
Ask HN: Side Projects Gone Big - SomeoneAtHN
I've heard many of you love to create side projects for fun, but I also heard that few of them actually took off and grow into a profitable business. So feel free to list if you have any. Statistics will be welcomed as well!
======
mojombo
I started both Gravatar and GitHub as side projects. I sold Gravatar to
Automattic after several years (though it was never profitable and became
quite painful to run during the last year that I owned it). GitHub has been
profitable since the day we started charging money (6 months after we started
working on it) and we are now up to thirteen employees without having taken
any funding.

In both cases it was the viral element of the idea that made it possible for
me to turn what was once a side project into something more. If you can't
spend all day every day working on it, you need something that will grow even
when you're not watering it.

~~~
eps
Just to establish the baseline and not to over-excite everyone - how many side
projects you had that did _not_ work out? :)

~~~
mojombo
This is a hard question to answer. I work on a lot of side projects in the
form of open source libraries and whatnot. It's possible that any of those
could blossom into a business, but I've never really pursued many of them.

As for other business projects:

* I tried to resell knives and other camping gear on eBay once. I called it Wolfcastle Munitions. That was a disaster. I'm not built to do retail.

* I had an idea called Project Mothership that was going to be Rails hosting (before anyone was doing dedicated Rails hosting and much like what Planet Argon became) but I abandoned it after I realized that I'd lose my mind if my job became network operations management.

* I wanted to do a climbing sight called Microbomber that would list and categorize climbing routes across the world with photos and reviews and whatnot.

* I also thought about making custom gloves and coats for hardcore outdoor activities (wilderness hiking and skiing, etc). I have a near impossible time finding gloves that fit me well and are legitimately waterproof, and I've still never owned a winter coat that I've loved. I was also going to use the name Microbomber for this effort.

There are plenty more that I've long forgotten.

But, all of these ideas (except the first) I only spent very small effort on.
I like to put small efforts towards a lot of ideas and then see what catches.
That way I don't spend a lot of time and effort that is later wasted. Knowing
when to abandon something and when to dive in is the hardest part, but it's
essential. Call it what you want: intuition, savvy, or instinct. I just call
it seeing the world objectively and not overvaluing every little idea you
happen to have.

~~~
mattmiller
Do you feel like you truly tested any of these ideas? If so how?

I have built something that I think is good, but has not taken off. I don't
think it is a bad idea, I think it is an untested idea. I would hate to drop
it without anyone ever seeing it.

~~~
mojombo
With a lot of effort I think they all could have been successful. But when you
have to work your day job to make a living, you need something you can
bootstrap on the side without investing huge amounts of unrewarded effort up
front. That's why I like to start a lot of things and then see what happens.
Sometimes I give up on an idea simply because it becomes uninteresting (e.g.
retail). With both Gravatar and GitHub, it was almost immediately obvious that
they were ideas worth pursuing. They got people excited, and I could easily
gauge the interest by tracking signups. If you're not seeing signups, it means
something is wrong and you'll have to decide how much effort you're willing to
invest in order to fix that something. Without knowing the details it's hard
for me to give any more insight.

------
paulsingh
<http://notarycrm.com> and <http://mailfinch.com> are doing pretty well for
me. Still side projects but they're both profitable and steadily growing.

My rule of thumb: if you see a business using spreadsheets to manage
something, there might be an opportunity there

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
Awesome rule of thumb Paul.

~~~
paulsingh
Now that I think about it, I think _you_ planted the seed about that idea
through one of your blog posts last year. Thanks! :)

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
Ha, really? This post I'm assuming:
[http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/microsoft-excel-is-the-
wo...](http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/microsoft-excel-is-the-worlds-most-
used-database/)

TONS of Micro opportunities here.

~~~
paulsingh
Yep, this is definitely the post I was referring to.

FWIW, I fundamentally believe that smart people tackling brick-and-mortar-
businesses-using-spreadsheets will make obscene amounts of money over the long
term. (Not only are my products examples of this but, few people know this
about me, I actually bought a gas station earlier this year to force myself to
_feel_ the pain.)

For anyone thinking about doing anything like this, feel free to reach out - I
want to help you. :)

~~~
brianbreslin
Paul, have you found any significant points in the gas station business you
think could be improved by leveraging soft-tech?

~~~
paulsingh
Abso-f*cking-lutely. :)

CRM: who's buying from me, what are they buying and what should I market to
them so that I can make more money.

