Week 1: Starting a new project
Week 1: Starting a new project
I see a lot of people wanting to build a startup and never getting any traction on the idea. To keep myself motivated i thought it would be a good idea to write a log of the journey. Feel free to comment.
Background/ Project: I have a customer who has issues on the way Zapier works and its pricing. Zapier is a great way to stitch up different cloud services. The Interface is built to allow non developers to make the connections for example between a webform and an internal tool like Slack or Trello. Zapier is free for 1on1 integrations and less than 1000 transactions a month. My customer is a power user and wants to be able to do 100.000+ transactions at a lower price point than what zapier is offering.
I made the customer an offer that we would build him a POC in a week. That week has passed now. This POC is the basis of a MVP. The ability to route transactions from one service to another on a decent scale and stability. No GUI yet to have the customer adapt the workflow himself.
Work done this week:
- Built the workflow definition of a workflow the customer needs
- Built a POC engine to route transactions based on the workflow definition with mockup data.
- no API integrations yet
Monday we will discuss with the customer on the next steps.
This is a great idea. :) I will follow you and maybe try this too.
Thank you , some reflections,
I specifically started with this idea because i found a start customer for it, and we agreed on scope and price for the service. I have had about an idea for a business every other week , but ongoing motivation to build is not easy when you have other activities to do, like bringing money on the table , I had hoped to receive more community reaction , but two people following is already great :) once the project will become more tangible more people will probably be interested. thank you for the interest.
Hi @filvdg - that's fantastic that you've got a customer for your project this early. They will keep you focused on delivering and will provide you with real-world feedback and validation. Is your solution something that could easily be applied to other customers? Do you see a market outside of this single customer?
I think that talking about your project is one of the best ways for a maker to stay focused and ship. That's one of the reasons I'm building Open Shippers. I've got some work to do on creating a proper landing page to clearly communicate the value prop, but it's essentially a place for makers to journal their side project progress day-to-day (or week-to-week, etc) and garner feedback, accountability, and support from others.
If you're interested, I'd invite you (or anyone else) to join the Open Shippers limited preview. Even if not, best wishes on your new project!
I will be following :). Best of luck!
Hey, great idea! You can rent dedicated developers at designpac.net if you feel the need for assistance.