Ask HN: How long did it take you to go from side project idea to launch?
I've been working on a SaaS product side project for about 4 months now. Progress feels painfully slow, but I wonder what typical one-man consumer SaaS projects look like. Years of development? 6 months average? Specific examples would be helpful so that I can compare the scope/size of the idea to mine.
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Not a SaaS, but I'm working on a blogging platform for developers : https://www.ploghub.com/ . To use an analogy : Medium for developers without the dickbar. It took me around one month to build the initial version. The front page uses a dumbed down version of the HN algorithm. Code here (need to add test cases) : https://github.com/ploggingdev/ploghub
For my next project, I plan to build an alternative to Disqus which respects users' privacy. I removed Disqus from my blog a while due to the 2 MB junk it loads and sends tracking data to 10+ sites. I used to receive a few comments, so I thought I would build myself an alternative to Disqus and maybe turn it into a SaaS if there's demand for such a product. Any interest for a $10/month privacy respecting Disqus alternative + an open source code base?
I expect it to take me 2 to 3 weeks to build it. As you build more projects, you end up with a lot of reusable components, so it gets easier to build out the MVP. The real challenge for developers is to get users. This is something I don't have much experience with, so let's see how it goes.
I quit my job in May 2016 (15 months ago) to work on an idea (a painting web app). Unfortunately I was also trying to earn money with any sort of side-kick jobs (teaching) and the idea never got the attention it deserved. It got a few turns and twists after an initial demo to some designer friends in December 2016.
I have since then managed to get some funding and have been working on it more seriously for the past 4 months (since may 2017). In two weeks I will have another closed alpha-demo that is then going to be used to produce a video for the landing page, and opened to the public if there is no big bashing from my zen target audience friends.
It does seem like a huge desert to cross. Motivation comes and goes. In the meantime I managed to kill my desire to feature creep it to death and learned a lot about the fine art of listening/ignoring the target audience requests. I know for sure that my approach for my next project is going to be completely different than my current one. But in the meantime the rent is due :)
The landing page: https://www.pixnit.com
My blog with some thoughts on the bootstrapping experience: http://www.hugodaniel.pt
For me, there's about 4 months between idea and first public launch. But another 4 years between that first launch to deciding to build a company around it. The time between 4 months and 4 years involves building a community, helping users, and improving the core product...
My personal examples:
Launched Selenium as an open source project in 2004. Founded Sauce Labs Inc ("Selenium in the cloud") in 2008. (Sauce makes roughly ~$25MM a year now. https://www.inc.com/profile/sauce-labs)
Launched Tapster (then called "Bitbeambot") as an open source project in 2011. Founded Tapster Robotics, Inc. in 2015. (Not disclosing revenue at the moment, but still going strong!)
To echo some other comments, I also have many other side-projects (some posted to GitHub, but even more unpublished) that never went anywhere. Success is a combination of luck, timing, ABC (Always Be Creating), stubbornness/persistence, and getting feedback from as many people as possible.
3 Months. It highly depends on the project though.
For me, it was an e-book [0] that I wanted to write to teach others about React. The idea was to learn React while building an application that is more complex than a Todo Application.
So I took the first 3 months to write the initial draft - only 90 pages. I released it on Leanpub as an unfinished book, because it was painfully hard to keep going. Yet the community seemed to like it. It confirmed me being on the right track and my motivation went up again.
Since then I iterated 4 times to improve and enrich the learning experience and "released" it multiple times. I keep it updated to the recent library versions, best practices and new techniques with the help of the open source community. Now it has over 170 pages and over 11.000 downloads.
What helped in my case: Release early and improve/iterate based on the feedback.
- [0] https://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-learn-react/
The problem is not the actual dev time of a serious side project like a SaaS. Even if it just takes you three months to get to some sellable product with payment integration, etc.--the much bigger problem is that you need multiple shots to get it right (find the right market niche, the right product, the right angle, the right Marketing, the right growth channels, etc.). Then, after more than just three months and many attempts + pivots you just don't have the energy/time/money to keep up. Of course you can clone some proven model but then you face lots of competition which doesn't make success more probable.
People who are succesful did 99 mediocre side projects before they hit the jackpot. But it still took them tons of time and energy. Very often a overlooked by-product which was developed over night and benefitted from all prior experiences will be the cash cow while the main project which took 12 months still hasn't won any users.
Most stop at some point because it's just tough, especially the mental part.