
Seems a lot of people want to get into the maker world but they often find themselves having problems coming up with an idea. This is what I do to figure out what I am going to work on.

First off, I'm not a big fan of trying to find a unicorn idea, one that will get massive funding and catapult me into startup stardom.

I'm a fan of finding low-touch SaaS products that have already proven the market for me. It's so much easier to get going when someone else has done validation for your idea.

If your goal is to build a product that can sustain the lifestyle you want, you're building a lifestyle business and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. So seek out something that interests you and you can build something solo or with a co-founder.

My only biggest advice is to be passionate or at mimimum interested in the market. I had spent a few years building projects in different markets that I found myself not really having an interest in. This caused me to spend my time diddle daddling around and procrastinating until finally I just lost complete interest in the project.

You also don't have to be revolutionary in the market either, you don't have to absolutely shake it up and make your competitors clammer in fear of what you're doing. Just sliding into the market and getting a slice of that pie can be a damn good living for indie people. Hell some markets even the crumbs are pretty lucrative.

Your main advantage could be just that you are open to suggestions from your customers or that you just have damn good customer support.

Don't underestimate how much customer support can be for your product in itself. I switched from one service to another after 8 years purely because the customer support was superior.

So find that pie you want to get a slice of and start building. Be sure to ignore the big startup guys advice because they're in a different world than you, they are preaching what they only know, and that is getting funding. You want to build a business. One that is sustainable.


Ever get stuck trying to figure out what to build? Here's how I do it.

How to find a product to build


There's a lot of talk around the maker and indie hacker communities about what tech stack should they use for their next project, and there's two possible scenarios I think one should consider when starting their next projects.

## Scenario A: Do you want to learn new tech?

In this scenario you would use a real world project as learning grounds for a new tech you're interested whether it is React, Elixir, or anything else, then it doesn't matter.

If your intent is to learn new tech then I would say go ahead and use this project to learn that tech. You may be slower but your goal isn't just to ship a product, but also learn new tech while building it. Don't use how fast you ship as your metric on success here.

## Scenario B: Do you want to ship a product fast?

In this scenario, then the tech you use does matter a lot. You should be using the most efficient tech that you know. It may not be the latest and greatest hotness, but the end user, your customers don't care about that. They care that the service they are paying for does what it advertises.

So if you move faster with PHP/Laravel and jQuery than there is absolutely nothing wrong with continuing using that to ship.


Seems to be everyone is unsure if what they're using is correct or not.

What tech stack should I use?


Today marks the end of an era, I no longer identify as a full snack developer.

Over the last 5 years after transitioning from being a primarily PHP backend developer to a Node.js developer, naturally my JavaScript skills improved immensely which resulted in becoming a "full stack developer" due to the ability to also do frontend JavaScript too.

Because of that, I tried to stand out from the crowd and began billing myself not as a Full _STACK_ Developer, but as a Full _SNACK_ Developer. This has done great for catching peoples attentions. I even own the domain [full.snack.dev](https://full.snack.dev) which I used to talk about my skills, experience and somewhat a makeshift resume. Even helped immensely in getting new clients.

But I quit consulting last week. I am now focusing fully on being an entrepreneur and indie maker building my own products.

So with that said, adios my good snack friend.


No longer identifying as a full snack developer.

Next Phase


Another decade gone, where has all the time went?

A lot of stuff happened in the last decade. In the first quarter, I went full time web development as my primary job. That was a big thing for me, as I've been doing web development since 1997 (23 years to this day) and had always been doing it part time on the side. In August 2011 I got a contracting role that brought me completely into the industry full time, and since then have bounced around contracting and full time employment.

Not only that but I also went from being a strictly backend PHP developer to a full stack JavaScript developer after switching to Node.js, which coincidentally also improved my JavaScript skills so much that I do frontend too.

All in all it was a good decade for my work. I'm excited to see how the next decade goes as I transition from a developer to an entrepreneur.


Reflections of the last decade


A whoopsy daisy. I failed.

_Kinda._

Let me back track a bit. A week ago I made the decision to pivot from my project [Merched](https://merched.com) to [App Metrics](https://appmetrics.co) as my primary project. After having a discussion with a few people, I have determined that Merched is too massive of a project to be able to launch solo in a timely manner.

So I decided to see how quickly I can build an MVP of App Metrics and launch that in under a week.

