I Got Started With Many Projects In 2024
Celebrating my wins and learnings from the past year
Cheers to all the creators and entrepreneurs who had the courage to start projects and fail in 2024!
Yes, I believe it is important to acknowledge the hard work we’ve put into building planes that never got to fly.
I’m talking about all of the hours we’ve spent putting together an idea, creating a concept, building strategies for it, and then tirelessly asking for feedback with hopes of making our brain children happy.
I have to say — 2024 was a fabulous year, at least for me.
I got to work on lots of new, exciting projects. Some of them worked, some of them did not, and in today’s article, I’d like to give a bit of an overview on a couple of my favorite projects I got to conceptualize in 2024.
Let’s get to it!
Project 1: The Creative Nudge Newsletter
The first time when I got the idea of starting out a newsletter was in 2022.
That was when Startup Adventures was booming and had the full attention of international student communities in Estonia.
So, I did what I do best and sat down to research and come up with a concept that would be interesting for my audience.
Long story short, I came up with the simple idea of creating a newsletter where I would put together links to some of my favourite articles and videos on the internet and send them out to my subscribers.
Sounds awesome, right?!
I came up with the slick name — The Creative Nudge, created a landing page on Substack, and got to work.
But, after some time, I realized this concept was not as exciting as it sounded in the first place.
Probably because I didn’t see many learning opportunities in such a project, I decided to put the initiative on pause.
However, sometime in March last year, I got the idea of creating short newspaper-style stories on my blog to practice my storytelling skills.
After spending a good 5 minutes thinking about it, I realized this concept would fit the new version of the Creative Nudge Newsletter perfectly — This was the missing ingredient I needed all along.
So, I designed a couple of those “Magazines” and prepared everything to revive my newsletter on Substack.
Week after week after week, I postponed the launch of the project. To be completely honest, I don’t know why — literally every single material is ready for it.
Anyways… I’ll be launching it soon, so keep an eye on my Substack page if Newpaper-style, funny storytelling sounds like your cup of tea.
Project 2: Flamingo Swag Store
This is another project I meant to start some time ago.
I did spend a looot of time working on it, though. Especially with building a website and putting together a proper product catalogue on this site.
Flamingo Swag Store was meant to be an eCommerce store for startup enthusiasts, where they would find all sorts of unique startup-themed products to better represent their character.
As said, I did spend a lot of time designing those products, creating a strong brand, and building a fancy website.
However, I didn’t have proper processes in place to keep up with the consistency of sorting out the commercial part and bringing more eyeballs to this project.
So, I’m currently taking time to test different approaches and see what works best to implement them in my strategy and re-open this online store for my visitors.
For example, I created a Pinterest page to show some of my designs and see which of them are more popular.
I also started pushing more AI-generated characteristic designs, which really gained my attention lately.
Anyways, stay tuned for this one. Exciting products are on the way!
Project 3: Open Mic Sessions For Founders
This is the project I started together with one of my favorite co-working spaces in Tallinn — Workland.
The idea is to create a safe space for aspiring speakers, mostly working in tech & startups, and give them the opportunity to share their ideas, expertise, or passion projects with the live audience.
Sort of like a TED-Talk style event, but for people who are aspiring speakers, not professionals.
We already managed to put together 3 editions of this event, which I would say were successful. There are surprisingly lots of entrepreneurs who have really interesting stories to share from the stage.
I honestly loved hearing every single story that our speakers told from the stage by now. Looking forward to hearing even more.
We will definitely continue this project and drop events from time to time, but the idea is to take this concept to big tech conferences and apply it there.
I’m sure there are lots of general attendees to those conferences who would be willing to share their stories from the stage and give the event additional flair.
In any case, stay tuned for future events in Tallinn or maybe elsewhere.
To Sum up…
It’s getting a bit late now. I guess talking about all of the projects I’ve tried will take me forever, haha.
The point is — last year has really taught me that if you have an idea of a concept, there is literally no point in not trying it out.
Just give it a shot. People might be more supportive than you think.
That said, I have some exciting projects coming up this year. Can’t wait to share all of them with you.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn if you want to collaborate. Cheers!
Ucha Vekua
