7 ideas that didn’t quite make it

My attempt at a niche dropshipping store stocking alternative, independent sportswear brands. I’m always looking for new gym and running gear but got sick of the same generic, low-performing high street brands. After countless hours searching for alternatives I started cataloguing them, with the idea of an affiliate platform first and dropshipping later.

A curated collection of unique Airbnb cabins within a train ride of London. We’d both been huge fans of Airbnb since its early days, but as the platform exploded the special places got harder to find. We also planned a blog documenting our stays at some of the featured cabins.

In 2018 I read over 2.4 million words online, roughly 19 books, all logged in Pocket. After a tweet by Neil Strauss about retaining information, I wondered how I could remember more of what I read. So I ran a simple experiment: condensing the key points of the most interesting posts into 280 characters on Twitter, so you don’t have to read them.

Inspired by an Indie Hackers post asking people to describe what a company does after 10 seconds on its landing page. It got a lot of attention, so to keep it going I knocked up a quick site with Weebly and Airtable where makers could keep getting free feedback. I stopped managing it once Indie Hackers added a similar feature.

A blog of interviews with early-stage founders and makers, digging into the questions I wished I’d known the answers to while building an online business. The Pac-Man-inspired logo came from an old-school phase. I published six interviews with fascinating founders before it fizzled out: I’d underestimated how long it takes to find interviewees, edit the content and promote it.

A London tuition service teaching people to build websites with drag-and-drop builders like Weebly, plus the design tools and plugins around them. I advertised on Gumtree and had over 20 clients in a year, working evenings and weekends, until other side projects and a new full-time job took over. I later handed it to a friend.

My first business, and my first website. I was in second year at uni in Glasgow studying Environmental Science while working at Apple, and was inspired by colleagues running their own side projects. It started as a blog curating environmental news and events in Glasgow, pivoted into a social enterprise, won a grant from UnLtd and started Glasgow’s first carbon offsetting scheme. I had to close it when I moved to London.