What is the XYZ Studio and why we started it
An initiative to build weekend projects, ideate, collaborate and learn new things.
When I started working on Hapramp in 2018, my exposure to building products was zero apart from a few college projects and running a blog. And as we made progress on our startup, I got more and more curious about building products.
While we were building 1Ramp.io and GoSocial, I always kept coming up with new ideas to experiment with. So did the other team members. It somehow became second nature to discuss new ideas, scrutinize them, and talk about best-case/worst-case scenarios if we ever run such product companies. So one day I and Mofid Ansari decided to start a few side projects and figure out a way to ideate, build, and launch while spending only the weekends on these ideas.
Over the last two years, we developed frameworks to categorize product ideas, question and judge those product ideas, and figure out the fastest way to launch MVP. And then we bought byxyz.net to give a home to all our existing and future side projects.
Why do we call it XYZ?
For us, XYZ stands for random, undefined, free-flowing, or something that you can assign any meaning to. We have no limitations on what kind of products we work on and also no limitation on with whom we collaborate (more specifically, request help and contribution from).
The idea of building tiny products (as side projects) for learning, trying out new things, researching, and developing new mental models is very interesting. But we can’t do it all in a team of two. Especially when our aim is to build 100+ products or sometimes overambitiously we say “a thousand tiny products!”.
That’s why we imagined a team of people with different expertise who are passionate about solving problems, trying new ideas, building businesses, and in the process creating something meaningful and useful. Hence, the XYZ Studio.
Why build products, why work on side-projects, and above all, is it worth it?
In the short run (think 2 years, it is not worth it). In the long run (think 20 years, maybe).
The world we live in operates in a fashion that it solves a problem and invents two. Every time giving birth to a bigger problem. Climate change, income inequality, classism (discrimination), inequality of opportunities, population explosion, poor standards of education, pollution are among many problems that contribute to the suffering of all living beings. As we’ve solved countless problems over the last couple of centuries, we’ve also invented newer and harder problems. For example, the problem of Climate Change and income inequality. Sure we’ve become comparatively prosperous and eliminated a lot of diseases. But still, the quality of life around the world has a huge room to improve. Sure we are more educated as a society. But the problems of disinformation and fake news is bigger than ever.
Maybe a lot of problems are not solved with precision or creating new problems is human nature, I’m not sure. But what I’m sure about is that those who build new things learn how to define problems, eliminate them in their thoughts and while discussing new ideas, and approach them with more clarity.
It helps us find the simplest approach to solving a problem and helps us eliminate a lot of issues that we face while solving a problem. We also learn what problems can be solved with tech, what will take a paradigm shift, and what problems are very hard to solve for an individual and will require a change at a large scale.
Building products and working on projects helps us in developing a process and mental models to approach problems. A thought process that helps us in cutting through the clutter and in getting things done.
I believe, over the next ten years, if we could possibly turn any of our side-projects or the XYZ Studio itself into a company, we’ll have the resources, time, expertise, and above all the will power and intentions to work on the biggest problems the world is facing. At that stage, we might be able to move the needle, make a difference, and say “It was worth it”.
So far we’ve built:
- Letterflix — Send letters online.
- Stumbleonmusic — A new way to discover music.
- Real Apple — Our take on Apple.
- iwish — Twitter for wishes.
- Dulo — Where designers share their WIP.
- Blinkstore.in — Create your fully-managed online store for free!
We’ve 2 projects which are in progress.
- Snaccx
- Gloset
We’ll reveal what these products do when they are ready.
And a few dozen ideas are on our Trello. We only use a single Trello board to keep track of all ideas, products, manage ongoing work, track progress, and everything else that we need to work on these ideas.
In the future, we might make our Trello board public for anyone to pick ideas from it, collaborate with us, or share feedback and their own insights. We keep brainstorming ideas to make the XYZ Studio open and collaborative, but we can only do as much as our broken sleep cycle permits.