Inventory Management: what's in stock, what do I need to re-order, are my
employees stealing from me?

I can keep going... :)

~~~
brianbreslin
interesting. i'd love to hear more about this.

------
wensing
<http://stormpulse.com> was completely nights & weekends for the first couple
years, but is now supporting two full-timers and growing. For stats on hours
invested, traffic, and revenues, see:
[http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping-
stor...](http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping-stormpulse)

~~~
quickpost
That's an epic bootstrapping post. Even though it's a bit of a reality check,
it's also quite inspiring. It shows how far pure determination and persistence
can take you!

Well done.

~~~
wensing
Thanks! I should add, however, that my next post in that vein is going to
explain how much was timing and circumstances we couldn't have imagined.

------
mitchellh
There are a lot of side projects listed here which made it HUGE, not just big
:) To lighten it up a little: I started <http://uwrobot.com> which is a small
niche app for finding course openings for students at UW. I started this 2
years ago, and now over 25% of the entire undergraduate population at UW uses
it, and in one academic quarter registration period, it is able to pay my rent
for the year.

Its definitely not big, nor huge, but its very profitable. Just some
motivation for those of you out there who have little side projects that just
want to make a small side income.

~~~
mv
I'm no expert, but it seems unintuitive to have to click 'course notifier' and
then 'getting started' to actually get signed up. There should be a 'Start
watching courses now' link on the homepage... Most people that go to that
sight probably already know what it does and are just looking to sign-up.

------
wushupork
This doesn't fit in the tech startup realm at all, but I started doing martial
arts for fun, got pretty good at it, got chosen to do the motion capture moves
for the Mortal Kombat video games. Did that for 10 years. So I got paid to do
that. I also did performances like shows, theater performances and corporate
events etc. I would say it was nice money but definitely quit your job FU
money. I also taught martial arts on top of my day job which means I got paid
to exercise, a rarity in our tech geek community.

~~~
nailer
Are you Subzero, per the Reddit AMA?

~~~
wushupork
Subzero, Raiden, and a few others.

~~~
nailer
I know hn isn't the place , but I an so completely jealous, and I think you're
awesome.

------
sahillavingia
Instapaper is the (or at least, my) defacto example - <http://instapaper.com/>

Two of my iPhone apps, Color Stream and Dayta have turned into profitable
businesses, even though they were just pet projects (and still are).

~~~
bignoggins
Awesome, I had no idea Dayta and Instapaper were the same developer.

~~~
rbarooah
They aren't.

------
jasonfried
Basecamp was a side project for us.

~~~
nolok
I didn't know basecamp and started looking at your site; I really love the
presentation except for one thing: the bit about the basecamp competitor
founder saying blabla basecamp is the best is the "who uses it" page. When I
read the part between parenthesis the whole thing really sounded to me like a
phony message, and made me have a more negative look on the page.

Just wanted to let you know.

~~~
nolok
Could the person who downvoted me tell me why ? I merely expressed my opinion,
to me this quote looks like a flaw on an otherwise great presentation of his
project. Or am I not supposed to criticize projects here (I'm new to hacker
news) ?

~~~
julsonl
He was probably outraged to discover that you don't know the legend that is
Jason Fried (37 Signals).

~~~
cookiecaper
You should get used to this attitude, too -- even though 37 Signals's founders
and advice are highly overrated, there are a lot of people who idolize it and
take criticism of the group pretty personally. There is a really weird dynamic
going on with that, it's hard for me to understand.

------
spencerfry
Carbonmade <http://carbonmade.com> was a side project of our design studio
before gaining enough traction to work on full-time.

------
waxpancake
I built Upcoming.org on the side from my day job just for fun, and I didn't
quit my day job until it was acquired by Yahoo two years later. It was never a
big revenue generator before acquisition, but ads covered server expenses and
then some.

------
kylebragger
Forrst (<http://forrst.com/>) was a side project I built out of frustration in
January. It's now a community of around 15k developers and designers and gets
a healthy amount of traffic. Not quite profitable yet, but slowly gaining
ground every month.

~~~
SomeoneAtHN
I saw you've got a good amount of advertisers on the site already (as well as
the cabin). Is it because the cost of hosting & S3 that makes it still not
profitable?

~~~
kylebragger
It's mainly my (meager) salary + the cost of a full time moderator that's
standing in the way at present. S3 and hosting are pretty affordable in
comparison.

------
garrettdimon
Sifter (<http://sifterapp.com>) started out as a side project. It was
literally just something fun for me to fill my time with until a handful of
people encouraged me to actually try to build a business out of it. Within
about 18 months of launching it was able to support me full-time.

During that 18 months, there were times where it was rather stressful to work
full to part-time on another job and manage a web application that's supposed
to be up 24x7.

However, I would definitely say that if anybody else is in that tough spot
before your side project can support you full-time, it's definitely worth
fighting through it.

