What is this?
The goal of this side project accelerator is to help ~10 individuals or small teams turn a side project into a real product in 6 weeks, from October 21st to November 29th.
My hope is that >50% of those teams end up working on their projects full time, through either funding or bootstrapping.
There will be a big focus on AI. Every project should be incorporating AI into the product and development process. We will spend a lot time talking about this.
The group will be remote. We will meet twice a week (probably Mondays and Thursdays) and have a busy slack channel. We will have our own little demo day at the end of the process and help each other launch.
I will try to help every team in some way. Depending on what your biggest blocker is, I can help with product decisions, figuring out a business model, understanding your users, engineering challenges, and sales/marketing.
But the most value I add will come from bringing a sense of urgency and accountability.
This is a free thing I’m doing for fun. If you are selected to join you are expected to commit to the full 6 weeks and take it seriously.
Who am I?Hi, I’m
Daniel O’Shea. I’m a Director of Engineering at X. Previously founder/CTO at Laskie (acquired by Twitter/X) and Interviewed (YC S15, acquired by Indeed).
I’ve worked as both an engineer and product manager, and as a founder I’ve done a bit of design, sales, marketing, account management, and a variety of other jobs.
Most importantly, I really love building products and helping other people build products.
Who should apply?
Apply if you meet most of the criteria below:
- You have a side project that you want to turn into a real product.
- The project is ambitious and you want it to eventually become your full-time thing.
- You have experience building stuff OR you are a domain expert who recently learned to build stuff with AI dev tools.
- You are very interested in building with AI.
- You are willing to commit at least 20 hours a week to your side project for 6 straight weeks. If you can work full time some of the weeks, even better. No weeks off.
- You are willing to join calls that are in the late afternoon/early evening Pacific time.
Logistics- I may have follow up questions or ask you to jump on a 15 min call to help me make a decision.
- I will notify everyone that's been selected before October 2nd.
