How to make your side project pivots more thoughtfully
by richstone_io | 2025-04-07 10:33:18+00:00
Thoughtful side project pivoting

Do you ever switch from one project to another spontaneously? It often happens when something new comes along, and you snag the chance to leave this thing alone that you were excited about just recently but came to view as a burden as time passed. It has a sour aftertaste of having left things undone that probably still had potential.

I think what I have here is an example of a more thoughtful pivot that is not switching to something entirely new but continuing the core of the thing and switching the theme. At least, I don't feel the aftertaste, and I imagine you could benefit from my thought process to decide for your next pivot.

I started building socialgames.cc a few months ago for the main reason of wanting a showcase of running your SaaS on a marketing platform API, so you can develop marketing first and delegate the ugly chunk of subscription and user management work to a third party that had hordes of developers working on that functionality.

I didn't want it to be a dummy app, but something that I or other people can actually _use_, even if it's simple. I went for an offline game score tracker for a few reasons: I'm into games and "needed" this at home and with friends. It's simple to build a first version of it and serve its purpose of making the sample app "do something".

Given all that, I have been doing some product-market-fit work:

* According to my notes, I talked to about 50 people in the "Mom Test style". (not the complete Mom Test, just folks I know or met, but in the Mom Test way, at least)

* Created numerous threads in related communities to understand whether I am solving a real problem and what it is (I had many comments and learned a lot, still - recommended!).

* Shipped some posts on socials.

Most responses were lukewarm at best, not really indicating a need. And my own need for it seemed to be gone. I haven't even made the time and budget to buy the one and only competitor app in the App Store for $5.99. And to be honest, it's hard to think through the communities and places where I could get leads and talk to real people. It's also hard to imagine I'd be excited to talk to random people or game nerds about a board game score tracker. As a counter-example, if I built an API- or Rails-focused product, I could easily have 200 valuable conversations with the right people in the next few weeks. I'm sure there are many ways I could pivot within the socialgames realm, but I don't think it makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

Also, at this point in the year, I planned to have already started the implementation of the sample SaaS integration with the Marketing Platform API part. So, I'll keep with the plan and start this now. Basically going in reverse now with this pivot:

1.) Spin up a new sample app.

2.a) Build the dummy app and showcase how you can run your SaaS without putting much work into user and subscription management.

2.b) In the meantime, do deep product research in the API-product space, do your Mom Tests, and get a feel for the market.

Having some kind of an API-focused Rails product would be the coolest thing I can build, given my professional focus in the past 7 years. As I gameplan, I should have a solid base if I review all the stellar products I used, read about recently in blogs and heard about on podcasts and see what I can apply to the Rails space.

This makes so much more sense. I probably only started with a game tracker initially because it was easy to begin with. Doing it in reverse now, I can still be building right away and working out a tangible idea that makes more sense from so many viewpoints on the way.

Writing this down, I think this is a good enough pivot. Hope you can gather enough data next time to make your pivot more thoughtful!