Ask HN: Choosing a Side Project
When the time and energy you have available to work on side projects is limited, the opportunity cost of working on the wrong one is enormous. How do you choose which of dozens of ideas to pursue?
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2016 where @cauterized convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:
Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.
CATEGORY Ask HN Roundtables →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE 23 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 15 comments
I blogged about coming up with an idea for my latest project last week: https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/how-to-come-up-with-a-business-idea ↗
At some point, I narrowed a list of 40+ idea down to 4, and then I picked one. I used a somewhat formal process to help me out, and that was to evaluate each idea based on a checklist of 7 requirements:
1. Do people need this? (i.e. have I identified a niche that I'm very confident will love what I build)
2. Can I personally do a good job marketing and distributing it? (i.e. do I know where the target customers hang out online and am I sure I can get the word out about my product there)
3. How hard will it be to avoid churn and keep retention high? (i.e. is the product set-it-and-forget-it, or at least somewhat naturally re-engaging? or will it require lots of effort from users' to keep using)
4. Is it meaningful and beneficial to the world? (i.e. will I enjoy working on it for years to come)
5. How long will it take me to build an MVP? (i.e. do I have time for this now)
6. What kind of effort will it take to keep it running long-term? (i.e. will I have time for this later)
7. Can this idea actually generate revenue? (i.e. do I have a business model in mind that has been proven to work for this kind of idea in the past)
My advice to you is to come up with a similar checklist, run through your ideas, give each a score, and go with the highest one!
I've had several and they've all been great learning experiences. I started by customizing some php-mysql form generator and selling databases to small businesses. Next I learned ASP.NET and wrote web services to collect water treatment data remotely. After that, the biggest and most successful side project I did was Cupcake Wrapper Creator. I rewrote it once. Then I started a SaaS project in Django, but never finished.
Recently I gave up on a AVR emulator I was writing (in C, to learn C at the same time). The core controller structure and instructions were fun, but when it came time to implement the IO, I realized I just wasn't that interested. Plus I have older kids now who realize when I'm neglecting them, a bigger house to maintain and a more demanding job.
Now I just do a few algorithm exercises in Juypter or crypto challenges in Go each week. I'm still learning and I get a sense of accomplishment without the nagging unfinished project aftertaste.
An alternative approach: break side projects down into short-term projects. Basically minimum viable products. This shortens the time to feedback and minimizes the opportunity cost from picking the wrong one.
It's generally easier to optimize this path, then to "pick the right idea." Because it's basically impossible to know ahead of time. And, besides, you'll learn a lot through each iteration. Good luck!
One compelling idea that I heard recently was looking around on odesk and similar sites for lots of similar requests and building a tool that solves those problems.
The upside is that you can find a probably that people are provably interested in paying money to solve. The downside is that most ideas you'll find are going to be a real grind to solve and are unlikely to be passion projects which is often helpful for success.
I would approach this with two things in mind.
1. Pick something you can do in a relatively short time, say less than one year. That way you do not run out of steam working on it.
2. Pick something that you will learn a new skill or skills working on. Regardless of if what you choose succeeds or fails, you still come out ahead with a new skill.