Selling a side project

Today I feel a bit dirty, I just sold WeddingDeck after putting more than 100 hours in it for a couple of hundred dollars. Would I recap WeddingDeck’s life, I think I would describe a lot of side projects out there. A great coding burst getting slower & slower until it gets forgotten & frozen in time.

I was at a point where I was considering shutting down the project entirely, but could not resolve myself to pull the plug. Lack of focus, interest, being alone, all contributed to its downfall. At one point I hit a threshold where I could not even look at the code without having a headache & just wanted to wander elsewhere.

But then someone contacted me yesterday & asked if I was interested in selling it, after a little negotiation it was sold & in less than one day everything was transferred. Like that it was gone, looking back at the code for helping the buyer get started I was surprised at the amount of work that was put in & that was kind of a big slap in the face. I sold my biggest baby for about nothing.

Frankly, I’m not quite sure I learned a lot from this project but it confirmed at least two things I was already starting to get. It might look like two stupid points, but I find sometimes we look the other way & hope we won’t have problems.

1. Never start a project alone.
2. Do something you are really passionate about.

1. I’m not saying that you should not start a project alone. The guys from the startups for the rest of us podcast are both serial entrepreneurs & try to outsource most of their development. They seem to act more like a product owner than your typical dev that is going to code everything & then market it themselves, maybe that helps.

But personally, I’m just not wired that way, at some points working alone takes its toll. You get less advice, you are less challenged, and you can’t be excited because your partner just did something awesome.

Frankly, there has been a lot of people saying it, most won’t listen. It’s even the top 1 startup mistake on one of Paul Graham article.

2. I’m not that much passionate about weddings, in fact i”m not married & I don’t plan to, but I saw a real potential where current apps were of very bad quality (still are). With that in mind, I tried to create the best wedding app possible & I think I had an excellent MVP.

Would I have been able to continue to focus on that project it might event had become a real business. Without even doing anything for a year I was able to build up 8000 free users. It’s certainly more than any project I did before, who knows?

But I was just not picturing myself going to wedding conventions with a small booth trying to convince wedding planners & people getting married they should use my app.

So it’s sold, next.