
We have decided to keep this site in a private beta for a month and not tell you much about it. Not because it is a secret (I know ideas are a dime a dozen), but because we would rather have you try out the application when it is out rather than us talking about it.
This series of posts is not about the service or what it does. It's about the things I learnt from building this side project and one of our biggest realization as we worked during the weekends was about excuses people (me included) give about why they do not start side projects during weekends.
Honestly, there is no reason not to.
Hosting infrastructure and tools are cheap. They are cheaper than you can think.
Anyone who says that he is not building or implementing an idea because he does not have sufficient resources is bullshitting. It is that simple.
Hosting accounts that are good enough to get a full blown implementation going can be less than fifty dollars a month. Yes, I know. Its ridiculous. Yes I know you probably might not scale with that infrastructure but scaling it is not your biggest problem when you are getting started, getting people to give a shit about your blog or application is.
With the plethora of open source tools out there, the Microsoft Bizspark program and the base installations that most hosting providers are giving out now a days, if you go out looking for a venture capitalist to fund your idea there is something fundamentally wrong with your approach.
If you need venture capitalists, it probably means you are not lean enough or it probably means you are not embracing constraints.
With the productivity that most development environments and databases provide you now a days, if you cannot build a small implementation of an idea or a hobby, without quitting your day job or making a big deal about it, there is something fundamentally wrong with the way you manage your weekends.
With every passing day, the reasons for not implementing your idea into a concrete working application, are diminishing.
Reasons like No Funding, No Resources, No Time, No Venture Capitalists are probably not the things that are holding you back. Laziness, Fear of Failing (or succeeding), Bad Time management and your lizard brain are.
(Honest confession: At least these were the things that were holding me back from pursuing and completing this project).
Ok, now that I have confessed, I am calling your bluff. Accept it. With lesser and lesser reasons to hide behind, chances are that you are going to get your butt off that couch, fire up that IDE and work on something that fascinates you.
A couple of months ago, we called our own bluff, got our own butt off the couch and if there is one thing I can tell you after launching a private beta for this system, it is that, if you have an idea lingering in your head, you are doing yourself a disservice by not implementing it.
Shipping a hobby feels good.
Go on. Start this weekend. I wish you good luck.
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