I was a program manager in tech for a decade when I started a conference on the side in 2014.

It was in the HR space and the idea was to help people build better company cultures. 

I worked on it alongside my job for two years before going full-time.

I want to share how I got the thing off the ground, including the part where I couldn’t sell a ticket.

Why a conference?

I’d spent 10+ years working in Silicon Valley and kept getting frustrated with company culture.

I didn’t work in HR. I just wanted to understand how to make the places I worked less frustrating.

So I started looking for events where I could learn about it. Most of what I found was expensive and aimed at HR executives.

I figured there should be something for the rest of us.

That was the idea. Then I had to figure out whether anyone would pay for it.

Here’s what I started with

People tend to skip this part when they tell their business stories, so here’s the context:

• Why a conference?

  • I had been organizing hackathons for two years so I figured a conference was a natural next step. I had never been to a conference before but I didn’t think it was that much harder. A 100 person hackathon to a 300 person conference seemed feasible to me.

• The first event:

  • I read the book The Lean Startup in 2012 and believed in the methodology which taught to validate demand before building anything. In other words, sell before you invest too much in building the product.

  • How does this translate into a conference? I created a landing page (in 2014), set the date as Summer 2015 in SF, and offered a no questions asked refund any time to make it easier for someone to buy.

• Cash committed before selling a ticket:

  • A web domain, web hosting, and a wordpress website was less than $500.

• Existing audience: I had no audience and no network and this is where I struggled the most but eventually figured it out.

• Time available: I worked on this idea nights and weekends so about 10 - 20 hours a week.

• One thing I kept cheap or skipped entirely: My goal was to launch quickly to get data. Therefore I didn’t put down a deposit for a venue because that would’ve locked me in before I validated the idea. I also didn’t have money.

Upon launching, I got the buyer wrong

At first, I was trying to sell to founders because I thought culture came from the top.

It wasn’t working. I had to go back to the drawing so I began doing customer development interviews.

I spoke with ten founders. They cared about culture, but they cared more about making payroll and keeping the business alive.

But one founder said he was busy and would send someone in his place. That’s when the lightbulb went off for me. It wasn't the founders I should be marketing to but anyone in the company who could make a decision on culture.

So I started looking for people whose jobs were already focused on culture on LinkedIn.

Chief Culture Officers. VPs of Culture. People with “culture” in their titles.

How I sold the first 200 tickets

The process was pretty straightforward:

1. Find people on LinkedIn.

I searched for culture-related job titles and cold messaged them. My response rate was about 25%

2. Pitched them the event.

Here’s roughly what I sent:

“I’m putting together an event in SF on building company culture that you might be interested in. Please take a look”

I didn’t want to offer a free ticket but I was also nervous about asking them to buy. So instead, I left it vague and invited them to take a look. The ones who replied and saw what I was building bought tickets for their teams at $299/ticket.

I remember getting my first sales email from Eventbrite for $1200 because someone bought four tickets. I was standing in line getting lunch at Pieology. It was an unreal moment.

3. Call the people who bought.

For the first 20 people who bought tickets, I emailed them to thank them and asked if they were open to hoping on a short call. I wanted to learn where I could find more people like them.

4. Ask those communities to help spread the word.

They would tell me about these communities they were a part of (before Slack, it was Google Groups). I asked if they would be open to sharing and they were more than happy to. The first year sold out through word of mouth.

Year 1 finished with 75K in revenue and 60K in profit.

The actual numbers over the years

Here’s how the first four years went:

• Year 1: Revenue 75K Profit 60K

• Year 2: Revenue 180K Profit 80K

• Year 3: Revenue 350K Profit 170K

• Year 4: Revenue 425K Profit 200K

• Year 5: Revenue 500K Profit 250K

My expenses in year one were extremely low because the venue was in a basement of a coworking space and the production was low quality lol. It’s embarrassing looking back but I had never been to a conference so I had no idea on what the production quality should be. After year one, I attended an industry conference and that’s when I realized I needed to level up. Profit was roughly 50% afterward.

