The Power of Side Projects

Long Story Short:

Side or after-work projects are a perfect way of gaining experience in executing web projects and founding startups. Anyone who’s never founded before but is thinking about setting up a startup should have carried out at least one side project.

Full Story:

Note: “Side Projects” means small after-work projects that realize startup ideas in a free-time setup, not a full-time occupation.

No matter if you’re a business or a tech person, side projects help you to gain 360°, hands-on experience in executing web projects on a small scale. It’s exactly the kind of experience you can use to pursue several goals:

1. Boosting Your Career:

Use your accumulated knowledge for your job. Web projects give you a chance to experiment at will before you utilize your learnings for big tasks and clients. Side projects are tremendously instructive. These learnings help not only with any future founding stints, but also with job life as an employee. Thanks to my past side projects?—?no matter how successful or not they were?—?I learned a lot for my main occupations and still thrive on these hands-on experiences today. My execution of side projects, close cooperation with developers as tech partners and the following technological implementation of projects even served as a foundation for my longtime position as CEO of a Digital Media & Software Development Consulting Boutique.

2. Gaining Early Founding Experience:

Side projects are incredibly valuable for anyone who wants to found a startup, but is still a student or employee. People wanting to found who so far only have work experience as employee and never had a side project, I don’t get at all. Whoever has the required entrepreneurial passion will find the time to start and oversee a side project. Whoever doesn’t find the time has proof that maybe they don’t have the necessary founder spirit after all.

3. Proof-of-Concept of Your Idea:

Your side project can be a first validation to see if your idea might turn into the founding thought for a full-blown startup later on. Like this you can run a risk-free test to see if your idea might work.

4. Proof-of-Team:

You’ve never worked with your co-founders before? Then you really need proof that your team works?—?before that you shouldn’t look for an investor.

A side project helps to test early on if every team member makes the desired contribution and how well everyone works together.

I’ve seen many side projects where the concept turned out not so great, but the newly formed team worked together exceptionally well. With that you’ve already created something incredibly valuable! You have the founder team that you’ve long searched for, and now you can move on to thinking about the next idea and its execution! Especially the techies and designers with whom I’ve realized side projects years ago now make up the core of my network and are the people I love to work with most.

Side projects can and should be designed with a view towards your own resources, especially the weekly amount of free time you have and want to reserve for them. The next UBER certainly won’t be created with just a few hours a week. But there are so many ideas and possibilities to realize a small-scale concept and test its market power. To start out, it might even just be a small blog about your own hobby or a limited niche you find interesting from a business perspective.

Therefore my advice clearly is: If you (want to) work in the digital market and have a true passion for it?—?and especially if you want to found a startup at some point?—?set up a side project and use it to gain valuable experience.

Or would you think it’s a good idea nowadays to decide to earn your money as a musician without ever having stepped on a stage before?

Btw: What do you think of preachers who don’t practice what they preach? Well, with my next post I’ll show you how I as VC executed a side project as a case study for my thesis. It’ll be the most effortful blog post ever. Stay tuned!