How To Build Side Projects When There Is High Competition

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Hey folks, we are going to the comments for a question from Epic Technab. And this one is about side projects and how to navigate side projects when it comes to, you know, things that are maybe uh got a lot of competition, so to speak, like there's lots of variance of them. Um, and then in general, like building software where there's lots of competition already. So, I figured it'd be an interesting one to talk through a couple different angles and uh sort of to preface it, the thought process I have on this is like side projects truly for for learning versus business versus what, right? So, I I want to kind of break it down into those areas because I think ultimately it's going to depend on what the goal of building a side project is. So, we'll we'll kind of break it down that way. Uh, what do we got for a drive?

Says 30 minutes. I got to make it in less than 33 minutes or else I'm late for my meeting. It's a RTO for us at the the Redmond campus at Microsoft this week, but I'm also on call in the mornings. And I went from a week of dealing with live sight things to a week of being back up on call, dealing with live sight things to a start of a week being primary on call with return to office. So um I am absolutely at my limits and it's the start of the week. So we'll we'll see how it goes. I'm going to need some some time off after this cuz I had a couple of days last week that were between 16 to 20 hours long and uh that's not that's not a thing that anyone should be doing. So, okay, Epic Technav, how do I think about this?

Well, I think like I said, you got to break it down into what your goals are with your side projects and you know, things that come to mind for me. Let's like start with with the learning one just because it's kind of the maybe the more obvious shorter one to go through. If your goal with the side project is purely for learning then I think the the idea around like you know competition or has it been done before is almost irrelevant um in my opinion because that shouldn't affect you know the time that you're going to spend to go learn something right so uh for example you know the typical side projects you kind of see here like you got calculators you got to-do apps perhaps you got I don't know things that are like really simple web pages like that you can do the

same thing on mobile but usually it's like a really simple kind of like notetaker calendar you know something where you can basically have something useful you know has has some type of function that you can interact with um in in not too many steps and then you and think about, you know, the the format or the the way that you would get or interact with this app, mobile, desktop app, web app, whatever. And so that's I feel like sort of the stereotypical ones that we see, but I think now especially with AI and people being able to lean into these types of things, the the like the bar, I guess, is has been raised in terms of what you're able to do. So, uh, ironically, the the one that I see coming up a lot, and I think this is maybe why Epic Tech Techchnav brought it up, cuz it was on one of the videos that was talking about brand ghost.

And so, like, I think, you know, social media posting apps are like maybe falling into the the list of like, you know, low barrier do-it-yourself apps to build. Oh no, my shaker is leaking. One sec. Is this just water I dripped? I hope so. Um, not actually anything with flavor. And so it's it's ironic because I build brand Ghost on the side, which is a, you know, like a a product and service I charge money for and it runs my social media for me. And then now like that is you know or I shouldn't say the exact same thing obviously but that is perceived as one of the things that someone can just whip up in vibe code and like you know an afternoon kind of thing. So you know we can do more advanced things quicker because of AI.

But to bring it back to this idea of learning, like if you're just trying to go learn how something works or get more familiar with an ecosystem, tech stack, language or whatever, I don't think the the question of like competition really matters, right? Um, you know, it didn't stop people with calendar apps, to-do apps, and that kind of thing. Like if you if you're just trying to learn the tech stack or how something works, what does it matter if other people have done it, right? So just to kind of wrap up that one um because I mentioned AI, I think that you know keeping focused on the goal. If your goal is to go learn things through side projects, then it's not that you can't use AI, but like think about truly what your goal is. Because if your goal is to go learn something and you're like, well, I want to cut out all the parts that are difficult, then like the your learning effectiveness is probably going to drop dramatically, right?

Like part of learning is having these like points where you're struggling through something. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's uncomfortable, right? Because you're getting stuck, but that's literally part of the learning process. So instead of just like avoiding it or being like anytime I have to think I'll just go ask for the answer like I would just highly encourage you to lean into that to be like it's okay and actually a good thing that you're getting stuck along the way because that means that when you get unstuck by thinking through things or like researching or uh it could even be asking AI just not literally give me answer that I I think that those are where you will have uh these learning moments. So again, it's not that you can't use AI, right?