~~~
DannyCooper
Beautiful design! Nice work.

------
suhail
Mixpanel was some kind of side project.

When I left Slide, I was initially going to build a gaming company 6 months
before gaming blew up. Unfortunately, I couldn't find myself building games
because I wasn't staying up till 3-4 AM excited.

One night I scrapped it and started building Mixpanel strictly to learn how to
scale systems since that was interesting to me. What better project to learn
about it fastest then doing analytics?

Ever since then I've consistently been up past 1 AM =). Still excited. Still
learning.

This was all still being in school so I couldn't focus on it full-time.

------
dangrossman
I made a WordPress plugin to add a feature to one of my own sites, and threw
it up on my blog as a free download. After hundreds of downloads and comments
asking for support, I rewrote it and packaged it up as a commercial product.
In the next 1.5 years I made about $180,000 in profit selling that plugin,
then sold the rights to the plugin on Flippa for another $90,000.

~~~
SomeoneAtHN
Wow. That is impressive. Few questions:

1\. How long did it take to write the plugin? 2\. How did you find your paid
customers? From what I heard, most WordPress users don't want to pay for
themes or plugins. 3\. And why did you decide to sell it for that kind of high
price? Were there troubles at the beginning because it was a free download
before?

Thanks!

~~~
dangrossman
1\. A few hours 2\. Forums, blog sponsorships, PPC ads and holding #1 organic
rank on all the relevant search terms 3\. Sales were slowing and I lost
interest in putting more into it, so I sold it while it was still valuable

[http://flippa.com/blog/case-studies/dan-grossman-on-
selling-...](http://flippa.com/blog/case-studies/dan-grossman-on-selling-
wpreviewsite-a-wordpress-plugin/)

------
chops
My MMO Guild Hosting site started as my own personal WoW guild website, which
itself was a fork of the code powering my personal LAN Party website. After
deciding in late 2005 to try to make a business out of it, I launched in May
2006 and was profitable since day one, enough so that I abandoned consulting
by Jan 2007.

It's been my sole income-source since then.

It took 6 years from initial creation: the first version of that original LAN
Party site was written in old ASP in 2000, and then rewritten in PHP in 2001
or 2002, and then forked in 2004 for WoW.

Hopefully some of my new side-projects turn into something useful, almost all
written in Erlang with the Nitrogen Web Framework (absolutely love it).

------
dotBen
I built a url shortening service called vb.ly because my girlfriend, Violet
Blue, was using url shorteners all the time for her blog.

She's an author and adds to her book income by linking people to her 30+ books
on Amazon using her affiliate code. I was concerned that the various url
shorteners she was using might swap out her affiliate code for theirs as a
revenue mechanism, so I wanted to take it "in house".

I discovered that this .ly domain registry had "vb.ly" available (her
initials) and thought it might be cool engineering challenge to get that going
for her and open it up for others to use.

500k+ shortened urls later, the rest is history. Literally

~~~
mthoms
Wait. Didn't your domain name get taken away by the the Libyan .ly registrar
or was that another shortener service?

Edit: Nevermind, found the discussion here -
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772071>

------
jespern
Bitbucket was a side project for me, and it was just acquired. I ran it for
2.5 years under my own wing.

------
dsifry
Technorati was a side project for me.

~~~
gkoberger
How long did you work on it before making it a full time project? And how long
until you got funding/hired your first employee?

~~~
kolinko
[http://www.venturevoice.com/2006/04/vv_show_32_david_sifry_o...](http://www.venturevoice.com/2006/04/vv_show_32_david_sifry_of_tech.html)

:)

------
patio11
BCC was supposed to eventually grow to $200 a month in revenue so that I could
buy videogames without delaying student loan repayment. Eventually the tail
started to wag the dog. As for stats, well, right now is the start of the busy
season and I predict a very happy Halloween indeed.

------
bignoggins
<http://www.fantasymonster.com/> Fantasy sports app for the iphone. Launched 4
months ago. I still have a full time job but the app is pulling in 20K+ per
month in sales and ad revenue. Not sure if that qualifies as "big" but it's
more than enough for me =)

~~~
riffraff
godaddy parked domain?

~~~
bignoggins
bluehost. web site doesn't actually get much traffic, 99% of sales are purely
on the device. I only keep it up to maintain some semblance of web presence.

------
endlessvoid94
ThatHigh.com - started in February as a joke, now it pays my rent in SF.

