Why it is worth building without an immediate business goal, and how experiments turn into skills, audiences and opportunities.
A side project does not need a business case on day one
A side project is something you build outside the main commercial plan: a tool, experiment, artwork, small service or technical test. Its value may be learning, curiosity, reputation, a new audience or simply discovering whether an idea deserves to become something larger.
Companies benefit from protected experimentation too
Google’s famous “20% time” is often simplified into a rule that employees spent every Friday on personal ideas. The reality was more nuanced, but the useful principle remains: if every hour must justify immediate revenue, organisations stop exploring uncertain ideas. Gmail is one of the best-known examples associated with that culture.
Other side projects have also become much larger than their origin. Unsplash began with ten free photos. Twitter emerged inside a company that was working on something else. These stories are not a promise that every experiment becomes a business; they show that optionality can be created cheaply.
Why I keep building absurd.website
My own long-running side project, absurd.website, gives me permission to make things I would never justify only through revenue. Each project teaches a technology, but often also forces me into a completely new field: science, security, education, advertising, death, fashion, autonomous systems, AI or human behaviour.
The archive also trains a less glamorous but important skill: finishing what I start. A regular rhythm forces me to choose a scope, make decisions, cut unnecessary parts and publish instead of waiting for the perfect version.
Experiments compound into a portfolio and an idea library
Even when one project attracts little attention, the code, knowledge and creative method remain. Over time, separate experiments form a network of skills and references. The archive becomes a portfolio, a reputation layer and a library of mechanisms that can be reused in future projects.
A side project can become marketing or research
A useful free tool can bring people into contact with your work more effectively than a traditional ad. A strange experiment can reveal which audiences react, what they share and what they ask for. In that sense, side projects can be both marketing and market research without pretending to be either at the start.
AI makes experimentation cheaper — and therefore more important
When prototypes are cheaper to make, the advantage shifts from having ideas to testing more of them. The aim is not to generate hundreds of unfinished demos. It is to increase the number of completed experiments and the speed at which you learn.
Know when experimentation becomes avoidance
Side projects are useful until they become a way to avoid the uncomfortable work of a real business: talking to customers, selling, maintaining what already exists or finishing the important thing. A simple practice helps: choose one question, set constraints, build the functioning core, publish it, write down what you learned and keep an archive.
Not every idea needs to prove its commercial value immediately. Sometimes the correct response to an idea that will not leave you alone is simply to make it.