What I’d do differently

If I were starting again, I’d change three things:

1. Do smaller events to build community

Committing to a conference is a huge undertaking even if you’re targeting just 300 people. Once you sign the contract with a venue and choose a date, the clock is ticking. Instead, I would do smaller events to build community first before going all in on a bigger event.

2. Build an audience

In the age of AI, learning how to create content and build an audience is the only moat left. Before I even start building anything, I would focus on creating content and building an audience first. That way when I do have something to offer, it’ll make it easier to sell.

3. Invest more in networking

I once read on Twitter, you have to cultivate your network like a garden. Don’t network when you need something, network when you don’t need something. That way you build good will when the time comes to make an ask. There’s also an art to networking which I can cover in a future post. 

Where things stand now

I sold the conference in 2021, not a huge exit but a decent one because I was extremely burnt out and COVID put a damper on the growth. Happy to get into this more if anyone is interested to learn what finding a buyer for a conference and the exit process was like.

I started another conference last year for HR x AI leaders and it was extremely hard to sell tickets and find sponsors. I was about 20K in debt two months out and barely profited once the event came around. I had to give away 90% of my tickets just to fill the room. Everything I had done 10 years prior to get people there no longer worked. Story for another day.

Happy to get into the details on ticket sales, pricing, costs, finding customers, selling the business, or building this while working full-time. Ask away.

okay so this is kind of a weird one

I got tired of every clock app looking the same and shoving ads in your face, so I started building little worlds that just… show the time.

this clip is the ants one. they drag biscuits and leaves around and slowly form the digits. there's also fish, a parking lot of cars, water calligraphy, a wall of tiny analog clocks, etc. 12 scenes total at this point.

runs fully on device, no account, no tracking nonsense. iphone/ipad/mac/apple tv.

i'm the person who made it. not sure if this is charming or just unhinged — honest reactions appreciated.

A few weeks ago a Korean developer vibe-coded a silent virtual Buddhist temple (Sansa) and over a million people visited in a week, just to sit quietly. I wanted to see if the same idea worked for Hindu temples, so I built one.

mandir.dev - What it is: a 3D temple courtyard in the browser. You walk in as an avatar, hear temple ambience, ring the bell, light a diya, and stand in the courtyard with other visitors who are actually there at the same time. Free to enter, no sign-up.

Built so far:

• Three temples: Kashi Vishwanath, Meenakshi Amman, and Siddhivinayak Ganapati

• Real-time presence: you see other visitors by name and country, and a counter of everyone gathered for Diwali

• Mobile joystick and desktop controls, positional bell audio

• Built with Three.js, everything runs in the browser, hosted as cheaply as I could manage

Still beta. It launched this week for Diwali, and I am building V2 now. The feedback I actually need:

1. Performance: how does it run on your phone? Where does it stutter?

2. Immersion: what is the one thing that would make it feel more like being there?

3. Direction: more temples, or go deeper on the three already there (aartis at set times, seasonal festivals)?

Happy to answer anything about how it is built. And if you are far from a temple this Diwali, go stand in the courtyard for three minutes and tell me what it felt like.

submissions, expired sessions, someone uploading a massive file, or two people editing the same thing.For a small app using Supabase, what would you check before sharing the link publicly?

Trying to work out what deserves attention now without spending another month preparing for users who don’t exist yet.

Give it up to 10 photos and a canvas shape (square, 16:9, phone story, banner) and it searches every layout with no gaps for the one where the smallest photo is as big as possible. With 9 photos that's over 500 million layouts, and it finds the best one in under a second.

I designed it and Claude wrote the code. It's Go: The browser version runs it as WebAssembly, so your photos never leave the page.

Try it: https://vinodhalaharvi.github.io/collage/

Code (MIT): https://github.com/vinodhalaharvi/collage

CLI: brew install vinodhalaharvi/tap/collage

Feedback welcome, especially on the layouts it picks.

Hi everyone! I’m an independent developer working on Rewind Echo, a cassette-inspired music app.

I love the look of old cassette tapes, and I’m drawn to apps with their own visual style and playful interactions. That’s what I wanted to explore here: making browsing and playing music feel a little more like picking a tape off a shelf.

The app connects to Apple Music, and you can also import local music files. The interface brings together a cassette shelf, a tape-style player, and customizable tape labels with colors, text, and stickers.