~~~
danfitch
I like the christian treatment center ads that run on the side.

~~~
endlessvoid94
haha yeah....I could actually use some pointers on how to better handle
adsense in this respect. is it possible to require approval for any ad shown?
is it possible in an automated way?

before we got kicked off adbrite (for our content, or something), it was
possible to do this, but it was very tedious...

~~~
danfitch
I think you can only stop others from serving but looks tedious.

------
bcx
<http://www.olark.com> was a side project: <http://www.hab.la> for a few
years.

------
magno
I started <http://blogo.it> as a side project. It's now the third media
property in italy with 11 ml/uniques month. Before Blogo I started another
company as a side project, it was a web agency I later sold to a pre ipo
company. Starting a project in this way is a really good way to start slowly,
think about it a lot and to have no pressure at the beginning.

------
jcnnghm
I started Barhopolis (look at barsannapolis.com) as a hobby because we never
knew what was going on until after it happened. We reach over 40,000 people a
month now not including mobile, and we are growing fast. Last night we went
around town with the Mast-Jägermeister executives filming, including the CEO
of the company that imports Jägermeister into the US. In July we had a huge
event (1700 people at it's peak), and the governor showed up and performed
with the band, pretty cool. We aren't where we need to be yet, but we are
profitable and growing.

~~~
bmelton
I'm pretty sure that's the site I used to find a bar for New Year's Eve, which
was the first time I'd been to the Sly Fox, which I am in love with.

I owe you a drink!

~~~
jcnnghm
Must have been, we had an event at Sly Fox on New Years last year. We have an
event coming up there on Saturday the 30th for Halloween, probably worth
checking out if you're a fan.

------
raffi
<http://www.feedbackarmy.com> really surprised me. I came up with the idea
from a HN user asking for a service like it. It was on the front page of
delicious the week I launched it (it was a slow news week, given). Since then
it's served as a source of extra income.

------
adamhowell
This is a topic dear to my heart, there's not much I love talking about more
than side-projects.

<http://mocksup.com> is my current side-project, and while it's yet to "go
big", it's profitable and growing.

~~~
SomeoneAtHN
The site looks great! Just curious, how did you find your initial paid
customers? Is it just through word-of-mouth or did you do anything more
specific?

~~~
adamhowell
Thanks. Once we got the marketing pages/admin features to a place we thought
were worth paying for, I posted a link on HN and from that we got covered by
Mashable and several others. That got us profitable.

Now we're working on getting to that next level where one of us can stop
freelancing and get a check from Mocksup every month.

------
misterhaywood
WeatherLoop° <http://weatherloop.com> is a side project of mine. Amazing how
scratching your own itch can benefit someone else.

~~~
btucker
Hey, that's very nice! Easy monetization opportunity: Signup to be a Groupon
(etc) affiliate & include a little string of text with that day's deal for the
user's locale along with a shortened link.

~~~
misterhaywood
Thanks btucker! That is a great idea.

------
BorisBomega
I started TwitterCounter.com as a fun weekend coding project after my partner
said he wouldn't have time to start on it until he had finished some other
stuff. I couldn't let it go so started coding right away. We launched 6 days
later. Not it is hugely profitable and has 2 full-time employees.

More importantly: I think almost every major internet success was started as a
side-project. Yahoo, Google, Apple, the list goes on and on...

------
AbeBW
I don't have any myself. but here is a talk by Mitch Altman from this years
H.O.P.E. conference about the origin of tv-b-gone

<http://c2047862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/tnha16.mp3>

------
alexkearns
My first major side project was <http://gambolio.com> \- a browser based
iTunes-style app for online games. Despite getting featured on the New York
Times's website, the app struggled to attract many visitors.

So my wife and I set up a blog - <http://casualgirlgamer.com> \- in an attempt
to promote it. The blog has become quite popular - more than 100,000 uniques a
month - and we're now focusing completely on the blog rather than the app we
originally set it up to promote.

We're not yet making enough to give up our jobs but we're having fun and have
high hopes.

