Andy Fry

Andy Fry

I’m building 12 startups in 12 months using Clojure and ClojureScript. I’ve never founded a startup, and I’ve never used Clojure! Should be fun right?

What is Startup in a Month?

3 minute read

The Startup in a Month project is just what it sounds like: every month for 2021 (or until I make it big!), I will build, promote, and release a tech startup, start to finish. Whatever I end up with at the end of the month will be the MVP, and we’ll see if it takes off or not.

But why? Why make 12 startups in 12 months? Why not six startups, one every other month? Or three? Or just one big one that I work on for the whole year?

This is, granted, a fairly weird thing to do.

Why am I doing this?

First, let’s set the stage with some things I’ve learned in this brief, weird life of mine.

A lot of creative people have a few things in common:

  • We have a bunch of ideas. Sometimes I can’t sleep because my brain is exploding with ideas.
  • We are great at starting a new project. When something is shiny and new, it’s a lot of fun to work on it!
  • We are bad at finishing what we start. Once things get difficult and complicated, it’s hard to stay motivated.

Here are a few facts about ideas, specifically business ideas:

  • A handful are really good! Like make-you-a-millionaire good.
  • Some are just ok. Maybe they’ll make you a little money, but it won’t be sustainable.
  • Most are fairly cool in theory, but they won’t pay out much. You might even spend more than you earn.

Finally, some facts about the world in general:

  • Experimentation is key to learning.
  • Fast feedback is the best way to validate whether an idea is good.
  • Experimentation + fast feedback + course correcting in response to feedback = success!

Synthesis

Knowing these things about myself and knowing these things about the world 1, we arrive at the Startup in a Month project! Releasing a new startup every month, in my opinion, is a great way to take all of the above into account while maximizing the good things and minimizing the bad things:

  • Building a new startup every month allows me to try out a lot of different ideas, satisfying that creative urge to do a lot of new stuff.
  • Releasing within a month forces me to keep my ideas small, so they don’t become too big to finish.
  • Because I’m trying so many new things, the consequences of failure are low. It’s like having a diversified stock portfolio: if one stock tanks, you’ve got a good chance that the others didn’t.
  • Because the products will launch so quickly, I can get feedback right away, make proactive changes, and increase my chances of success.
  • Finally, it encourages me to experiment, which is the best way to learn and get new ideas for new products!

And I’m not alone in this, there are a lot of people who have done it too! To name a few: Pieter Levels, Jon Yongfook, and Monica Lent.

So that’s the basic idea. On top of all that (as if building a new product every single month wasn’t enough), I’ll be livestreaming the whole thing along the way as well so you can follow along with the progress!

Do you want to learn more about what I’m doing? I’d suggest starting with one of my weekly wrapup posts, or one of my monthly summary posts.

A final word

Thanks for reading this! It’s a busy world, and it means a lot that you spent some of your your time and attention on what I’m doing.

Would you like to join my mailing list? I send out updates once a month, so you can stay informed on what’s going on, but not too informed 😊






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  1. Well … strongly suspecting these things anyway 😛 ↩

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