Hello friend,

June is here and I’m moving towards creating another app. I’ll try to document every single step I take in order to build the app.

Why? You might be inspired by my journey. I hope you learn from my mistakes.

Also, it’s my chance to learn from you, to receive feedback and improve the whole process and it makes me stay humble. So let’s get it started.

Brainstorming ideas

After a day of brainstorming what I could build, I came up with two app ideas I could try. I’m not 100% convinced that these would work, but this is what I was thinking.

1️⃣ Saas Marketplace

As a builder, one way to monetize your work is by selling your startups. I’m thinking of building a marketplace where builders can list their apps, the price they want, and their contact details. I’m not planning to be like an intermediary or anything. I’m just building the directory and see where this goes.

How did I get the idea

I knew that building 12 startups this year wouldn’t be easy. You could end up with a profitable product, but there are tens of failed once at the beginning. I knew that it’d be difficult to properly brainstorm an idea, build and release it, do proper marketing, and make it profitable. At the moment, I don’t have time to get back to previous apps, but maybe someone else would be interested in continuing the work.

That’s where I got the idea of a marketplace. I could create a space where I and other indie makers can promote the startups they want to sell.

2️⃣ Glossary of Tech Terms

I believe for someone just starting in the tech industry, or who is interested in tech in general, it’s difficult to understand all the terms. I’m thinking of building an open source website where I could define all those difficult terms. It order to provide real value, I’m thinking of making this open source, and invite others to contribute, especially because tech industry is vast.

How did I get the idea?

I was watching a presentation that Eddie Jaoude gave for Middlesbrough Front End in 2023 where he described why open source can accelerate your career in tech. You can check out the full presentation here:

At the Q&A session, someone raised a very good question: “Where can people find a really good introduction to all the terminology we use in tech?”

Actually that’s a really good question, and, at the same time, a really good startup idea that helps the community.

It’s not difficult from a technical perspective, and I believe it’s the type of project best suited for the open source community. I’m not as experienced in open source as Eddie or others, so starting a project like this most would teach me a lot of useful skills.

Picking up the idea

Even though the marketplace idea is still something I’m considering in the future, I believe I could benefit from the glossary app right now.

Here are some reasons why I picked the glossary app instead of the marketplace:

• Getting up to speed with the latest technologies - As a programmer, it’s always great to sharpen your tech skills, especially after couple of months of reusing the same technologies in order to ship faster.
• Acquiring knowledge on open source - This will teach me more about contributing to the community.
• Engaging with other tech folks - This is an amazing oportunity to meet other developers interested in open source and to learn from them.
• Learning tech terms - I’ll learn new tech terms myself. There are still concepts I know of and use, but I don’t know how to properly name them or how to explain them simply. I believe this project would help me improve.
• Embed the definitions - One feature I’d like to add is the ability to share the definitions, either through an image that can be shared online or as an embedded code. That’ll be useful for me when I’m creating content or preparing presentations.

Current status

I’ll also share with you what’s going on right know. I’ve started searching for a domain and a name for the project. I didn’t do much progress yet, since I’ve had some busy days.

Once I’ll have the domain and the project name, I’ll start creating a GitHub project and proceed with the implementation.

I’m also thinking about the technologies I could use. That’s still to be decided, and I’ll try to document that process as well.

Besides writing and working, I’ve traveled to Porto. I’ve been a bit tired due to the travel, but I’m almost fully recovered. The weather is amazing, and I enjoyed so much getting back to this beautiful city. Hopefully I could get some work done these days, but I won’t miss the chance to explore the city, eat great food, drink coffee and meet amazing people.

Thank you for reading this article.

See you soon!