Graveyard of ideas

Recalling failed side projects. Warning: B2C apps inside!

I’m writing this post at the very beginning of the year. A pretty popular time for resolutions and planning, but it may as well be suitable for putting some unrealized projects to sleep. I’m going to update this list after more failed things - if it doesn’t grow, that means I’m dead inside. There’s value in moments of coming up with an idea, then playing with it - a mental exploration no worse than reading or programming. This piece is mostly about ideas that were no longer “free” at some point, as I put effort into implementing them.

The greatest influence on what I call “creativity” had my father. As far as I can remember, I watched him DIY-ing around home, sewing(!) funny costumes or drawing on demand, no matter artsy or technical stuff. Between providing for his family and emigration, he would hit upon new patents, usually for novel home products. For me, I suspect I gained some of this not just by observation, but pure inheritance.

licytujkase.pl

2011 - 2018. Let me qoute a description I used to put in my CV:

Teamed up with friend to create new “All-pay” website, I was solely responsible for graphic design and PHP/MySQL script behind the innovative auction engine.

A classic story of two founders with a bold concept and little budget. Over high school time, so called penny auction sites were all over the place. Our take was to let players bid on cold hard cash instead material rewards. Buddy was the brains behind legal, inner workings of the games - we went as far as getting official certificate they were not hazard - and bookkeeping, and I was the technical guy. Tireless refining, coding and on-the-go learning led us to launching. The first deposit settled just a few minutes later, and the feeling was incredible, like we conjured this money up!

The first version closed after about half a year - the time for fully incorporating our company was up, and we haven’t broke even yet, so decided to cut the spendings. This tells a bit about expectations for growth!

I relaunched in 2013 as one man show, with the same principles and… similar outcome - lack of traction despite having better code: fast, minimalist and mobile-first design, and more playability thanks to detailed graphics and dynamic behavior (the original app didn’t even use AJAX!).

My last attempt at this project was around 2017 - 2018. I advanced with Laravel backend and some fresh games mechanics. Digging into e-mails of that time, I got distracted by idea of adding some tokens as a currency (inspired by crypto hype) and never got back since.

Conclusions:

• I stand by a claim that this gig kickstarted my whole career in IT. From markup kiddie to full stack developer, I became employable. Thank you for this Maks (this time publicly), and howdy!
• Focus on shipping - there was a set date of lauching, at it helped immensely against the “one more feature” syndrome.
• We didn’t check product market fit or do extensive advertisement, yet we got paying players. You may not find enough customers, but never zero.

Nosia

2014 - 2016. An everyday gadget - soft handle for carrying shopping bags - sold through a micro online store. The product was sourced from China (in an exclusive “nude” color) and branded for local market. Probably first symptoms of super optimistic, over- (I’d say total) preparation and planning. Incorporated Zim for tracking every current and future aspect of business. Did a neat LibreOffice Base → Write pipeline for printing shipping envelopes.

This time I budgeted for promotion, but had bad luck with the medium. Leaflets and newspaper ads brought no buyers. On the internet I couldn’t get past minuscule organic traffic. One of mildly interesting concepts was to collaborate with second-hand clothing shops, but unfortunately didn’t try that. Today, I’d probably settle for combo of TikTok profile & dropshipping for such microbrand.

Vending machines

2014. This one never took off, but I like takeaways. Inspired by just two stimuli:

• YouTube videos pitching vending as sustainable, self-made business lifestyle
• A fact that market was really uncrowded in Poland

I was planning to run a network of machines selling only energy drinks. I’d connect lack of action with the previous venture - proceedings from Nosia would have allowed me to rent or buy first dispensers, but it never happened.

Conclusions:

• Timing is important. The world isn’t going to wait for your idea. Today, energy drinks are forbidden to sell through vending machines. While it’s alarming states do wipe out whole legitimate industries overnight, I had exactly decade to earn from this.
• Physical business seems harder than creating yet another app, but at the same time feels more adventurous and fulfilling.

milo.sc

2018 - 2019. For a few months, I was paid to come to office and do next to nothing at work. An idea was born out of boredom, a brief motivation to get better at (pre-hooks era) React and… romanticism. Website builder for couples scratched my own itch - I wanted a place online to celebrate my engagement, so why not build a whole product around it and enable others to share their love stories?

Probably the first time I launched to the market with direct, strong competition in place. Among other providers, I had unorthodox business model (pay after wedding date to conserve the content), diverse advertising plans and a killer domain - short address on Seychelles TLD meaning “love” in polish.

The lazy period at work ended, so did my capabilities to code and market the app. Nevertheless, my relationship is still going strong ♥

Juandji

2017. In retrospection, it feels unbelievable I made an attempt on a knock-off board game known from a classic adventure movie. Guess who convinced me? Ultimately, my father - the creative ancestor you may recognize from second paragraph. Prototyping involved wiring up Raspberry Pi together with bunch of electronic parts, and was very enlightening. As soon as we more-or-less attested the self-walking figurines can be done, we brought the project to Kickstarter.

We received some love and - to be honest - it was the most profitable idea of all you have read here! Well, almost - the campaign was promptly shut down for copyright reasons. I told you, dad!

What next?

The stream of ideas hasn’t dried. I still haven’t approached The Prostitute Milestone Number Two, but constantly hope to do so. I’m thinking about 2 physical products, a subscription item, and another B2C website (again, scratching my own itch). I believe in bootstrapping and the importance of execution.