| I think it's important to define what it means for you to "finish the project". Is your project "finished", when you see an MVP that you can release to the world? Your project now has a minimum set of features that delivers the initial value you thought it would deliver? Is it worthwhile to do a Show HN on it? (and risk no one clicking on it because HN receives so many submissions? :) Is it worthwhile to release on PH? (and so many products launched in PH thesedays are... pretty much well-polished, revenue ready - if not funded etc) What comes after you "finishing" your projects? Will you continue? or move on to something else? For me, one of the ways to define "finishing" was to make sure that it launches with some type of payment plan. It is an MVP, but it also has monetization in it so that should anyone else wish to pay for it and use it, they can do so immediately. Sure, not all projects are about payment and those projects are fine (which is why I said 'one of the ways'...) but if I know that this is something that I'd like to continue to work on because I enjoy it and I know it has legs, I try to find some way of generating revenue to see what the response would be. Thoughts? |
I think for the most part I align with you regarding calling something “finished” as a project having monetization in it.
As of lately though I’ve been thinking a lot about two different definitions of “finish”, one of them being that I can use it to do some task that I want to do. For example, I handle my finances using beancount and around that I’ve build a few projects that are finished in as much as they do what I want them to do and make managing my finances easier (import transactions from email notifications received from bank, eMacs configuration for my finances, etc.)
The second category is open source projects. I often wonder what would it take to build something that is useful to others but that doesn’t come with all the complications of a monetized products? Like, how Moodle or Drupal became Moodle and Drupal? How did they became known? Who used it first?
I want to find a tiny little problem to solve, and find a way that the people with that problem know about my solution and hopefully can benefit from it… but I don’t even know how to properly ask the question about where to start something like that… and actually finish it!