Build Something Build Anything
Jason Glaspey
#bsba
#wv2010
- Clay Shirky: in the 1950s, there was a 40 hour work week. people had time, and they didn’t know what to do. enter the sitcom.
- At the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo they discussed…
- How many hours did it take to assemble wikipedia: about 100M hours of effort.
- Americans watch 200 billion hours of TV each year.
- Americans watch 100M hours of commercials in a single weekend.
- We could have another wikipedia every weekend if people just gave up commercials.
- Some side projects make it big
- Examples
- delicious
- upcoming
- metafilter
- But they can be successful even if they don’t
- Some inspiring examples
- Again and Again: 23 year old college grad. Passionate about Apple products. Like this band. Built a video for the band. Got over 1.5M views. Has since gotten a huge jump in his career.
- He demonstrated his skills. He manifested what he wanted.
- Written up in NY Times, Mac blogs. Talked with Apple. Made videos for Microsoft.
- What is Google Wave
- Video by Epipheo Studios
- Google made a 1 1/2 hour video. Nobody wanted to watch it.
- So this guy made a 2 1/2 minute video. Just to try to get an invite to Google Wave.
- Has since been hired by Google to do “what is google chrome”, “what is google tv”.
- Their company cannot keep up with demand…
- The project they did in a day got them tons of attention.
- iPod Touch Ad
- Nick Haley: 18 year old in the UK
- He loved his iPod touch, and loved Apple ads.
- Got an email from Apple, “Would he please come to California and be the creative director to shoot a polished version of the ad.” -> which turned into the actual TV ad.
- never thought he would even be in advertising, and now it very successful
- Beyond video, and some personal examples
- unthirsty.com: happy hour finder
- was novel at the time. got written up on lifehacker, won google mashups. got a couple of thousand user-contributed locations.
- something they built in their spare time… a few hundred dollars invested. over a couple of years, it built up.
- it was not about financial success. no advertisements. just for fun.
- this was attractive to people…
- finally these sold it… not retirement money, but decent enough.
- But it led to jobs: they never saw a resume, or a portfolio: just saw unthirsty. The fact that they built something so cool and compelling for fun, just because they wanted to build something: they just had to hire him.
- Jason on Cars
- As a perk at a job got to drive different classic and exotic cars on weekends or the evening.
- So decided to write a WordPress blog doing lifestyle reviews of the cars. For two years they would drop off a brand new car everything Thursday, and pick up the old car. He made a couple of hundred dollars a month on advertising from the blog, and got to drive all these cool cars.
- Just for setting up a blog and writing a post each weekend.
- Bacn.com:
- started dec 28th 2008, launched on January 17th.
- got bacon from all over the country, filmed content, built site, ecommerce.
- it was really fun, really novel.
- sold it in january of this year…
- got invited to speak of webvisions “we built a company in 3 weeks”.
- “wow, that would make a great book.” – a publisher asked them to write about a book about it.
- Paleo Plan: a site to make it easier and cheaper to follow paleo diet
- in 3 weeks launched a site. you get a shopping list. you get a meal plan.
- saves people about 4 hours a month by not having to do that.
- he charges $10/month to save 4 hours of time.
- he works about 3 hours a week on it, and now it’s his primary source of income.
- They don’t all work: He has 5 or 6 sites that failed
- some are bad ideas
- some have bad timing
- some are good ideas with bad execution
- examples:
- laptopia
- to smoke a cigar
- revoluton cyclewear
- snotips
- on and on
- You don’t have to broadcast your failures
- make them count
- get there fast: or fail fast
- learn from everything
- be purposeful about what you learn and how you describe
- Success isn’t cashing out.
- success is building some cool, learning amazing stuff
- Questions to ask yourself
- Is this for art?
- Make sure it fits at least one specific need: if it kind of feels like art, kind of feels like it will make money, kind of feels like a hobby… it may do none of those things.
- Make sure it really satisfies one of those categories.
- Is this for money?
- It’s OK. It doesn’t have to be, but that’s fine.
- Is this for your career?
- Get out there and make something. Let them know what you can do.
- Maybe the first one sucks. That’s fine. Do five more. You’ll figure it out.
- What does success look like?
- Am I looking for a better job?
- To get an opportunity that wasn’t there before?
- To gain notoriety?
- Build momentum: one project alone might not get you there, but a series of them will.
- Be Creative
- Will It Blend?
- You can’t help but know about this blender, even though a blender is one of the most boring appliances around.
- Talk to everyone you know
- Learn to weed out bad ideas early
- Questions?
- Paleo Diet site: cost about $1200 to get site up. includes consultant fee to the primary expert on it, the wordpress plugin, an search adwords guy
- Q: favorite way to prototype?
- A: I’m an information architect. I make a lot of wireframes and specs. I work in person with people, people I know, and can work closely with. Most of my projects are simple enough that a couple of wireframes and specs is enough.
- Q: the sites you sold: was that an email out of the blue or what?
- A: we knew the competitor from the beginning, he was happy to help us in the beginning, and let us know over and over that he was willing to buy the site.
- A: we had a lot of calls from guys who wanted to the backend from us, and eventually a guy called who knew what he wanted to do with it and was willing to pay.