Project: Fixdin
Demo: https://fixdin-web-dev.herokuapp.com/ (You can create your account and start using it)
Source Code:
Stack: Python, Django, React
The purpose of this app was to help people and companies manage their expenses and incomes. I started this project back in 2017 and worked for a whole year just myself on it.
It was an amazing experiment and pushed my knowledge further. I didn't have enough experience with Python/Django, I never created a React app before. I had to study and define how to make it and make it as fast as I could.
The timeline was a big issue for me. I was working full time on another company and then I took this project incentivized by some colleagues that I committed to deliver, so the only way to make it happen was to wake up by 4 am so I would have around 3-4 hours to work per day. Obviously, it was unsustainable in the long run, but I'm happy that I could keep it for a few months. Happy because I could know myself better and because it gave me insights into time and value. Every YES I say to a project, I'm saying NO to something else, in this case, it was my sleep.
The most frustrating thing is that I NEVER LAUNCHED. I worked for a damn year straight and I never launched it. Even to know how much this project sucked, if I had launched, maybe I could have learned more!! I realize the worst mistake as pointed out by Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup was to successfully create a "product" that I didn't know what to do with it:
[...] the lethal problem of achieving failure: successfully executing a plan that leads nowhere
Well, since I never launched (thus I never learned how much it would suck and what could I've done to make it better), I'm making it open source now, so hopefully, other people might find it useful.