Projects are currency in a networked world

I love building side projects.

The feeling of finally launching something on the internet, after working on it for hours and hours is amazing.

This article puts into words about the importance of building in public.

My love for building grew during hackathons, where I was inspired and committed to turn an idea into reality.

It was hackathons that got me to interning at Tesla. It was my ticket into the Bay Area. So it holds a special place in my heart.

My most recent hack - ClassGPT was using the ChatGPT API for document question answering on my class lecture slides.

Even though there was no prize involved, and there were dozens of other apps that did something similar, I had so much fun building it.

It was my own app in the corner of the internet. I could say I built it from scratch. I could share it with my friends and have them test it out.

I wanted to put it out into the world and show others what I was capable of. So I posted it on LinkedIn and Twitter and they became my most popular posts ever.

People even reached out to me and even offered me internships.

It made me realize how important it is to launch side projects.

It projects who I am and how I spend my time.

They demonstrate I'm someone who can generate output.

With LLMs, coding a new side project has never been easier.

Having ideas is easy, but execution is hard.

I hope to continue building, and devote time to launching.

Some quotes I want to come back to:

It’s a massive differentiator to have launched something

it’s becoming increasingly obvious that projects - launched, defined, things - are currency

To build and make things rather than reposting others work

Get out of your feed. Make your own feed. Put something new out there. Launch something. Don’t worry about the form or function.

Put something out into the world that is yours. That allows you to demonstrate what you’re capable of. Keep it weird. Keep it yours. And if you don’t, someone else will.