Uber and Instagram started as side projects. Here’s why you should start your own.

Photo credit: Pixabay

Would you take your side projects more seriously if you found out someone would pay you tens of thousands of dollars for it?

Side projects are much more than hobbies, they are indicators of what you are capable of building. In an age where so many people are talkers and so few are doers, side projects can be the factor that sets you apart from the rest of the pack.

More importantly, side projects are not creatively stifled by the ordinary campaigns or work-related projects that you have to endure. You can explore things you’ve always been curious about, and that freedom is the elixir behind the effectiveness of the side project.

Companies that have taken advantage of the power of side projects have found it to have paid back many times over. A famous example was Google’s 20% time; for those unfamiliar, Google allowed employees to spend 20% of their time on a fun side project they were passionate about. It was through this 20% time that some of Google’s most important products, such as Gmail, Google News, and AdSense came about.

Garrett Camp — co-founder of StumbleUpon and Uber

Garrett Camp. Photo credit: Canadian Business

Social network StumbleUpon has over 30 million users and 100,000 advertisers. It has been acquired by eBay for $75 million. This gigantic social network was started by Garrett and a handful of his peers from the University of Calgary in 2001 as a Firefox extension.

Later on, while he was CEO of StumbleUpon, Garrett would be compelled enough by another idea to start working on it as a side project. As Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick explains in this blog post, Garrett brought up the idea of solving the taxi problem in San Francisco by introducing a limousine timeshare service. This happened while the two of them were at a conference in Paris in late 2008.

“By March of 2009 Garrett started working in earnest on figuring out what this iPhone app would look like,” wrote Kalanick, “the prototype was coming along, but it was still a side project — Garrett had spun out StumbleUpon and was now CEO again.” Today, Uber has 300 employees, raised $200 million in a funding round led by Google, and been valuated at $3.5 billion.

Now one of the world’s fastest growing companies, Uber would not have existed were it not for Garrett’s curiosity and passion for side projects.

Gaby Dunn — creator of 100 Interviews

When journalism major Gaby graduated from Emerson College, she was forced to take on a day job that wasn’t related to her passion. Frustrated, she went home and ranted to her family about the lack of opportunity at the newspapers, and complained, “I bet I could think of 100 stories I could have written for them if they had only let me!”

After listening to her father’s suggestion to write these stories down, Gaby essentially created and self-published her own column, titled 100 Interviews. Using 100 Interviews as a portfolio, Gaby landed a series of freelance opportunities much more related to journalism, including one at The New York Times Magazine.

Tina Roth Eisenberg — founder of Tattly, Creative Mornings, Studiomates, TeuxDeux

Closing Thoughts