Announcing 10in30: 10 tiny hacks in 30 days
Two weeks ago we set out to build 10 projects in 30 days. As we’re halfway through, we would like to share our thinking, as well as the hacks we built and the many things we learned along the way.
Why are we doing this?
To get inspired
The pandemic not only trapped our bodies in small boxes, it had a similar effect on our minds. Our ideas got smaller and without the external stimuli created through travel and social interaction, they became repetitive. By doing a new project every two days (except during the weekends), we hope to prompt our minds to generate fresh ideas.
To force ourselves to practice testing quickly (and moving on!)
The lack of commitment to any single thing we build allows us to get out of our heads and into building mode. It is stunning how quickly you can get a sense of what works and what does not: What is a problem people actually have, versus problems we wish they had (because we have a solution)? What problems are solvable today, and which ones require policy changes — if not a revolution — to tackle? Most importantly, which projects have an audience that we actually relate to?
Two days is very little time and it will not tell us everything we need to know, but it will give us a sense of what is worth pursuing and what is not.
The rules
Yes, we have some rules:
- Have fun!
- Always ship!
- Work on each project for two days and then leave it alone. Only if we meet our success criterion are we allowed to return to it.
- Lunch breaks. This became a rule two days in, when we realized breaks are important and none of us are very good at taking breaks.
What we have worked on so far
Our first week was all about getting started and finding our flow.
PairsWith
PairsWith helps you match your meal (or anything else, really) to music. Simply upload an image of your meal and our algorithm will suggest a handful of different Spotify playlists that pair perfectly.
Definition of success: at least one user we do not personally know regularly uses the app.
HerdWise
HerdWise is a landing page for a Mastodon analytics service that we hope will help creators find and engage with their audience, without anyone’s privacy being violated in horrible ways. It is tailored to all the ways in which Mastodon is different/weird/better. In addition to the landing page and fleshing out the business idea, we also set up a scaled-out Mastodon server using NorthFlank.
Definition of success: at least one person we don’t know signed up to use HerdWise. So far we have 8 people signed up.
While these projects were both successful, we realized afterwards that we hadn’t set goals that were particularly business-focused. So during our second week we wanted to build things that could potentially turn a profit. That means we looked for problems people would pay to solve.
S(m)ooth
Do you or someone you love struggle with itchy clothing? Do you dread getting dressed in the morning because your clothes feel like sandpaper against your skin? You’re not alone. Many people with ADHD, on the autism spectrum, or with sensory processing issues struggle with the tactile sensations of clothing.
S(m)ooth is our attempt to address this problem. Initially we sought to find existing clothing options that we could help promote, but we quickly discovered that very few live up to our (high) standards. And so we did user research to understand what clothes are most annoying (SOCKS!) and built a Medium publication to further validate that is a problem a significant group of people experience — it is. Finally we explored various options for 3D knitting that would allow us to create seamless clothing.
Definition of success: 50 replies to our twitter/mastodon polls. We reached that within 24 hours.
Fling
Fling is a tool for those of us who cannot help but create new side projects. Some “flings” are started late at night and forgotten about the next day, while others we may continue working on over many weekends. Some may generate income, while others drain our savings. With so many projects in some state of development, keeping track of your flings, your fling’s social media accounts, user activity or even where they’re hosted can be nothing short of a nightmare. This tool is meant to help with that.
Fling allows you to collect and store “business state” separate from both the source code (which lives in a git repo), and app state (which usually lives in a production database somewhere).
Business state is:
- Hosting details (where is it running)
- Socials (blog, insta, mastodon)
- Monthly costs
- Income (revenue or donations)
- Basic user stats (views, signups, sessions)
- Partnership details (who built it with you)
- History / Timeline (when was it started, deployed etc)
We built a CLI and web interface that allows you to start a new project, find a free domain name and start storing your fling data. You can also authenticate using GitHub and add existing repos to Fling. A web interface allows you to choose to share core statistics on your Fling projects with the world, providing a simple “portfolio” view.
We defined success as getting at least 20 stars on GitHub.
Side note: we broke our own rule and ended up spending 3 days working on Fling. We are about to deploy!
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So far our first two weeks! We’re excited to find out what our next weeks will bring. Follow us to receive future updates!
