119 karma · joined April 30, 2016
When I’m “lost” in programming or conversation, I feel I’m doing it right :)
- I simply don't know where to begin... which one to contribute to? I don't have an area of computing that excites me to such a degree for longer than a week.
- I worry that anything meaningful that warrants open-source contribution is going to established - and will feel more like a dayjob in terms of creativity (or lack thereof; implementing a shopping list of FRs) and formality.
I could be entirely wrong but I've never tested this hypothesis as I have a huge backlog of (useless/unprofitable) side-projects to build. Perhaps I'm more of a lone wolf :)
EDIT: One thing that I do assume would be better in established OS is focusing on complexity and going deeper. With side projects you'll often spend far more time on boilerplate stuff than on the "big idea" that might have drawn you in.
Not sure where to take it next as there’s well funded competition and conversions/revenue have plateaued…
Its probably that "there is still a lot to be done" thought is actively demotivating and that's the issue.
Perhaps having too many plans and goals for a given project rather than just enjoying the task as you mention can get in the way.
But on the flip side, for the most part the big 3 can’t sell into China so it can have a commanding lead.
Its growing at over 60% per year in a far less competitive environment than the big 3. Tencent (mostly focused on gaming) is also competing there.
Full disclosure: I invested in BABA today because of the above.
https://24hrstartup.com/products/quora-scanner
It failed as Quora changed how much info could be seen/scraped on the frontend without a login. Even if they hadn't I likely wouldn't have been able to get enough LTV from each user to spend enough acquire them at a decent pace.
No regrets though, it was my first experience doing user feedback sessions over Skype, which I can't recommend highly enough vs. asking them to fill a form.
Curious as to how deep you plan to go on the peripherals to product analytics - attaching additional attributes to users to group them (eg. Subscription level), getting a view into attribution channels for marketing strategy etc.