I think one of the biggest challenges that I faced over years of being in software development is like when you are stuck and you want to go search for something, the tools that we had to go search, you have to go keyword search things. And so like you need to have like a a literally a skill at properly keyword searching, which sounds kind of funny, right? Like what do you mean it's a skill to be able to Google things? Um but truly because you need to think about like you're stuck on a problem. Like what is it you're going to search? Because if you're too specific with your keyword search, then you get nothing. And if you're too generic, you get everything. And so you have to to know the right keywords to search to get a good balance of things. But it's different now. It's not that you'd never have to keyword search again, but you can ask AI to help you search for things.

And so instead of you having to have this expertise around like being a a keyword search guru, you can almost have a conversation and let AI go like seek things out for you. And uh I always I always think about uh actually one of my really close friends I work with uh on Brand Ghost. He used to work with me at the digital forensics company we were at prior and um I don't know like I don't think that I'm bad at Google searches but I was always amazed that he somehow could find like anytime we were stuck on something we're like man we've searched everywhere he could somehow find it on Google and it was always like fascinating that he had the Google foo So yeah, I think that we have tools to help us with this kind of stuff and I encourage you to

like use them to go search get information for you but to not take the entire thought process out of it because if you're doing your side projects and you fall into this trap of like I'm stuck so let me just ask AI fix it then like are you actually learning? And the answer is like, I'm not saying you can't learn at all that way. I just think that it's going to diminish the effectiveness. You might get to an end result quicker of having an app that does something, but that was never the goal. Like, are you building a to-do app or a calendar app because you're trying to get to market with it, or you trying to build it to learn about it, right? Um, and you could make arguments, too.

Maybe like just to give you an example, I don't know, maybe you want to learn about deploying stuff in Azure or AWS or something and you're like, I I actually just need an app that I can go put together deploy so that I can see it running and I want to spend the time like learning about deployments and cloud infra and stuff like that. So yeah, maybe you do get something to vibe code a calendar or to-do app or whatever because you're like, I don't care about that part. I just need that part done. Now I want to focus on how do I set up resources whether it's programmatically or through the UI. Like you want to spend time kind of fumbling through those things, right? So just think about what you're trying to to learn and make sure that you're not like having something else solve that problem for you.

Okay, let's move on from learning and talk maybe more about like I guess like business. Um, and this is going to be more my like call it like personal philosophy I guess on these things. And that's going to come down to like I don't think that there's a cop. I don't think there's like necessarily a right or wrong or definitive answer to this, but this is just my my thought process. So when it comes to competition on things, I think that I have personally fallen into a trap of like well someone else does this so like better not like better not even spend time like why would I bother if there's already a company that does this or there's all like and it could be a big company or it could just be like you heard about a startup that's already in that space and

it's like oh someone's already doing it right I think I have this mental barrier or I I have at least over years where it's like well why bother if someone else has and I actually think that this is a pretty problematic mindset because there are so many examples around us whether it's in software or any other industry where just because one person or one company has doesn't mean that others shouldn't or cannot right and like I want you to think of literally anything that you pay for. Think of anything that you pay money for. Any single thing and then tell me that only one thing, one person or one company offers that as a product or service, right? Uh shaker cups. Okay, this one's from Blender Bottle. How many shaker cup companies do you think there are? There is water that came out of my fridge.

How many companies sell fridges that have water dispensers? How many companies sell caffeine powder that's in here or uh flavor crystals? Right. I have my phone sitting in my cup holder with my GPS. How many companies make phones? Right. Music streaming platforms. How many companies have music streaming platforms? What about uh social media networks? Right. think of anything and tell me that there's only one person or one business that sells it. And I would I would be amazed if you could find one and then I would say, "Hey, maybe maybe that's actually a thing you do want to go build." Um, but the point is that I don't I think that it's kind of a almost like the wrong attitude that if someone else is doing it, you can't or you shouldn't or it's not viable. There's no business opportunity.

And um I will, you know, just to kind of give you one more concrete example because I think that it's really important to hear this kind of thing to to know because like I said, I have this, you know, barrier for myself. I'm not trying to like talk about it like I'm immune to it. Literally still have it even as I tell you these things with evidence. Um, and I have lived through an example where other people were doing something and it didn't matter. Okay? So, I'm telling you all of this because I think it's important to know that you're sometimes like your own worst enemy when it comes to this kind of stuff. So, the example is is the digital forensics company I worked at, right? It was a startup when I started there. It's around seven or eight people. And in the space, there were already two big incumbents.