------
dasil003
Does Twitter count?

~~~
tomjen3
Only if you made it.

------
Osiris
I started my side project, BatteryBar
(<http://osirisdevelopment.com/BatteryBar>) after my boss made a comment about
how he couldn't figure out how much time was left on his battery. After about
6 months I went to a Freemium model and started selling a Pro version. Sales
have been consistent over the last two years, not growing consistently like
I'd like, and not enough to quit my job, but a nice side business.

------
Wump
iTeleport <http://www.iteleportmobile.com> started out as a side project while
one of our founders was getting a PhD.

~~~
bignoggins
just watched the CMU lecture by the PHD guy yesterday. Pretty inspiring.

------
surtyaar
My motivation for working on side projects is not just about chasing the dream
of riches or fame. I try to keep my ambitions inside the 9-5 (or whatever
weird hours I find myself working on the 9-5). My motivation for working on
side projects is they are fun and provide variety. Working in a team has a
necessary evil - you can't just do what you want. Working on side projects
provides me with this freedom.

------
jmilinovich
StartupDigest is a great example of this. They started with an internal
listserv of 12 people and have, over the last year or so, grown to a global
audience of over 68,000 people.

It seems that side projects give us the ability to stretch our creativity
where our '9 to 5' lives don't allow us. My advice would be to have fun and
pursue your side projects and make the leap to full-time once you have some
traction and cashflow.

------
p01nd3xt3r
I created www.socialadmanager.com as a side project. It has not gone "big" yet
but it is profitable which i think is pretty cool.

------
Baher
I've tried a lot of side projects but none of them panned out, because I
couldn't focus on them long enough to get them to a state where I can leave my
day job to fully work on them. Doing successful side projects requires taking
small steps and a good amount of focus over long stretches of time, even if
the rewards don't initially come.

------
michaelaiello
<http://www.difrwear.com> was a success I've had about 20 fails. Here they are
[http://www.artofcyberwar.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/mike...](http://www.artofcyberwar.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/mikes-entrepreneurial-failures.jpeg)

------
prawn
I started collecting photos from sold houses on real estate sites as interior
design inspiration. One day I put them online, categorised them (bathroom,
bedroom, etc) and added in a few ads. I've left it largely untouched for 2-3
years since and it pays my mortgage.

~~~
spoiledtechie
the site address?

~~~
prawn
<http://www.spaced.com.au/>

------
darkxanthos
The rub is that "fun" is a subjective term. If all you want to do is program
you _may_ be right. If you enjoy problem solving and you do it in a way that
is usable by others I don't see why not. [Currently pursuing the dream] ;)

------
janj
Ship Mate for the iPhone (Android coming some time in the future) is a side
project, hopefully transitioning into a full time thing. It is now making me a
livable wage and I haven't even started the big ideas for it yet.

------
tectonic
<http://absurdlycool.com> and <http://recreationparks.net> pay rent - they are
both side projects for me.

------
quizbiz
How many weekly hours of labor are you guys able to put into a side project?

------
SomeoneAtHN
Just created a related discussion: Side Projects Gone Deadpooled
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772903>

------
schammy
Side projects are where it's at, because they're typically low cost up front.
You're just doing it for yourself. If no one likes it then you can ditch it or
just use it for yourself for whatever purpose. No big loss. But if it turns
out you're building something that people are passionate about, then you can
turn it into a business without all the risk of going into it like a business
from the very beginning.

<http://getclicky.com> started as an internal project for another company I
worked for a few years ago. It was profitable 4 months after launch, and
revenues are doubling ever year. 2010 will be about $1M. We are happy with
that.

~~~
nl
I love GetClicky

------
MykalM
in beta testing <http://www.getjoined.com> should sign up and get a beta login

~~~
kno
The donate button seems kinda alien to me, why would you be asking for money
at the same time your are asking someone to signup to know more about what you
are doing? I think people donate money when they see something and are
impressed about it.

~~~
MykalM
thank you for the feeback,

------
nkohari
I don't think you can create a side project _for fun_ and have it turn into a
profitable business. You can, however, create something on the side with a
mind to sell it, and become successful.

~~~
nkohari
It's okay, you can downvote me. I understand wanting to believe that it works
that way, but it almost never does. You will simply make different decisions
based on whether a project is for fun or for profit.

Can we at least agree that projects with no business model and no funding
should be called _apps_ rather than _startups_?

~~~
natrius
I'm guessing people didn't like your first comment because it was trivial to
disprove due to your word choice. If you say that something "can't" be done,
you're usually wrong. Statements of probability usually work better, which was
the case for your second, more successful comment.

