Augustus 2015 - May 2018
JudgeMySound / Tringa
JudgeMySound was an online web application with which DJs could generate and edit unique melodies that were generated on the spot with a melody generating algorithm.
The process of getting to the final product included:
- Building and improving the melody generating algorithm.
- Building a simple PHP website on which people could rate generate melodies from 1-5 (1; bad, 5; good).
- Building a neural network to process all the ratings.
- Building a python application for DJs.
- Building an online web application for DJs.
Unfortunately, even though I talked with many DJs and producers, in the end they were not willing to pay for it. The project pivoted to Tringa; an online song generation tool for kids. The lack of music education on primary schools in the Netherlands was and still is worrying. I gave multiple paid workshops on primary schools, which was a success. However, due to a lack of funding for artistic programs on schools, Tringa could not be sustained.
What I learned from the whole experience:
- People that say they will pay for your product may only be saying that to please you. The Mom Test was gold. It learned me to always ask questions to people their behavior in the past to determine if they would be a potential customer.
- Sometimes the market is not ready for your product yet. Therefore, it is often easier to step into an existing market with already paying customers by improving products or making them cheaper.
- Products that solve problems sell. Building a product and then looking for a problem it might solve is not the way to go in most cases.
The full story
It all started as a hobby and a challenge to improve my programming skills. It ended up as my first entrepreneurial journey which set the basis for future businesses.
June 2018 - January 2020
eLearnScanner.com
eLearnScanner.com was an affiliate marketing website with search functionality with around 42.000 courses from more than 15 online course platforms (e.g. Skillshare, Coursera, Edx).
Due to the vast amount of online courses that were available at the time, this website made it much easier to find and compare online courses people were interested in.
I built a complete web scraper in Python (Scrapy) and ran multiple scripts on a local computer to ethically scrape the course provider websites with a reasonable time interval. The scraper was configured from within a Django backend and all new scraped data was automatically updated to that same backend every hour.
We did make some money, but we did not earn the amount we expected. This was due to the lack of experience and knowledge on how to market an online platform in this day and age. Although my partner had a successful online business back in 2000, he lacked the experience with the state of the internet in 2018.
What I learned from the whole experience:
- First make a simple version (minimum viable product) to test if the product is even going to sell. Improve the product once it has been proven to work. I built way too much before going live. I built the whole scraper and its complex integration with the website. However, in the end we did not get enough visitors, so it was lost effort.
- Team is everything. Without a good team, any product will most likely fail. With a good team, even if you fail, you will eventually succeed with a pivot or a complete new product.
February 2020 - March 2023
Pointiful
Pointiful was an advanced CMS (Content Management System) with which you can build websites to visualize geo related data.
The Pointiful platform was used for multiple purposes;
- displaying candidates for the national (2021) and local elections (2022) in the Netherlands.
- showing geolocations of facilities within municipals.
- hosting multiple affiliate websites.
I developed it using React with Nextjs for the front end and Django with Wagtail CMS for the back end. The design and layout were made from scratch, focusing on making it easy to use while being powerful enough to handle different types of data. We hosted it on AWS, using the Serverless Framework to manage everything.
The whole project was about making complex data easy to understand and use. I learned a lot about creating a tool that's flexible for different users while keeping it simple and intuitive. Pointiful was a great experience in balancing technical details with user-friendly design.
September 2021 - May 2022
Charm Dating App
No more endless swiping, pointless matches, unanswered messages, and mismatched expectations. The Charm Dating app provided you with deeper insights about the other person than other dating apps offered. It showed the swiping behavior of the other person, how interactive they were in conversations and the likelihood of the match succeeding based on interests.
Charm Dating App was a project where I dove into the world of online dating with the aim to make it more meaningful. Starting from scratch, I used Expo Dev and React Native to build an app that was different from the rest. It was designed to give users a clearer picture of who they're matching with by showing things like swiping behavior and conversation engagement. This meant people could get a better sense of their matches, based on shared interests and interaction styles.
The development was an exciting challenge, pushing the boundaries of typical dating apps. Our pilot phase showed great promise; users liked the new insights and the fresh approach to online dating. Unfortunately, despite the initial success, we had to put a pause on the project due to unexpected circumstances.
From this experience, I learned a lot about the nuances of app development and the importance of adapting to challenges. It was a reminder that in tech, sometimes things don't go as planned, but each step is a learning opportunity. This project, with its ups and downs, was a key milestone in my journey, teaching me valuable lessons about innovation, user engagement, and the realities of bringing an idea to life in the tech world.