Two years ago, I was one day away from halting work on my new side project.
I had built an event-based finance simulator to replace one of my convoluted spreadsheets. I was satisfied that it did most of what I needed for my own planning, and a few shares to places like Reddit were met with little (i.e. no) fanfare. So I thought, "mission accomplished, time to move on."
I posted the link to HN just for kicks, but didn't bother checking back in... then an hour later I found my email inbox blowing up 🚀
Since that day, I have worked nights and weekends bootstrapping ProjectionLab (https://projectionlab.com) as a side project from $0 to $8500 MRR.
→ 9 months to get to $1,000
→ 4 months to get to $2,000
→ 7 months to get to $5,000
→ 2 months to get to $6,000
→ 2 months to get to $8,500
It has been a long and challenging road to get here, and contrary to my own advice (https://www.indiehackers.com/post/reached-6k-mrr-as-a-solo-dev-71decd3025), I have been burning the candle at both ends pretty often.
Would my own financial plans be looking a lot rosier if I had just grinded leetcode to go work for FAANG instead? Probably... but I still wouldn't trade this experience of building and growing a passion project for just about anything 😁
The process of materializing a creative idea in the real world and growing a user community around it has been energizing and fulfilling in a whole different way than corporate engineering could ever be. But I think all you fellow indiehackers already know about that feeling!
I suppose the next question is: when should PL become more than just a side project? If only there was a personal finance simulator that could help explore the different scenarios and trade-offs... 😉
If you have an opinion, story, rule of thumb, or thoughts on personal risk calculus to share, let me know in the comments below!