Why I’m doing the challenge?

I’m going to take a risk, spend my time on developing products which I’m not sure if they’ll become successful startups. But I can’t sit and wait for the one big idea which is going to make me a billionaire. Even if I don’t make any of the 12 startups an unicorn, inthe end, I become more experienced, learned lots of new things and had a better day to day life.

In this section, I’ll share the inspiration behind this challenge and describe why I’m going to do this challenge.

Inspiration

As far as I know, levels.io was the first one who did 12 startups in 12 months back in 2014 with inspiration form “180 websites in 180 days” project. I saw his results a couple months ago and impressed by the numbers he achieved by bootstrapping the startups.

I googled and find out that the number of people who attempted to follow 12in12 is increasing; @swlkr , @yongfook , @heymehdi , Shan Han, @wisochris to name few. Some of them started a couple years ago and left the challenge in the middle, maybe after launching 3 products, and some of them are new (like me) and started it like a couple months earlier.

Start

I’ve been keeping an idea journal for some years, but never implemented any of product except for a couple of them. I always procrastinated the implementation due to perfectionism reasons or fear of failure.

I thought it doesn’t worth to spend lots of time developing a startup while you’re not sure if you can get traction or not. And I’m right. From one hand, you should not spend lot’s of time developing an idea while you don’t know if it fits into the market. And from the other hand, you can’t kill your ideas just because you don’t know the outcome.

So I’m going to start implementing an MVP of my ideas, launching them to the public, marketing for a while, and decide to quit or bootstrap the product before the expiry date of its domain name.

Productivity

I’ve been a freelancer for a long time and a theme developer on ThemeForest for the past few years. Recently, I figured out I don’t like my current position. I’m not motivated anymore, I don’t get up early and I don’t work hard till midnight. I used to be such a person. I always wanted to make something big. I actually made TheSaaS to be the landing page of my products!

I already started my challenge a couple weeks ago and I can see improvements in my productivity. I’m goal-oriented now, I’m motivated and waking up early, I write down my daily to-dos and I work harder to accomplish them. This challenge helps me to be a better version of myself.

Learning

It’s going to be a long and new experience for me. I need to learn new things and apply them to real products. From idea generation and validation to product design and development; from launching and marketing to generating leads and growth. All of them are topics that I haven’t explored very well yet. So it’s time to expand my skills set.

Connection

I’ve never been active in social media because I was underestimating the value it can bring on the table. But I have to admit that most of the early adopters are among your followers and connections. A challenge like 12in12 have potentials to grow my network and connections.

I’ve recently started a personal Twitter account at @hosshams. Would love to connect with other makers and bootstrappers.