There were two really big companies that sort of had a like what I would call a monopoly over at least computer digital forensics. And I would say quite confidently that the company that I was at, Magnet Forensics, absolutely displace them in terms of forensic software. Absolutely did. Um and those companies were big and had a head start and they had resources. They had they had the lead, right? And then it took one company to come and say, "Hey, we're going to do something different." And I think that is where uh it becomes interesting because that's going to be the thing that you focus on, right? So if you do if you do the exact same thing as another company, I would I'm not going to say that you can't be successful that way. I'm sure I'm sure you could be, right? If you did, if you did the exact same thing as some other company, you built some product or service, right?

If you happen to market at places where they're not getting their marketing across or you can sell it to people that you have a closer relationship with or you can be more convincing with or just their sales, you know, funnel has not reached, then yeah, great. like you you are getting business doing you know air quotes like the exact same thing. So the that your differentiator there is not a a difference in your product or service offering. It's a difference in your like acquisition funnel, right? You just hitting a different market that they have not started reaching yet. And it's not that the markets uh in terms of like interest or whatever don't overlap necessarily. It's just that you happen to be closing on the same sort of segment. That's fine. Now, is it the best strategy? I don't know. Like, if they already have resources, like what's to stop them from being like, "Oh, wait.

We're losing. You know, someone else is being successful here. They're brand new. Uh they have a lot of catching up to do. Like, great. Like, maybe we should just kind of move in over there and start, you know, acquiring customers." It's like I mean there's the the moat so to speak is very very small at that point. But what's cool is that the moat to actually cross for what a lot of companies are doing now is shrinking, right? That means there is potentially more opportunity for people to do to start things and grow them. So you can you could, you know, ramp up and have success, you know, doing the exact same thing as other people. This guy has got to merge lanes, buddy. You have to get up to speed. Come on. What is going on? Thank you. If you got a This lane was merging in from the the left hand side, which is the fast lane, and this guy was going about 20 m an hour, less than the speed limit.

Not not a good recipe for anything. So, I think the the other angle though is like not necessarily just do the same thing and then hope you're targeting different people. It's like to find something that differentiates you, right? And it could be on the sales and marketing part like I was saying. Uh I think that there are companies that maybe they have a monopoly or they have you know a customer base and people are using them out of necessity and so like you could win on service like customer service. So that's that's an angle, right? Again, you could have the same or maybe even less capable product or service offering, but your customer service is so good that people are like, "Man, I don't want to give those other people money because anytime I need support, like I hate myself.

Like, I hate doing that." And so they're like, "Look, like maybe all these bells and whistles I don't necessarily need and I'd much rather just like know that if I need any assistance, I have really good support from people that care about me or that's how I feel, right?" So you could win on support. You could win on feature differentiation, right? There might be some some products or services that have built things out over time and they've either been neglecting what their core audience wants. Maybe they've been trying to focus on acquiring different market segments, right? They keep uh going more broad to be able to get more customers, appeal to more customers, and now you have a product that's either too messy, it's convoluted, or it's just too thin. So there are these core audiences that their needs are like are somewhat met but like they're not really being fulfilled enough because someone decided to go more broad.

Um, so I mean there's so many different angles on this that uh I think like if you're if your goal is to try and and capitalize on these things then in my opinion it's really about um finding ways to kind of differentiate yourself. And it doesn't have to be onedimensional like let me copycat all the features and then try to catch up that way and then just add more. Right? Maybe that is a strategy. Maybe that is a strategy and you add more and that's how you win. Maybe it's that you do half the features but you do them twice as good. Maybe you don't even need half the features twice as good. Maybe you just listen to what part of that target audience is actually after. listen to the customer problems and um and you start to realize like wait like there's a very specific group of people here and they have these specific challenges and the available things that are being offered are kind of like doing a half-ass job meeting that.

So I'm going to go focus on that part. So I think there's lots of different options. um to be honest and I like I said I think the the big thing here is that sometimes we're our own worst enemies convincing ourselves that like it's not worth it. my my opinion especially as of as of late because I've kind of had this opinion over the past few years of trying to build stuff on the side but even more so now if you're a a technical person like I consider myself a technical person um you know the building of software is not the hard part right like I I am certainly more technical than I am like a sales marketing kind of person. Um, it's just always trying to get better at those things, but it's just it's not currently where my where my my skill set is shining.

