One Idea, One Year — The Challenge
I spent almost a decade in software development before I left a stable job and ventured into the unknown. In the past year, I worked as a freelancer/consultant and learned many lessons in running a business.
Yet, I still hadn’t found the answers I sought to a burning question — what do I want to do with my life? I suppose I thought freelancing and becoming a digital nomad was what I wanted to do with my life. It didn’t take me long to realize how wrong I was. Freelancing is hard (there are so many stories about this on Medium. Read them if you’re considering this). The digital nomad life didn’t match my work style. I didn’t have a plan when I began this journey. This was a poor choice on my end, but I didn’t know better, and I was confident that everything would be ok.
Of course, I can only tweak my definition of ‘ok’ for so long…and that time is running out. So, last week, I set a deadline and decided to answer a new question. How far can I get in one year with one idea?
This is my second year of self-employment. I need to make it count if I want to continue to make this work. I’m confident I learned enough in my first year to get a better start in my second year. I explored many ideas last year. I also went through a handful of entrepreneurship workshops. This isn’t my first “startup” or product exploration, but it’ll be the first time for me to give something 150% of my time. Knowing how difficult this path would be, I almost shied away. When push came to shove, I knew there was no better time to try. It would need to be now. One Year. One Idea. One Product.
The Idea — Dossifi
As a young writer, one challenge I had was keeping track of my ever-growing universe. I had many stories develop in parallel, each with a new cast of characters. I would often go months without working on a particular story. Then I would revisit a story when my muse struck, only to forget the details of what had already taken place. Reviewing my writing was time consuming. Finding shortcuts was not easy with the tools available. Often times, this resulted in abandoned storylines.
Although several products already exist for writers to organize content, none were readily available without paying a licensing fee — not a justifiable cost for the amateur writer. The free options are one-size-fits-all solutions (Google Docs, Microsoft 365), but there is nothing available for writers. With so many other time-consuming apps available for free, why not make one available that helps inspire creativity and improve productivity?
Thus came the initial idea: Dossifi — a cloud-based platform to help writers of all ages organize their content. For free.
In the past week, I spent a lot of time researching this idea and learning more about how others write, rather than relying on my own biases. By the end of the week, this idea evolved: a distraction-free editor that intelligently organizes content as it is being written. Dossifi tags and groups content, making it easy to find when needed, and hides it when not needed.
I expect this will continue to evolve over the next few months as I engage with more writers for feedback.
The Plan
This week was about getting serious about how I want to spend the next year of my life. Since deciding on building a product, I’ve broken down the process into 4 major categories I will need to address over the next months:
- Customer (and indirectly, marketing — listening to customers and getting to know my target market)
- Product (technical requirements, customer requirements, prioritization, product road mapping, metrics for success, etc.)
- Money (what revenue models are available? Can I make money from this before the year is up? The goal is still to keep this free for users, so what options are available?)
- Administrative (will I start a company to separate liability? Will I hire developers to help with product development? accounting…taxes…the fun stuff, of course)
I may add categories as time goes on, but this felt like a good starting point. I’m not trying to overwhelm myself…yet.
The Schedule
At this point, I don’t have a detailed schedule, but I do have some broad (and perhaps ambitious) milestones I hope to reach:
- Next Update: Complete landing page, have core features defined and some initial wireframes.
- 3-months (~Sep 1, 2018): define the MVP and a product roadmap, begin MVP development
- 6-months (~Dec 1, 2018): develop an MVP, have an alpha release
- 9-months (~Mar 1, 2019): refine MVP, and gauge product-market fit
- 12-months (~May 1, 2019): to proceed, or not to proceed…that is the question?
The Budget
I want to bootstrap this on my own as much as possible. I’m open to working with other developers, which may require additional funding. I do have some funding I can set aside for that purpose. My current living expenses are pretty low, but I am currently relying on modest savings to bootstrap.
The Journey
If you’re interested in #StartupLife, follow me on Medium and join me on my journey to build Dossifi. I’ll provide updates every 2–3 weeks with major accomplishments and lessons learned. Ask questions, and I’ll do my best to answer.
Let the journey begin!
Credits: Photo by Jill Heyer on Unsplash
