1) Focusing too much on making money: A side project doesn't have to be a business and probably shouldn't to start with. Once it reaches a certain level you can try to make it a business afterwards.
2) Not enough focus on learning: Side projects only focused on making money don't provide enough motivation (see #1) to keep things going when the resistance sets in (no customers). Focusing instead on learning new technologies through the project can provide an extra boost of continued motivation.
3) Not setting up milestones and getting feedback: Without getting the right amounts of dopamine hits, in the form of feedback from peers and mentors
As an experiment in addressing these challenges, we @ Bridge.Academy are hosting a side project challenge:
https://medium.com/the-spectrum/announcing-the-bridge-academy-tournament-725998fc5126
Here's a list of some of the initial ideas we've received so far. Please leave yours in the comments below or apply with one here.
https://apply.bridge.academy/b/lxshok/view
- PredictIT: An ML model that predicts the winner of a match between two teams by taking in the players’ performances over the past six months on different parameters.
- Knowtable: A fully-encrypted note taking app built made for Mobile.
- Credible: A Blockchain powered solution for Consumer credit reporting agency.
- MailMonkey: An email marketing/newsletter subscription service that allows the creator to truly own the email address captured.
- TweetTheBook: A web app that fetches the most “tweetable” quotes from any book depending on how many times they have been tweeted.
- PersonGraph: A web app that fetches the best blogs, tweets, articles from the internet for any individual in real time.
- AI.DAO: A DAO which gives out grants for AI Research to deserving fellows.