Over the years i've learned from personal experience about some of the different failure modes for getting side projects off the ground:<p>1) Focusing too much on making money: A side project doesn't have to be a business and probably shouldn't to start with. Once it reaches a certain level you can try to make it a business afterwards.<p>2) Not enough focus on learning: Side projects only focused on making money don't provide enough motivation (see #1) to keep things going when the resistance sets in (no customers). Focusing instead on learning new technologies through the project can provide an extra boost of continued motivation.<p>3) Not setting up milestones and getting feedback: Without getting the right amounts of dopamine hits, in the form of feedback from peers and mentors<p>As an experiment in addressing these challenges, we @ Bridge.Academy are hosting a side project challenge:<p>https://medium.com/the-spectrum/announcing-the-bridge-academy-tournament-725998fc5126<p>Here's a list of some of the initial ideas we've received so far. Please leave yours in the comments below or apply with one here.<p>https://apply.bridge.academy/b/lxshok/view<p>- PredictIT: An ML model that predicts the winner of a match between two teams by taking in the players’ performances over the past six months on different parameters.<p>- Knowtable: A fully-encrypted note taking app built made for Mobile.<p>- Credible: A Blockchain powered solution for Consumer credit reporting agency.<p>- MailMonkey: An email marketing/newsletter subscription service that allows the creator to truly own the email address captured.<p>- TweetTheBook: A web app that fetches the most “tweetable” quotes from any book depending on how many times they have been tweeted.<p>- PersonGraph: A web app that fetches the best blogs, tweets, articles from the internet for any individual in real time.<p>- AI.DAO: A DAO which gives out grants for AI Research to deserving fellows.