Let me tell you the grind is terrible. After about 3 days of pulling 16 hour days, going to bed about 3-4 hours past my normal time took a big toll not only on how I feel, but also my productivity.

While I did end up getting about 60-75% of the MVP done in that timeframe, it did slow me down considerably in the fact that I have spent the last 2 days trying to come up with a more informative landing page, with not so great results.

All in all I feel the attempt was beneficial. It lit a fire under me that I hadn't had in a while, and pushed me to skim off the fluff and only come up with the absolute minimal features to launch as soon as possible.

I will continue pressing on and hope to launch the project in the next week or two.


Failure of Launching in Under a Week


There’s currently a huge phenomenon going around the JavaScript community called JavaScript Fatigue. At first this phenomenon was centered around React and it’s community and is spreading like wild fire through the Javascript community.

What exactly is JavaScript fatigue and why do you get it? I believe that this is a result of being a bandwagon jumper. Too many people in the community feel the need to use the latest and greatest tool. Not because it’s the best tool for the job, and certainly not because it’s stable, but because everyone is talking about it. Heaven forbid you aren’t using the latest hotness. Shame on you if you can’t raise your hand and say, “Yeah I use React too!”

Another factor adding to this sense of fatigue is the significant upgrade Javascript recently underwent, something that doesn’t happen often. While most languages see incremental and regular updates, JavaScript’s iterations tend to be minor and more seldom, resulting in less motivation for developers to stay up-to-date. However, the slew of new features that arrived with the advent ECMAScript 2015 seems to have made developers feel a renewed pressure to learn cutting-edge techniques and apply them to their daily code.

> Oh god, surely you don’t expect me to learn? I’m too busy building yet another Todo app as a service, I don’t have time to **LEARN**!

My advice to those who feel fatigued with JavaScript is to pick a toolset and stick with it. These major frameworks and tools aren’t going to suddenly disappear and lose all utility. Gulp didn’t kill Grunt; Grunt is very useful and still has its place, and neither tool is going away anytime soon. The same applies Browserify and Webpack, Angular and React, and most others you can name.

Perhaps the one exception, where I take a strong stance on choosing one over the other is Bower vs npm. Use npm. Virtually anything on Bower is already on npm, and npm has better conflict resolution regarding versions. Why use one package manager to install another package manager to use packages that the former can handle on its own? npm, Inc is doing a great job at being THE package manager for frontend too. npm quite simply is superior, in my opinion.

It’s okay to forego the latest and greatest. I still use Angular 1.x even for new projects. Why? Because it’s not EOL yet. It’s still getting updates regularly. When the Angular Team EOL’s it I’ll reassess, just as I’d do with anything else.

Examine new frameworks and libraries to learn just enough about the core concepts and paradigms they introduce or espouse. Doing so should take no more than an afternoon or two of your time. Then, while you’re still building your Angular 1.x app and a client says “I want a React app!” you can discuss the prospect with the confidence of your fundamental understanding of what React brings to the table, and how it builds upon or differs from Angular.


Why You’re Experiencing JavaScript Fatigue


DHH of [Basecamp](http://basecamp.com/) (formerly 37Signals) wrote a rant that is making it’s rounds called [Reconsider](https://medium.com/@dhh/reconsider-41adf356857f) that is really resonating with me.

I’ve been in web development since around 1997 and I’ve worked on projects that have made me good money, and many that flopped. Every idea I had, I would talk to people about and their goto response was the same.

> You’ll never beat X or Y.

Maybe I don’t want to beat them? Maybe I don’t want to be the Facebook who killed Myspace. Maybe I don’t want to be a startup. Because I don’t. I’ve been in the startup world, that world sucks.

I’m in the build a sustainable business slow and steady world.

You don’t have to be a special snowflake. Just get your slice of the pie.


Reconsidered


There, I said it.

Looking back at all the projects I’ve worked on for myself, I have never completed a single one of them. I realize why now. I was always so worried that either I’d put all my effort into it and it would fail. So I would work on something, be so into it, but halfway, or even 80% of the way there, I’d lose interest, or find something else to take my interest.

**This stops now.**

Looking at my idea sheet, I have 9 ideas I want to work on. Friday I sunset a project that has “been in the works” since 2012. The one I had been working on is now being put on indefinite hold. Everything else will stay on the idea sheet.

But what will I be working on? What will I do?

Three weeks ago I was hired by a local printing and embroidery shop here in Dubuque. I have decided that the projected I am working on for them is the ONLY project I will work on.