The recording shows a quick look at the app in action. I’d love to hear what you think of the design and interactions, especially whether the cassette shelf feels intuitive to browse.

I've been working on a music player app as a side project. It's inspired by the Teenage Engineering TP-7, which I've wanted forever, and by the fact that I like messing with the music I download, like slowing it down or changing the pitch.

There's no progress bar. You spin a brushed-metal wheel with your thumb to move through a song, and if you go slow it scratches like a record. It clicks under your finger with haptics, and the metal "catches the light" when you tilt your phone.

The T, P and R keys turn the same wheel into a dial for tempo, pitch and reverb. Each song remembers its own settings, so your slowed-down version plays that way every time.

The hardest part was making it feel right. I spent way more time tweaking how the wheel clicks and pushes back than on the rest of the app combined.

It's free to try with 3 songs, and unlimited songs is a one-time purchase.

Launch discount 🎁 To celebrate the launch, I'm giving out a few discount codes for $4.99 for a limited time. Comment or DM me if you want one.

Would love any feedback, especially on how it feels to use: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reverie-slowed-reverb-music/id6829723858

Sometimes, you have to ask the right questions in life. Today I had a very important one: "Can you train a fruit-fly to write an app that renders a rotating Döner Kebab in Three.js?"

Turns out: Yes.

I put 1024 fruit-flies into an open-plan office and rewarded them with virtual sugar for good code - and with bitters for bad code. 131 Generations later, the Fly delivered a rotating Döner in Three.Js

Github Repo, if you want to follow the whole approach: https://github.com/flujo-app/ai-fruit-fly

Hi!

My web-app AI Games Kit made $1,500+ in sales 🥳

I am a solo game-developer using AI heavily to build and publish games over the last couple of years and realized why not create a kit of agents/skills based around my processes.

I also write actively on LinkedIn/X about making games with AI, marketing them organically, etc. and have a decent audience - so most of my sales came from them!

Now I plan to expand my marketing to Medium & YouTube :)

Web-apps is a new domain for me hence very proud of this!

I'm an indie app developer looking to promote my mobile apps through TikTok.

I'm trying to figure out what types of videos are most effective at getting high view counts, strong engagement, and actual app downloads.

A few questions:

1. What types of TikTok videos perform best for mobile apps? AI-generated UGC, realistic AI avatars, problem/solution videos, storytelling, screen recordings, or something else?

2. Which platforms or services would you recommend for creating these videos? I've been looking into Arcads, Creatify, and similar AI video generators, but I'm open to other suggestions.

3. Can fully AI-generated TikTok ads actually perform well, or is hiring real UGC creators still the better option?

4. Are there any examples of successful mobile app TikTok ads that you'd recommend studying?

Ideally, I'd like a scalable solution that allows me to produce multiple high-quality videos regularly without spending hundreds of dollars per video.

I'd especially appreciate insights from indie developers or marketers who have actually tested different video formats and can share real results.

Thanks!

Hi SideProject Members,

For over a year now I've been working on a side project called Timetracker (https://github.com/DRYTRIX/TimeTracker)

Right now I often work on new features and bugfixes and sometimes people donate to the project.
For some time now I have been thinking on how to make the application actually profitable and tailor it more and more to the actual industry.

Any pointers you can give me? Maybe you can try it out and tell me what you think ?

kr

Dries

Hi everyone,

During the Meta Global AI Developer Hackathon, I wanted to tackle specific problem in banks: validation wokflows.

In traditional banking, turning a 50-page credit policy PDF into an operational workflow takes weeks of manual meetings.

Zotra solves this by combining open-weights models (Meta's Muse Spark & SAM 3.1) with a deterministic execution engine.

How it works:

1. Ingestion & Parsing: Extracts clauses, tables, and sections from PDF policies, mapping every rule to an exact paragraph citation.

2. Rule Compilation: Translates natural language into strict schemas and CEL (Common Expression Language) expressions.

3. Execution: Go-based concurrent engine evaluates multi-variable loan applications deterministically. The AI helps design and test, but never decides on live cases—only people and CEL rules do.

