Ask HN: How long did it take you to go from side project idea to launch?

I spent ~6 months building the initial version, then ran a 3 month beta (should have just launched here as beta didn't have a lot of usage), and finally launched about 3 months ago. All in all, I've been working on it for over a year. GitHub says first commit was May 22, 2016.

took me approx 2.5 years from the idea (of beating the stock market, trough losing money left and right, stopping and developing an edge) to building the system to algo trade constantly...

I spent around 6 months for version 1 of my food project https://bestfoodnearme.com and another 3 months for an entire re-write of version 2. It is still a work in progress with small iterations. I would say launch with the bare features, not even password reset. Get feedback and keep iterating.

Make sure you have some form of analytics from the start so you can see what pages people are going to

2 weeks -- http://www.backereta.com

Nobody uses it but it was a good learning experience.

The problem is not the actual dev time of a serious side project like a SaaS. Even if it just takes you three months to get to some sellable product with payment integration, etc.--the much bigger problem is that you need multiple shots to get it right (find the right market niche, the right product, the right angle, the right Marketing, the right growth channels, etc.). Then, after more than just three months and many attempts + pivots you just don't have the energy/time/money to keep up. Of course you can clone some proven model but then you face lots of competition which doesn't make success more probable.

People who are succesful did 99 mediocre side projects before they hit the jackpot. But it still took them tons of time and energy. Very often a overlooked by-product which was developed over night and benefitted from all prior experiences will be the cash cow while the main project which took 12 months still hasn't won any users.

Most stop at some point because it's just tough, especially the mental part.

It took about a month to built the initial prototype for the Search Engine we are building.

https://learn-anything.xyz

We had the interactive mind maps as JSON already however we needed to display them on the web in a nice interface so we made a react component to render the JSON to the screen.

https://github.com/learn-anything/react-mindmap

Overall it took about a month to do the whole thing and get a working prototype, the search engine improved a lot since then though.

I quit my job in May 2016 (15 months ago) to work on an idea (a painting web app). Unfortunately I was also trying to earn money with any sort of side-kick jobs (teaching) and the idea never got the attention it deserved. It got a few turns and twists after an initial demo to some designer friends in December 2016.

I have since then managed to get some funding and have been working on it more seriously for the past 4 months (since may 2017). In two weeks I will have another closed alpha-demo that is then going to be used to produce a video for the landing page, and opened to the public if there is no big bashing from my zen target audience friends.

It does seem like a huge desert to cross. Motivation comes and goes. In the meantime I managed to kill my desire to feature creep it to death and learned a lot about the fine art of listening/ignoring the target audience requests. I know for sure that my approach for my next project is going to be completely different than my current one. But in the meantime the rent is due :)

The landing page: https://www.pixnit.com

My blog with some thoughts on the bootstrapping experience: http://www.hugodaniel.pt

Concept was May 2011, I wrote up the spec in Aug 2011 and we launched in May 2015. So about 4 years.

Not a SaaS, but I'm working on a blogging platform for developers : https://www.ploghub.com/ . To use an analogy : Medium for developers without the dickbar. It took me around one month to build the initial version. The front page uses a dumbed down version of the HN algorithm. Code here (need to add test cases) : https://github.com/ploggingdev/ploghub

For my next project, I plan to build an alternative to Disqus which respects users' privacy. I removed Disqus from my blog a while due to the 2 MB junk it loads and sends tracking data to 10+ sites. I used to receive a few comments, so I thought I would build myself an alternative to Disqus and maybe turn it into a SaaS if there's demand for such a product. Any interest for a $10/month privacy respecting Disqus alternative + an open source code base?

I expect it to take me 2 to 3 weeks to build it. As you build more projects, you end up with a lot of reusable components, so it gets easier to build out the MVP. The real challenge for developers is to get users. This is something I don't have much experience with, so let's see how it goes.

I have built multiple SaaS products. I spend about a month building the first version. I get that out in front of users and continue to build upon it if I see traction and based on feedback. If traction isn't there or it becomes obvious user won't pay, I generally move onto something else.

After the initial prototype, it generally takes another 3 to 4 months to build out a full fledged app that I can offer to the masses. It doesn't stop after that though. There is always more to develop and improve including a lot of re-factoring.

I currently have 4 SaaS products on the market and another one in the works.

Around 1 month total time since the idea, 2-3 days net dev time.

http://reddittopbooks.com

I wanted to learn Django and wanted to start with something fairly easy. I don't really have any idea how and where to promote it, didn't get much attention in my `Show HN` thread and most subreddits remove it because of the affiliate links to amazon.

Other than that it was a fun experience and at least I can say that Django is a great framework to work with!

