There are always people in the world who can’t sit still. Sometimes life pushes you into tough situations. A pandemic. Market crisis. War. Sometimes all at once. And it feels like this is exactly the time to start something of your own. Your pet project.
That’s how our project started. And I’d like to share what it gave me and our team. How to begin, and why you should (or shouldn’t) join such projects.
So, you’ve decided to create something, or maybe someone invited you to join their pet project. Your own “Facebook, but better.” Cool. What’s next? What should you expect?
First — you need time and money
Even if you have a brilliant idea and a few teammates, you need to clearly understand: a project takes time. Look at your schedule. If you don’t have three hours a week for it — most likely you won’t succeed.
If you do have time, calculate how much money you have. If your safety cushion doesn’t cover at least a year of your basic living expenses, take care of that first. Make sure you can pay for electricity and food. Warn your family and friends: “I’m going into this, I won’t have money or time.”
Second — answer the question: what will I develop in this pet project?
This kind of work isn’t about making money. Most projects remain just “pet projects” — leaving traces in social networks, in Figma, and in repositories. That’s why it’s important to decide what technologies you’ll use, what you want to learn, and what skills to level up — even if the project never goes live.
In our case, I wanted to gain experience in Spring (Kotlin) as a back-end, and in Next.js as a front-end. I also wanted to try RabbitMQ (which, for some reason, was unpopular in the projects I worked on before).
My personal goal as a full-stack dev was to add another line to my CV (and as it turned out later, I gained not only that, but also new knowledge and two more skills).
If the project’s tech stack doesn’t interest you, or the idea doesn’t resonate — walk away. You won’t get any real outcome from it.
Keep in mind: in a pet project there’s no client, no clear tasks. There’s just a team. Someone will mess up, someone will leave because they found a job, someone new will appear. A pet project is always about experience and skills.
Third — sharing with the community
Okay, I’m in. I’ll improve my skills in this and that. Then you need to add time to your schedule for learning, but also — and this is more important — for showing your progress in your portfolio (I especially recommend LinkedIn).
Write a post once a week.
Ask for endorsements of your skills.
Publish code samples in your Git repo.
Trust me, this will pay off when you’re looking for a new job or aiming for the next career step. In a CV, just a link to the project and a couple of lines “I did this and that” can make a huge difference.
Finally — if you’re doing your own personal project
The main thing — don’t turn it into a “solo marathon.” A pet project is truly valuable only when there are different people, different views, and different resources involved.
Try to spread the effort so that collaborators appear: someone will bring time, someone will bring expertise, someone will bring ideas, and someone will bring connections. That’s the best test of whether your idea is alive — and whether anyone besides you believes in it.
Don’t carry everything alone — not the code, not the resources, not the organization. When a team contributes, the project grows faster, and you discover new horizons you can’t see on your own.
Never fund the project fully from your own pocket. Your money should not exceed 25% of the total.
Why? Because this is a test of your product’s usefulness. If your idea is truly valuable, it’s the best way to see whether others believe in it — investors, grant providers, or just supporters.
Never write all the code yourself. Your code should not exceed 25% of the total.
Why? Because when you code everything, you get stuck in what you already know. Other team members (lazy, random, stubborn, or overly smart — doesn’t matter) will bring in diverse perspectives.
Spend more than 50% of your time engaging people around your project. Don’t be afraid of rejection — and you’ll get a lot of it. On the contrary (and I’m really grateful to my circle for this), every well-argued “no” gives you a push in the right direction.
The conclusions are yours to make.
To have or not to have 🙂 As for me, as a co-creator of one such project, I’m starting to share my experience — and soon there will be a full-fledged blog from the team already working on Senta.Life.