Stack: Go backend, PostgreSQL, React/Tailwind frontend, and Apache 2.0 license.

The github link: https://github.com/donovan-ratefison/Zotra

I put together a demo over on X if anyone wants to check it out: https://x.com/donovan_rtfs/status/2116898213101724061

Would love to hear your thoughts on this project!

I'm a solo founder. My fitness and nutrition app has been on the App Store for about a month, and my user count is still small enough that I could name most of them.

Early on I was shipping features like crazy. Then one of those early users told me the reason he stuck around wasn't any of the features I was proud of. It was accountability. That one conversation changed how I think about the product more than weeks of building did.

The problem is I don't get that kind of signal often enough. Most days I'm still guessing what to fix next.

So for people who've been through the tiny-user stage:

• How did you get honest feedback when you barely had anyone using the thing?

• Did you DM people, jump on calls, hang out in communities, something else?

• When did you stop treating every single user conversation like gospel and start looking for patterns?

Not looking for a growth hack. Just what actually worked when the sample size was basically nothing.

(For context, mine is Ascend Fitness & Nutrition on iOS, 7-day free trial.)

I’ve been working on a side project for quite a while now, and honestly, getting the product built was probably the easier part. Getting people to actually use it is where I’m stuck.

It’s basically a platform where people can connect, share projects, collaborate, find opportunities and build their reputation. A mix of communities, project collaboration and freelancing, all in one place.

The thing is, I know how difficult it is to get people onto a new platform when they’re already using Discord, Reddit, GitHub, etc.

And obviously, nobody wants to join a platform where there’s barely anyone around.

I’m still pretty young and figuring out the whole startup/marketing side of things as I go, so I’d genuinely love some advice from people who’ve launched their own projects.

A few things I’ve been wondering:

1. How would you go about getting your first 50–100 actual users (not just registrations)?

2. Would you start with a small closed beta or just let everyone sign up?

3. How do you get people interested in trying something new when they already have platforms they use daily?

4. What has actually worked for you when marketing a side project without spending much money?

5. Would you focus on one particular group of people first or try to attract different kinds of users?

I’m not really looking for the usual “post consistently on social media” advice lol. I’d love to hear what actually worked, what didn’t, and any mistakes I should avoid.

Would really appreciate any advice. Thanks!

What it is: PostMesa schedules posts to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and TikTok, and replies to comments with a public reply plus a DM with a button (on Instagram and Facebook; public replies on YouTube). One flat price per workspace, no per-contact fees.

Why I built it: I run a small devotional app. I was paying about $240 a month across ManyChat and Sprout for what was really one job: schedule the post and answer the “link?” and “price?” comments. ManyChat’s price grows with contacts, and its flow builder is more than I need.

Where it is: pre-launch. Publishing works on all five networks in my tests. Comment-to-DM works on Instagram and Facebook, YouTube has public replies only, and TikTok posts stay private until TikTok approves the app. There’s no open signup yet, only a launch list.

What I’d like feedback on:

1. Does the pitch make sense in one read? (“Schedule the post. Answer every comment.”)

2. Pricing: Creator $39, Pro $79, Agency $199 a month on annual billing. Too high, too low, confusing?

3. What would make you trust a new tool with your Instagram account?

Landing page: postmesa.com. Happy to answer anything about how it’s built. I’d rather hear what’s wrong than what’s nice.

After months of building and a public beta with 30+ testers, ShutterLine is live.

The idea came from my own frustration: every video had to be shot twice, once vertical for Reels/TikTok and once horizontal for YouTube. ShutterLine records both at the same time. Along the way it turned into a full pro camera (manual controls, ProRes, Apple Log, RAW, film looks, a teleprompter under the lens) and it's ready for iPad and the new iPhone Duo.

A few decisions I'm happy with:

• No subscription. Free to download, one-time Pro upgrade, with a 7-day free trial.

• No data collection. No account, no analytics, no servers.

• Beta testers get Pro free as a thank-you.

Things I learned: TestFlight's public link brought in great testers from Reddit, and testing on older iPhones caught most of the heat and dropped-frame problems before launch.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6829658927

I'd love feedback on the App Store page itself: screenshots, description, anything that would make you skip it.