Two weekends for the MVP of https://newsapi.org. About 3 months so far for v2 - I'm building it out into a more featureful service that I'm hoping I can build a business around.

I recommend "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup," if you have not heard of it. He has some simple formulas for measuring how much you're trying to do and how long it will take, given that you have a full time job.

1 week (mostly nights and weekend) - http://toptalkedbooks.com

Building a website is not the most painful part, promotion and getting traffic are the hardest, you have to be very determined. keep up the good work, don't give up.

anyone has any good advice on marketing?

6 weeks of after work/weekends for the first iteration in website form, and another 6 weeks for iOS App second iteration https://www.theroseleague.com

Shameless plug, if you or anyone you know enjoys The Bachelor series then this product is for them.

My last one's not a saas, it's a simple job board, but it took me 3 weeks working some evenings and weekends.

https://blockchaindevjobs.com

Depends on what you're building, of course, but seriously consider if what you're building is an MVP or not.

My most successful side-project has been the one where I didn't start out by using design patterns or TDD or fancy fun new languages as we do at my full-time job.

Instead, I spewed code vomit on the virtual floor of a tiny VPS, wrote most of it via SSH, and felt shame when users started using it because holy hell if they only knew what was underneath all that.

But ... that MVP generates income. Not quit-my-job income. But it's steady, and doesn't require a lot of changes. I plan on rebuilding it soon, as I need a better code base to handle upcoming plans. However, that embarrassingly messy hodgepodge has been running for a year, making money.

Good luck!

I launched the first version of https://ipinfo.io a few hours after having the idea - but it was just a super simple webpage at the time. I added the API within a few weeks I think, and that's when it started to take off. It was probably around a year before I added paid plans though, and another year before it started bringing in decent revenue, and then another year before I started working full time on it. See https://getputpost.co/from-side-project-to-250-million-daily... for some of the story.

I've worked on tons of side projects before this (most unsuccessful, some with some success - busmapper.co.uk, donothingfor2minutes.com). My advice would definitely be to launch early and improve things over time.

  ipinfo() {
    curl ipinfo.io/$1
    echo
  }

    $ curl ipinfo.io
    {
      "ip": "73.222.35.113",
      "hostname": "c-73-222-35-113.hsd1.ca.comcast.net",
      "city": "Mountain View",
      "region": "California",
      "country": "US",
      "loc": "37.3885,-122.0741",
      "org": "AS7922 Comcast Cable Communications, LLC",
      "postal": "94041"
    }

6 months. I sat on the domain and an index.html file for months even though the idea was super simple. Partnering with a friend and holding each other accountable was the best thing to launch.

Compare career levels across companies - http://www.levels.fyi

Not from idea to launch as I spend a lot of time daydreaming about projects before I begin work, but SendToMyCloud.com and PrivateForms.com both took less than a month to build, part-time.

This took about 4 months from idea to first real user registrations: https://www.turbo360.co

That was back in June or so. Since then, have made many many changes based on user feedback so the current iteration is more like the cumulative work of 6 months.

Biggest lesson I learned from building a SaaS side project that actually had revenue is this...

You cannot develop your way out of a marketing problem.

There will ALWAYS be technical problems to solve but it's all irrelevant if no one is using your product. Long development time also tends to create a familiarity with your product that users likely will not have, possibly ever.

I am a huge fan of Steve Blank's How to build a startup (which is free on udacity) https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245

For me, there's about 4 months between idea and first public launch. But another 4 years between that first launch to deciding to build a company around it. The time between 4 months and 4 years involves building a community, helping users, and improving the core product...

My personal examples:

Launched Selenium as an open source project in 2004. Founded Sauce Labs Inc ("Selenium in the cloud") in 2008. (Sauce makes roughly ~$25MM a year now. https://www.inc.com/profile/sauce-labs)

Launched Tapster (then called "Bitbeambot") as an open source project in 2011. Founded Tapster Robotics, Inc. in 2015. (Not disclosing revenue at the moment, but still going strong!)

To echo some other comments, I also have many other side-projects (some posted to GitHub, but even more unpublished) that never went anywhere. Success is a combination of luck, timing, ABC (Always Be Creating), stubbornness/persistence, and getting feedback from as many people as possible.

There seems to be a prevailing idea among startup people that if you can't get an MVP up and running in ~3 months or less, it isn't worth doing. I have heard this exact statement made on a few of the well known podcasts.

The reality is that not every concept is going to get the low hanging fruit, and for many people real life gets in the way. Plus, for some people the journey of learning is just as important as launching the product.

It might be worth considering that you shouldn't stress out if it takes longer than the conventional advice might dictate.