Looking back at some past projects

Sometimes, it is good to look back and consider the distance you've walked.

Back in secondary school, I had a teacher who kept telling my parents I was as lazy as I was creative. 15 years later, I don't believe I've been too lazy, but I've sure been creative. I am writing this article as a library of some of my past projects, an exercise to reflect on the things I've learnt and the mistakes I should not repeat.

With each project, success and failure alike, there's something to learn or improve. Here is an overview of some past projects:

2006 - 669

My very first website. The original version was built with ToWeb, then Cariboost, before I finally took the time to learn HTML & PHP.

669 was an eCommerce platform selling garments internationally. Quite a good exercise for no-budget-marketing! I closed the platform in 2017 after 11 years and 2 evolutions.

2008 - QueCuisiner.fr

QueCuisiner was a very unique cooking website that helped people find recipes they could make with the ingredients they had in their fridge and nothing else.

The website was quite successful and had an active community posting and commenting regularly.

Without business model or regular updates, the website has survived since but there isn't much activity left.

2009 - Express-BusinessLife

Back in 2009, I was just finishing my Master degree at the PolyTechnic University of Hong Kong and I decided to launch a website called "express business life". The purpose was to regroup valuable resources, both articles and videos, that would help people throughout their business life: how to create a clear presentation with powerpoint, how to use Social Media for marketing, etc.

The website and its content has been under-development for a few month but never enjoyed an official launch.

2009 - JulienRio.com

I built my own website in 2009 to give prospects a glimpse of what I had done. I had already finished quite a few freelance contracts and it was time to find more customers.

In 2011, I decided to start a blog and build a personal branding strategy through content.

2010 - pi-design.tk

A friend of mine, designer and freelance, needed a website to get new contracts and present his portfolio.

2011 - What to Watch

Similarly to what I had done earlier with QueCuisiner, I wanted to develop a unique algorithm that would help "pairing" people based on their preferences.

The idea was to go through a series of movies a bit like Tinder does today, saying "I like / I don't like" to be able to suggest new movies to watch based on the user's preferences.

I did create the website and developed a fair algorithm to go with it, but gave up once facing the gigantic work filling the database would have been.

2012 - Crypture.it

Why Crypture? Encryption + picture. After watching a few spy movies, I wondered whether I'd be able to create a system that would efficiently hide a large quantity of data within an image. This personal challenge became a project, once again, with no business model whatsoever.

Crypture.it allows you to hide a message in an image and secure it with a password. Only the person with the picture, the password and the software could then retrieve the message.

2012 - DemosKratos

Election year in France! I got passionate about politics, started doing some research, comparing various parties and their programs.

I then figured it would be great if someone could come up with a system to truly compare political programs to have a concrete yet achievable overview of the political landscape.

I started working on "Demos Kratos" to offer this vision, but I quickly realized the project was WAY too large for my shoulders.

2012 - i-list.it

i-list.it was my second commercial website. It still has a few users today.

The concept is very similar, yet less advanced, to what Trello offers. It creates a set of boards meant to organize all your "to-dos", categorize them, and manage your team remotely.

2013 - JulienRio.com - ads

At that time, I started to have quite a few websites available, most of which had no commercial value nor revenue. I then decided to create an ad platform, "JulienRio.com Advertising" allowing companies to advertise on one or several of my websites with banners.

2013 - made-in-china

This website never saw the light of day. I spent a few months preparing it, planning for the business model, finding suppliers, working on designs... but I finally realized there wasn't much of a market.

The idea was to sell customized Tshirts at a very low price by working directly with a Chinese factory. The website never got launched.

2014 - Quote-Easy.com

Quick & dirty.

My brother in law needed a way to make professional quotes, easily, review them and send them by email to his prospects, from his phone.

I decided to code something for him to achieve these goals then added some design around it to eventually turn it into a business. As there were many players on the market and my product wasn't adding much value, I stopped even before giving it a proper design.

2014 - Cardie 2.0

Cardie 2.0 was an internal task-tracking system. A very advanced project management platform made for a manager to assign and control tasks on a daily basis.

I developed it when I started having more and more people in my team to manage and started losing track of each task. The software was made for internal usage exclusively and sent me daily tasks report on what was late, waiting for approval or finalized.

I never made it public but it really helped and accompanied me through two different companies.

2014 - CompaniesRanking

CompaniesRanking never got launched, Glassdoor had something similar and Viadeo built a similar feature a few years later.

The whole concept was to allow people with a LinkedIn account to rate their company on various criteria and allow future employees to get a glimpse at what happened behind the doors.

I decided not to pursue the project as it seemed dangerous to build a business on a third party dependancy (if LinkedIn was to change the rules, the whole platform would collapse).

2015 - CheungNegi

My brother in law needed a website to promote his business online and get new leads. I built this chinese website presenting his activity and started some Adwords campaign to boost his business a little.

2015 - Later-Mail

Later-mail wasn't so innovative. It was something I had already used in the past but couldn't find again.

The idea was simple: write an email today that will be sent at some given point in the future. With this you could write to the future "you", or prepare a birthday email in advance for example. I always loved the idea of something coming from the past. Just imagine receiving today an email you had written three years ago giving you a glimpse of the past - nice, isn't it?

Within a few weeks I had thousands of spammers taking advantage of the platform to spam people ahead of time and had to shut it down.

2015 - myfairtool.com

My real pride is called myfairtool.

I originally developed the concept in 2014, but quickly gave it up before giving it a second chance in 2015.

myfairtool is a platform allowing users to manage their tradeshow from A to Z: budgeting, planning, promotion, lead capture, follow-up, etc.

The platform regrouped multiple tools aimed to make an exhibitor's life easier. I had originally developed something similar for my personal use back in 2011, but then decided I should make something more complete that could also scan business cards with OCR technology.

I then created an official company, myfairtool Ltd. hosted in Hong Kong, left my job and jumped full time in the entrepreneurship adventure.

The product had a very modest success: people who used it loved it and made testimonials, but the product was too complex for a pure marketing approach. I had to give the management of myfairtool to another company to keep paying for my bills.

2016 - FrenchVocab

In 2016, I was planning on leaving Hong Kong for good and return to France. My wife decided to learn French and therefore I built a small application to help her with it.

Soon after, I decided to turn my personal efforts into something that would benefit more people and created FrenchVocab.

Looking back at all these past projects is inspiring... what will the next one be?

Julien Rio.

Head of Marketing at Dimelo, Author of The Trade Show Chronicles. 

More articles available on my blog.