As engineers, we have a skill that lets us build things easily and, quite often, properly. We know about OG tags, optimization, and sometimes SEO and UX. We like to think of that as an advantage others don't have. For a non-technical person, even in the AI age, it can still be difficult and expensive to build a well-made app. That's why we think we can make a difference by simply creating a tool that not many people are capable of building. I fell into this trap multiple times, and I have a graveyard of projects 🙂

Some were built but never launched. Some were launched, then forgotten. I won't even mention the ones described in my notebook (the real one, pen and paper) that never left it.

The plan was simple: if I build the tool and care about every single technical aspect of it, it'll surely be a hit. People will use it, I'll monetize it with ads, and eventually Stripe or Google will acquire me. The product will be so good, so popular, that it'll succeed either way.

As you may have guessed, I'm not that rich yet.

We like to ship. New features, things that work, data coming together, CI passing (which we happily set up a week ago, just in case three other devs join after our success). When the project is finished, we feel it's done. Now it'll magically spread.

Engineers don't like the boring path. Repeatable work isn't exciting. Marketing needs revisiting. Metrics need watching. You need to find distribution. Social media? Come on, who needs that. I'll be the guy who emerges from nowhere with a shiny new thing.

Years of building projects taught me that maybe I won't build a unicorn. Does that mean I should stop shipping? Definitely not. If users are that annoying and don't notice such extraordinary effort, make your apps for a single user. Yourself.

Did you have fun working on the project? Did you spend a few nights on it? Are you happy with the result? It was worth it, even if you wasted some AI tokens.

Some projects are less fun to build but stay useful. I once built something that converted recipe pages (often full of drama and personal stories) into simple, translated recipes with the units I actually use. The result was my personal cookbook, which I still use. It even had a print feature, so I have it on paper. Is this a fantastic revenue stream? Not really. But I still find it useful.

After some time, I think that maybe the graveyard isn't actually a bad thing. I have a notebook of ideas and an approach to never stop shipping, regardless of whether the next one will be a hit or not (but believe me, this next one will be it 💯).

These projects prove you can bring something from idea to reality. You go through bottlenecks (there are always some, even with the simplest idea) and end up with a nice codebase and a shipped product. They can be part of your portfolio. They show your mindset. They tell the world you like what you do. They can showcase your hobbies (like my cooking sites!). A future employer may notice one. Yes, I've had that experience already (I once got a job offer based on my side projects!).

So remember, never stop shipping. And watch my next one; it'll be the hit you've been waiting for!