Why Side Projects Should Be Stupid !?

FirstRoundReview'da okuduğum bir makalede son zamanların aşağılardan yukarılara tırmananlarına bir örnek olan Tobias van Schneider, yenilere açık olmak ve daimi yenilik tarafında kalmak için kulağımıza küpe olası görüşlerini paylaşıyor. Ben de makaleden önemli gördüğüm kısımları aşağıya aktarıyorum.

"[Schneider:] The only way a side project will work is if people give themselves permission to think simple, to change their minds, to fail — basically, to not take them too seriously,” says van Schneider. “When you treat something like it’s stupid, you have fun with it, you don’t put too much structure around it. You can enjoy different types of success."

"Sounds great, but as van Schneider points out, keeping side projects stupid can be really, really hard — especially in an industry where everyone talks about funding, scale, and data-driven decision-making. If you’re not careful, you can forget why you ever wanted to work on something in the first place."

"[Schneider:] When you’re focused on just taking that first step, or that next right step to keep things in motion, you won’t ask yourself all these [like Who has already done this better, faster, smarter than me?] questions."

"[Schneider:] If you can remove all fears and go one step at a time, you will find things that will guide you along the way. You will learn new things, absorb new information, meet people, get feedback, see demand in different areas — new doors will open up for you."

"Love is not just talk or professed passion. It’s hard work. It’s focused dedication at odd hours, trying new things, knowing every step of the way that chances of traditional success are slim. It’s being fine with staying small."

"[Schneider:] Think about it. If you love your side project, even if someone says that it’s shit, you still love it. So take the feedback, figure out how it can make you stronger, and go with that."

"[Schneider:] You have to tell people so that they will believe you: ‘You know what, you can do this thing exactly the way you want to at our company. Give them the trust and responsibility and remove their fears. Those are the main ingredients for great projects."

"He reimagined and wrote extensively about a new type of Mac email client that he named .Mail (dot Mail), completely rethinking how a mail application could handle attachments, calendar invites, and more... Suddenly he was getting picked up by the likes of Wired and other major publications. People who ran large email clients at Google, Yahoo and Microsoft reached out to him asking if he wanted a job... The irony of .Mail is that so many people asked, even implored him or someone else to build the model he described in the article he published, and while he hacked on it for a while he ultimately gave it up. "I realized I was passionate about thinking about the problem, but not actually fixing it," he says."

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