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Ask HN: What can I use my excess development capacity for?

1 points by speg ↗ HN
I love to make things. However, every time I try to start something from nothing I abandon it once I get the basic framework together. Nothing is ever ready for real users, and as such I never get any real traction on my projects.

I need an outlet to build things that provides some sort of value. Open source projects seem like a good candidate but the learning curve seems so high and different for every project.

I wish their was a place to go where you could pop in, do some work for someone, and pop back out. Does anything like that exist? I'd love to have my own lifestyle business that I could tend to, but short of buying an existing one I'm not sure where to put my resources.

3 comments

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hooliganpete
You could try browsing sites like UpWork to check out available projects - maybe these requirement more commitment than you'd like but you'd get an idea of what's available/what others are working on. You could also try trawling business or engineering school message boards - there are often tons of small-scale projects looking for someone to pop in to lend a hand. Short of finding someone else's project to work on, you could focus your efforts on an "mvp of an mvp" - something so incremental and yet complete you could have it in the app store or in beta in a matter of weeks.
gravypod
I've been tossing the idea if starting a company with some people at uni. Do you have any tips for finding clients as a company.

I know this is off topic a little, but I'd like to know how to do this.

hooliganpete
Do it! Uni is the perfect time to do this, most of all because you will never have as much free time as you in college. In terms of finding clients, start calling potentials - generate a list of leads, rank in terms of potential and prioritize. Follow up; be polite but persistent. No shortcuts, just hard work.