Most successful companies started as side projects. Google was a research project. Apple was built in a garage. Facebook was a dorm room experiment. This is not a coincidence. Side projects have a natural advantage: they start from genuine curiosity rather than market analysis.
But here is the thing nobody tells you. Most side projects should stay side projects. The hard part is figuring out which ones should not.
Start With Something You Actually Care About
I think the most important thing when building a side project is picking something you are genuinely passionate about. If you pick something you do not like, the chances of you pushing past the initial honeymoon phase are small. But if you pick something that actually motivates you to open your laptop, to start designing, to dive into research at midnight when you should be sleeping—that is infinitely more valuable than building something you think will sell.
This matters because side projects are hard. Nobody is paying you. Nobody is waiting for your deliverable. The only thing keeping you going is your own interest. If that interest is not real, you will quit the moment things get difficult. And things always get difficult.
Quaternion Studios began because I was genuinely obsessed with WebGL and Three.js after my Tesla internship. I was posting projects on Reddit not to build a business, but because I thought the stuff was cool and wanted feedback. One day someone DM’d me asking if I could build something for them. That turned into a client. Then another. I had accidentally started a business, but only because I had started with something I actually cared about.
OctaPulse was similar. I grew up in Goa, India, surrounded by the ocean. When I learned about the problems in fish farming—that most farms have less data visibility than a 1990s retail store, that wild fisheries are at their limit, that aquaculture produces 52% of global seafood—something clicked. This was not just interesting. It felt important. That feeling is what carried me through the hard parts.
The Signal That Matters
At some point, your side project has to show signs of interest from other people. This might not be paying customers right away, but something that indicates you are providing real value to someone.
If you get this signal, lean into it. Really see how far it goes. Get involved with the community, even if you do not naturally belong in it. When I started getting freelance requests for 3D visualization work, I was surprised. I had not been trying to sell anything. But people saw my work and wanted it. That was not my cleverness. That was the market telling me something.
The temptation is to dismiss these signals. Someone asks if they can pay you for something, and you think it is a fluke. A few people get excited about your project, and you assume they are just being polite. Do not do this. Pay attention. These signals are rare and valuable.
Life is an adventure. Side quests are part of an adventure. Lean into experiences. Lean into the idea that every single day of your life should be different.
I recently heard Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram and now CPO of Anthropic, speak about his career. He said that for a long time his mission was to make sure no two years of his life were similar. He wanted to experience things. I think that is one of the most valuable insights into living a full life—getting out of your comfort zone, gaining those breadths of experience, doing things that scare you a little.
This mindset is how side projects get going. You follow your curiosity. You lean into the signals. You let yourself be pulled in unexpected directions.
Balancing Risk
Obviously there are risks. Everything in life has risk. So how do you balance it?
The first thing to understand is that the risk of starting a company is not as high as it feels. We treat it like it is irreversible, like choosing to start a company means you can never go back to having a normal job. That is not true. Most founders who fail end up fine. Many end up better than fine because they learned things you cannot learn any other way.
The risk of not trying is usually worse than the risk of failing. If your side project has real traction, real demand, and you genuinely believe in it, the biggest risk is that someone else will build what you could have built, or that the opportunity will pass, or that you will spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened.
Failure is recoverable. Regret is harder to shake.
You do not need to quit your job immediately.
There is this mythology around startups that you have to dramatically quit your job and burn the boats. Some people do that, and it works for them. But plenty of successful companies were built nights and weekends for months or even years before the founders went full-time.
Quaternion Studios ran alongside my other work for a long time. I was taking on clients while still doing internships and school. It was exhausting, but it also meant I could learn whether the business was real without betting everything on it.
The right time is when the opportunity cost becomes too high.
At some point, if your side project is working, you will hit a ceiling. You cannot grow it further without more time and attention. Clients will want more than you can deliver. Opportunities will come up that you cannot pursue. The project will start demanding to be your main thing.
When that happens, you have your answer. The leap is not a leap into the unknown. It is a recognition that you have already been moving in this direction, and now it is time to commit.
Signs Your Side Project Wants to Be More
There is no formula for this, but there are patterns.
People keep asking to pay you. If strangers are reaching out asking to give you money for something you built for fun, pay attention. That is not normal. Most side projects get polite compliments at best.
You cannot stop thinking about it. Side projects are supposed to be fun. You work on them when you feel like it. But some projects do not let you put them down. You think about them in the shower, while you are supposed to be doing other work, when you are falling asleep. This is a good sign, but also a warning—obsession is necessary but not sufficient.
The problem gets bigger the more you look at it. Bad side projects shrink when you examine them. Good ones do the opposite. Each layer reveals a bigger opportunity. When I started learning about aquaculture, every new thing I learned made the problem seem larger and more important.
You start saying no to other things. This is the real test. Side projects fit into the gaps of your life. Real companies require you to create gaps. When you start turning down other opportunities to work on your project, something has shifted.
What I Got Wrong
I want to be honest about the mistakes I made.
I waited too long on some things and not long enough on others. With Quaternion Studios, I probably could have scaled faster if I had committed earlier. With other projects, I committed too early to ideas that were not ready. The pattern I noticed is that I was better at recognizing good ideas intellectually than I was at feeling when they were ready.
I underestimated how much the team matters. When you are running a side project alone, you are the only variable. When you start building a company, the team becomes everything. Finding the right co-founder, the right early employees, the right advisors—these things matter more than almost anything else.
I overestimated how much the idea matters. Ideas are cheap. Execution is expensive. A mediocre idea with great execution will beat a great idea with mediocre execution almost every time. The idea is the starting point, not the destination.
The Decision Framework
If you are trying to decide whether to turn your side project into a company:
Do you have evidence of demand? Not theoretical demand. Actual evidence. People paying you, or desperately asking for what you are building, or a clear gap you can see with your own eyes.
Is the problem big enough? Companies need big problems, because building a company is hard and you need a payoff that justifies the effort.
Are you the right person to solve it? Do you have some unfair advantage—some insight, skill, or connection—that makes you better positioned than others?
Can you afford to try? Do you have savings? A support system? Can you survive six months of uncertainty?
Will you regret not trying? This is the most important question. If you know you will always wonder what would have happened, that is your answer.
The Leap Is Not the Hard Part
Here is what surprised me most. The leap itself is not the hard part. The hard part is everything that comes after. Finding customers, raising money, hiring people, making decisions with incomplete information, dealing with setbacks, keeping going when it would be easier to stop.
But that is also what makes it worth doing. Side projects are fun, but they stay small. Companies can become something bigger than you. They can solve problems that matter, create value for people you will never meet, change how the world works in some small way.
That is not guaranteed. Most companies fail. But the possibility is there, and that is enough reason to try.
If you have a side project that will not let you go, that keeps getting bigger the more you look at it, that people keep asking to pay you for—maybe it is time to stop calling it a side project.
Maybe it is time to see what it can become.