he Real Reason Your Side Project Will Fail (A Developer’s 10-Year Confession)

I think many developers have this dream. From the outside it seems quite simple. Have an idea. Use your hard earned skills to build that idea. Release it to the world and see the money start stacking up in Stripe.

However, I have realised after years of trying that although it may be simple, it’s not easy.

I want to share with you 3 legitimate app ideas I have tried to build over the past 10 years or so, all of which never made any money.

This definitely isn’t a “How to”. This is more of a “Things to think about before you start”. I’ve built and produced many apps. It’s time I share with you how not to do it.

Praguebeats — A music platform about Artists in Czech republic

I started this project back in 2003 or something with a friend. We both lived in Prague and we both loved music. “Lets make a website about it!” We built the website in Wordpress. Why? It was 2003 and I knew close to nothing about web development.

I had lots of fun building this project. This was actually the moment I fell in love with Web development. I was just fascinated by how everything worked on the website. Everytime I managed to do something, I would eagerly jump onto the next thing and dive down a rabbit hole of learning.

I also discovered Lynda.com around this time which was a game changer for my professional like.

However, the whole thing failed to make money for two reasons:

• We had no business plan — we had no plan or idea how this thing could make any money.
• It was really boring adding content — The motivation and joy died from the project very quickly.

Lessons learned:

• Don’t start any project without a clear plan of how it could make money.
• Running a website is very different to managing a website.

Slouch — A flat renting marketplace

This all started when a friend from work mentioned he was creating a site to help him find a flat to rent in Prague. He said the experience on Facebook was horrible so he wanted to do his own thing.

It sounded interesting so I asked if I could join. Before I knew it I was working evening and weekends on this app. It was fun!

The whole stack was in typescript — React, Nodejs backend and MongoDB. I learnt so much from this project. I was pretty raw going into it and it was a tough ride but as far as my technical skills go, l levelled up massively.

There were four of us working on the project. 3 devs and 1 marketing person. We spent a whole load of energy on design and UX. It was actually looking and feeling very professional. It was getting serious.

We eventually went live. And nothing… A few nibbles.

Then something hit us smack in the face. How was this site actually going to make money? We discussed ads or something in the beginning but once we got to the place where it was live it all seemed much harder.

And then scams started. We started getting real emails from real people telling us they’d been ripped off and what are we going to do about it.

This wasn’t fun anymore.

Lessons learned:

• Make sure it’s clear from the beginning how you intend to make money from the app.
• Choose very carefully who you choose to do projects with. Doing these things can change relationships. It puts strains on you that normal friendship doesn’t.

Runnago — An AI Trainer for Runners

I really thought this one was going to be successful. It was something I was passionate about — Running! I was building it in a stack I really like — Tanstack Start and Laravel. AI was breaking through to the mainstream.

I really did have fun building this. Until I didn’t.

What was the problem? It was the classic problem of starting off with one idea, but then keep adding to that one idea as I went along.

I didn’t have a clear plan from the beginning. It was more of a vague idea and I started building straight away. I was of the mindset that I would “work it out as I went along”.

The real pain was on the data side of thing. With all the plans I had and the fact they kept changing, trying to keep all the data in logical relationships was really hard — if not impossible.

It eventually just became too big and unwieldly. I couldn’t get it to all fit together. Along with the fact I wasn’t even sure in the end how I would want to charge the user, I just stopped working on it.

Lessons learned:

• Have a clear plan (both business and technical) from the beginning and stick to it.
• Keep the scope small. It’s better to get something niche finished and out to the market soon, rather than build something huge that tries to do too much.

When AI Isn’t The Solution

One thing to bring up with all of these ideas is the fact they didn’t fail because I couldn’t write code quick enough or got stuck on some technical implementation I couldn’t overcome.

It’s one thing to be able to technically create an app and this is where AI really can really help you. However, it doesn’t matter how great the app is technically or visually if the underlying business model fundamentally doesn’t work.

All these people online shouting about how AI now makes them so much more productive and they can write so much more code are completely missing the point. I have spent many hours writing thousands of lines of code on the above projects and not one of them made a cent. Not because the app failed on some coding level but the business idea just didn’t work.

Conclusion

The one thing I realised through all of this is I love building apps. I love thinking about how the app will look and behave. How and where certain logic will sit in the stack. What tech stack and libraries to use to solve the specific problems the app will throw at you.

However, if you want a successful app then you have to think deeply about the business side of things, make realistic plans and stick to them rigorously.

With all of these attempts at side projects I have broken fundamental rules and that in turn has led to them either not being successful or momentum running out too soon.

Would I change anything?

I’m not sure. I have really enjoyed parts of this whole process and I have learnt so much along the way. I wouldn’t be half the developer I am today and not in the position I am without this experience so that counts for a lot.

I will keep going though and one day I am sure I will find the sweet spot and find that App that just works.

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