Why 9 out of 10 side projects die after the MVP

· Published · 1 min read

Among developers, 9 side projects out of 10 die right after launch, for a very simple reason.

Once the product’s MVP is done (the fun part), everything else gets neglected:

  • operations: back office, notifications, transactional emails…
  • observability: logs, traces, metrics, alerts…
  • sales: payment, invoicing…
  • customer service: support, FAQ…
  • marketing: consent, email sequences…
  • maintenance: CI/CD, tests, updates, versioning…

All of these are less sexy, but absolutely essential if you want to go far. That unglamorous part is often what I end up building.

And I am not even talking about the business side: market research, market fit, potential pivots, strategy, competitive watch, communication, sales, partnerships, prospecting…

In short: the product core is (at best) 50% of the tech, which is itself (at best) 50% of the project.

So instead of doing 25% of 8 projects in a row, why not try 100% of 2?