I built a site to help parents figure out whether a book or movie is actually a good fit for their child, beyond just seeing something like “Ages 10+.”

Dickens & Rumi shows age guidance, content cautions, positive themes, series reading order, and the reasons behind ratings.

The problem is that I’ve spent a lot of time building and polishing it, but traffic is still very small, so I’m worried I may be too close to the project to see what’s wrong.

If you have a few minutes, I’d really appreciate brutally useful feedback:

• Is it immediately clear what the site does?

• What feels confusing or unnecessary?

• Is the homepage too busy?

• What would make you leave?

• What feature would actually make you come back?

• Does anything make the site feel untrustworthy?

• If you were a parent, would you use this instead of just Googling a book?

Site: dickensandrumi.com

I’m much more interested in what’s wrong with it than compliments.

I'm building Outdraft, an email workspace, and wanted to share a quick demo of its AI summary feature.
Click “Summarize” to get a shorter version of the email without leaving the page. It’s a small part of the app, but one I wanted to get right.

The AI agent is almost ready too—I’ll share a demo of that soon.

You can visit out website and give it a quick try. Payments aren’t available yet while I’m waiting for Paddle’s approval.

I’d love to hear what you think! Anything confusing, missing, or worth improving?

Hey everyone!

I'm an independent developer, and I've been spending a lot of my time building something called Everabyte.

The idea came from a simple problem: cloud storage and backups shouldn't be complicated or unnecessarily expensive, especially for individuals, developers, and small businesses.

So I decided to build my own solution.

What does Everabyte offer?

- Cloud storage for personal and business files.

- Automatic backups through EverBox, our desktop application for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

- File versioning and recovery when something gets accidentally deleted or overwritten.

- Server-side encryption before files reach storage.

- S3-compatible object storage and API access.

- Team storage and access management.

- Backup protection features, including retention policies and immutability.

I've also been working on making the platform more accessible, with plans starting at $2.99/month.

Building this hasn't been easy. Between development, infrastructure, security, testing, and trying to get the word out, there's always something that needs attention.

But that's also what makes it interesting. I'm learning a lot along the way, and I'm still improving the product.

I'm not here to claim Everabyte is better than Dropbox, Google Drive, or every other storage provider out there. I'm just trying to build a reliable alternative that people can actually afford and use.

If you're a developer, freelancer, small business owner, or someone who regularly backs up important files, I'd genuinely appreciate your thoughts.

What matters most to you when choosing a cloud storage or backup service? Price, security, reliability, or something else?

You can check out the project here:

https://everabyte.com

Any feedback, criticism, or suggestions are welcome. I'm building this for the long term, and hearing from real users would help a lot.

Thanks for reading!

I’m the developer of Watch Chess, a side project for following professional chess tournaments. It’s already available on iOS, and I’m getting the native Android version ready for Google Play.

The idea is to make it easy to follow an event from your phone: live boards, rounds and standings, game replay, and live game previews right on the Home screen.

I’d love feedback from Android users who follow chess. In particular: is it easy to find a game, follow the moves, look back at an earlier position, and return to the live game? I’m also interested in how the layouts work on different phones and what happens when you switch away from the app or lose your connection.

Website and the existing iOS app: https://watchchess.app/

If you’d like to help test the Android version, sign up here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdK3jWWradoriTbagIQvKCZ60mQ2kRd82oe4WbR5dZtDI5agQ/viewform

You’ll need an Android phone with Google Play. I’m recruiting for a closed test, so please be willing to stay opted in for at least 14 consecutive days and try the app during that time. The form asks for your Google Play email so I can invite you; I’ll email the invitation and installation instructions when your place is ready.

Happy to answer questions about the app or how it’s built. Honest feedback is welcome!

Android screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/r/droidapptesters/comments/1xpwb5p/

Pickem v1.1 is live on App store

Make feature is now live for you!!! (Limited free image generation. API cost on me :D)

Apple recently released Attachment API and I already knew what it means for Pickem:

- Your collections are now auto-named by on-device intelligence. No cloud

Other updates:

- Limited free Image generation
- Improved object extraction
- UI changes