Alex's Project Course - Substantially Impressive Project
I've been loving watch Alex's new project course - this is stellar and I recommend everyone watch it!
There was one slide however that troubled me and caused me to question whether or not if my project from a company that I founded was considered good enough. My projects were actually in the spaces of what was seen as "trendy," AR VR, AI and web3/blockchain/crypto (it was with an actual company and had users).
Would this still be equally weighted as significant as a mobile app since we were also building accounting software (this was for Hollywood executives)? I think from the video, I felt like I was being put down for working in this industry when I've been in it for about 10 years, so I was taken aback with this as an example.
Was the point he was trying to make that any application regardless of tech stack matters less because it doesn't hit 10K users, vs. something more technically complicated that has less users (but nonetheless makes money and has users)? Even if an app has 10K users, but has no one paying (like an open source project), is that also considered worthy or the same as a side project that has paid users on mobile/web/other platforms?
![Senior Software Engineer [E5] at Meta company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fmeta.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Da7a5bcc0-e178-4b5b-b71e-09bf6c6aefae&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
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Discussion
(5 comments)- 3
17 days agoThoughtful TarodactylTaro Communityfrom what ive heard paid users are way way way harder to get than free users.
https://x.com/levelsio/status/1852353692332114248
here levelsio (THE indie hacker guy making $250k MRR with indie projects) says 1000x probs exaggerated for clickbait purposes but nevertheless any paid user is way way more impressive than free users
- 117 days agoSenior Software EngineerTaro Community
Ya, I feel like that's why when I saw the dismissive tone for the AR VR, NFT, blockchain stuff, I'm like uh but what if I had paid users? Yes, way way harder to get, trust me, and for something with that level complexity, I feel like it's like level 3 and paid = way harder to do than level 1 (click this button and get a food recommendation app). I'm actually trying to work on another app querying the Yelp and DoorDash API with Autogen, but this would be a free app to use, still slightly more complex pre-GPT days, but ya...
- 1
16 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroProduct Spaces
Sorry, I probably could have framed this better. What I wanted to get across is that solely building within a trendy space like genAI/blockchain won't automatically gain you "impressiveness" points. The inspiration is that I've seen so many engineers whip up lazy AI/ML side projects, apply to OpenAI, get rejected immediately, and then wonder why their cool AI/ML side project didn't mean anything.
At the end of the day, follow your passion - That's pretty much the entire point of the course. If you genuinely like the genAI/AR/VR/blockchain space and can find an organic problem within that space to solve, go build something cool there. The failure mode I want people to avoid is trying to make these big brain calculations to engineer something specifically to impress a company, which is usually something they aren't actually interested in. When your sole reason behind a side project is this ulterior motive to get a job, things fall apart pretty fast.
Paid vs. Free
As Thoughtful Tarodactyl mentioned, it's way harder to get a paid user vs. a free user. I think 1000x is exaggerated, but I would put it in the ballpark of 25x to 100x harder. This is why I don't think it's worth making a side project paid, and I think it hurts for interviews as well.
Humans are naturally attracted to big numbers. In a vacuum, I think 10,000+ users overall is more impressive than 500 paid users to the average recruiter, even though it's very possible the 500 paid users were harder to get.
There are nuances like how much revenue you're making per paid user, but for most people building side projects (i.e. more junior engineers), I think you should just optimize for being big. You'll get more relevant learnings, and it'll look better on a portfolio for hiring.
- 3
15 days agoHelpful TarodactylTaro CommunityWouldn't this depend on framing though? For example if your 500 paid users are on a $10/month subscription, that means you're generating $60K ARR, which, for a side project, is pretty impressive.
- 015 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
Yep, stuff like ARPU is one of those nuances. Recurring revenue in particular is very impressive. However, subscriptions massively increase the technical and business complexity of a product, which is why I largely recommend against it in the course, particularly for junior folks.
There's always trade-offs 😉
