A year of making
I've been working in the IT industry for almost 10 years and for the last 3 years as a web developer. It's been a great time and I'm super happy about my career path but I've decided that it is the time for a new challenge!
Digital entrepreneurs were a huge inspiration for me and it made me think that I want to try myself in this area.
To be honest I know very little about the business side of things. I am a regular programmer. Most of the time I learn about things related to the IT world or somethings around.
That's why it is going to be a great challenge for me. I have the skills to implement the ideas but I don't know how to validate, market, and sell the products. I am planning to learn on the way and achieve as much as possible for the next 12 months.
Perfect conditions
Right now it's a perfect time for me to start:
- I am finishing and defending my Bachelor's degree in October.
- My current contract with my employer ends on October 14th. I am not going to extend it.
- COVID-19 is still here so I don't travel much.
- I "stuck" in Bali which is cheap so I don't spend much money on living.
I decided to dive into the entrepreneur's world for the whole year until November 2021. Or until I realize it's not for me 😃
Challenge goals
The main goal is pretty simple: make something profitable.
Small goal is to reach ramen profitability which is about €1000-1500 MRR for me.
The big goal is to make it profitable enough to exceed the developer's salary (Around €80-90k ARR). It is a huge load of money so I don't have many expectations about this. But it's great to have a big goal.
I am planning to make all process public using the Makerlog community, posts in this blog, and my Twitter. I will be as open as I could and I want to make my products transparent as well. At least with open revenue and statistics following the open startup movement.
I understand all the risks and if I can't achieve anything and don't earn even a few bucks I will be fine. The experience and the learnings will still be valuable.
I don't have a problems to get back being software engineer.
12xStartup
After I've decided to make this happen I've got a message from a friend from the blogging community. She wanted to create a group of people making the startups every month for 12 months in total. The inspiration comes from the Piter Levels challenge back in 2014 and we all know where he is now :)
It was a perfect opportunity for me to stay accountable and get a small community to share all the bumps on the road. So I agreed to take part in it.
Now me and 3 awesome people are doing this. You can follow our journey in here: https://12xstartup.com/.
In theory we will ship 48 startups by the end of 2021. Of course it could be less or more, it doesn't matter that much.
Follow me
If you want to follow my progress you can follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my blog updates with the form below. Besides, I will add the progress report by each project on the website.
If you have any questions, suggestion or wanna chat, Twitter is the best way to reach me out.