So, uh, for someone like myself, if you're like me, where it's much easier to to try and and build things and solve problems, the hard part's not building it. Um, one of the, you know, one big challenge is making sure that you're solving the right problems. Of course. So, it's not just solving problems or solving hard problems. It's solving hard problems for the right audience. That's that's part. But I think honestly the hardest part is like it's not people, you know, what do they say? Build it and they will come kind of thing, but like not if they don't know about it. If they don't know about it, they won't. They simply don't know about it. So, they How do they show up to get the thing? Right. So that that kind of saying to me is like uh is just wrong because if if I were to believe in that then I could just keep building stuff and I would be making tons of money.

It's not like that. I built plenty of things and I think that the reality is the hardest part for my experience has been you know how do you get it in front of people that are willing to pay money and more recently when I was talking about brand ghost I was saying look like built it primarily for creators like content creators like I do on the side because I know that's a big problem. It literally solves my my content creation problems and lets me focus on making the content I want and then it distributes it. I don't have to worry about all that stuff that's a pain in the ass. It's a huge huge huge benefit for me and I know and believe absolutely wholeheartedly that it solves problems for others. That is a problem worth paying money for.

One of the challenges though is that, you know, trying to appeal to an audience that's like, "Hey, look, like, I'm not even I'm not even at a point where I'm making money from content creation and you want me to pay for this service." So, no, I I can't, right? But it's it's almost like a a catch 22 because like it's uh it might help you get to a point where you can get paid for your content if you could scale it. And that's one of the tricky parts. So, it's a difficult audience to sell to and we have to be better connected with that audience. Now, the other group of people we've been talking to, we are much better connected to. And the reality is they also share the exact same problem. and they're a lot more willing to spend money on it because for them it is a direct conversion.

It's a direct scaling factor for them. So it's like uh maybe the reason I'm saying all this is like when it comes to you know someone else has already built it. One thing to consider is like maybe the thing that you're trying to build or you're seeing someone else has built, is it being applied in the same area, like the same industry? I bet you there are so many super cool opportunities where we have some type of tech or product or service in one industry that's like it's almost boring because it's so prevalent there, right? like, oh yeah, if you're I'm just making this up. Like, you're in agriculture. Oh, obviously there's like this this and that kind of platform. There's, you know, there's a hundred of them, whatever. You know, pick pick whichever one you want. Go for it. And like I bet you there's things like that that don't exist in some other industries.

And all it would take is someone kind of connecting the dots to go, wait a second, like this is in some other industry, this is a very solved problem. like what if you could just apply this over here. I think there's tons of opportunities like that. And so this is why I was saying with Brand Ghost more recently, it's like have not given up on content creators. Like definitely not. I absolutely am a content creator and still use it and I have not changed my mind on on the value prop there. I also think there is a different group that sees it even bigger value. And so that's been a shift for us where it's like same all the same kind of tech, same things. It's just like the who you're talking to changes the perceived value of it. So in my opinion, that's just a different way to look at like the, you know, someone else is already doing it.

Should I bother? Um, okay. So I'm almost at the office here. figure how to do for time. I'm going to make my meeting which is great. Um so in my opinion learning building projects for learning doesn't matter if other people have built it you know it it just to me it's not really a factor. Um and the goal is really to you know to spend time on the difficult parts cuz that's where you're going to learn. Structure your learning in a way where you're spending time on the difficult parts like those are the things that you want to learn about. Don't don't cheat on those. AI is not necessarily cheating. Using AI to just like say fix it, solve problem and not spend time on it. I think that's where you're you're cheating yourself only. Um and then other than that, I think that if other people have done it, it's not a matter of like therefore you should not ever consider it.

It's about looking for creative ways where you differentiate yourself. And that could be your marketing approach, your salesunnel. It could be on uh your tech support, just service, like customer service in general. It could be more features. It could be deeper on features. It could just be different sets of features, right? So, I think lots of different angles to look at here. And I hope that at least some of that's helpful. Now, we'll see if there's any parking spots when it's RTO. And I bet the answer is no. Especially when you have people parking over lines like that. Come on, man. This is Oh, yeah. There's one. We did it. Nice. Okay, now you can watch me park in this spot. Can I do it? Can I do it? We can do it, right? This truck is huge beside me. The other side, the one that's that you can see ain't that big, but cool.

We did it. Cool. I made it on time. Four minutes to spare. Thank you so much. I will see you next time. Take care.