Working at the office, or even if I feel like working on a night or weekend, it will be for the project I was hired to build. That’s it.

I will not let anything creep in and disrupt that, no more side projects for a while.


I don’t complete anything


My dream was to own or work for a great startup. A little over a year and a half ago, that dream came true and I started working for a startup. I was in heaven, the hacker startup life.. Oh boy did that sound amazing! Long days doing what I loved, coding in an office with other like minded people doing the same thing. Group outings as we take a small break and go grab some dinner, or do something together. We even had a beer pong table in the office. It was awesome!

Then it started to really sink in after the honeymoon phase was over. 12+ hour days meant I spent no time outside of work, I didn’t spend time with friends, I didn’t even go out and see the big city I was living in. That sucked. For the first time in my life, I actually was getting depressed.

I realized that the startup world lures developers in with this sense of excitement, the “culture” would be awesome, how can I not take this?!? It’d be so great! Yeah having that beer pong table in the office seemed cool, take a 10 minute break from working and play some beer pong, or foosball. Or anything else that is part of the startup “culture”. Or don’t, because you feel like you’re slacking off, or the boss tells you to get back to work.

All those things are just to get you to work there, to tell you the culture is awesome, you get to mix playing and working, life is great! It’s not.

I did learn something great in my year and a half working at a startup. Startups suck.


Dreams and goals of the hacker lifestyle at a startup.

On Startup Life


So one of my goals with my new setup on this site is to blog about the process of building my own business.

## A Little Background

I've been building websites in one way or another since January of 1997. That's a long time.

During that time, it wasn't more than small freelancing gigs, and running a few rando websites while I worked a "real job" to pay bills. I did try a couple times to do this as a full time job but I was young and didn't really care about much. I always thought "hey, if I don't make any money, then I'll just move back home."

## Fastfoward A Bit

This fastfoward is kind of a big jump. The setting is October 2013, I am doing contract work for a company to barely pay what little bills I had working from my parents. A buddy in IRC that I helped a few times with coding issues and recommendations hits me up about joining his dev team for his startup he's making. I like it, I agree and he tells me when time gets closer we'll talk more.

January 27th, 2014 - I sit down at my computer and see a message on IRC. I go to read it and it's my buddy, he wants to talk over Skype or something. So I agree and we get on Skype. It's me, him (CTO), CEO and COO of a small "stealthy" startup in Chicago, we talk and they ask me to come to Chicago to meet. Of course I am open to this and say yes.

So here I am, mid-day at the end of January and I am driving 4 hours away in what looks like a blizzard on it's way. I didn't care, I was on a mission.

Finally I reach my destination in Chicago, on West Chicago Ave, just outside of the beautiful skyscrapers of the city in the River North section of town. I walk into the office, greeted by anticipation.

From that moment on, for literally a full week, I bounced around between CTO's parent's house, and CEO's beautiful 7th story apartment in the Grand Ohio building as places to sleep, which weren't really long stretches. We spent that whole time hacking away.

You see, when I got there, I was introduced to the codebase of a startup where the sole developer learned how to program while building the app. I'll tell you what, he did a great job despite my pickiness on how code should be structed. He literally learned everything he knew up to that point as he was going.

After that week of hacking, CEO asked me what I thought and if I was interested in joining the team. The company was 100% bootstrapped so funds were low. We discussed that and I understood. The next day, as I'm sitting next to the CTO hacking away, teaching him and bringing the small team up to speed on better practices, the CEO walks in, throws a set of keys at me and said he has an apartment in his building for me.

I sat there for a moment.. I was flabergasted at how fast this was moving and what the reality was to come.

I accepted. I joined the company as the lead and first software engineer.

I'll leave Part 1 there and I'll talk more in Part 2 about what I learned at the company and how I am applying it to my own business.


So one of my goals with my new setup on this site is to blog about the process of building my own business.

Building a Business  -  Part 1


This site has been through so many changes since I registered it. Lets change it again!

One of the things I often wanted to do but could never really get the hang of was consistently blogging. This time I set a goal to blog at least once a week. I believe my reason previously was I felt I never had enough to blog about. I often felt that I needed to blog about something that everyone would want to read, or was more than a paragraph. I now feel that blogging really isn't about writing the next profound story, but really about just getting things you want to talk about off your chest.


This site has been through so many changes since I registered it. Lets change it again!

Thoughts, Stories & Ideas

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