{"id":351,"date":"2015-08-02T11:16:50","date_gmt":"2015-08-02T01:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/?p=351"},"modified":"2015-08-02T11:16:50","modified_gmt":"2015-08-02T01:16:50","slug":"my-fiasco-with-creating-software-that-saves-electricity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/2015\/08\/my-fiasco-with-creating-software-that-saves-electricity\/","title":{"rendered":"My Fiasco with Creating Software that Saves Electricity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In September 2014 I decided to stop active development of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fotrel.com\/\">Fotrel<\/a> and create a new product instead. This time I wanted to build software in environmental area. I envisioned software that would help to make the Earth cleaner somehow.<\/p>\n<p>I was inspired by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peachjar.com\/\">Peachjar<\/a>\u00a0company. They built a software solution that helps environment by reducing amount of paper flyers that kids bring from school.<\/p>\n<p>Some ideas that I have considered:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Software for marine biologists<\/li>\n<li>Software that helps solar panel installers<\/li>\n<li>Planning software for garden designers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I decided to build software that would help people to save electricity. Most of electricity is produced by coal power plants that pollute air and increase global warming.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"352\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/2015\/08\/my-fiasco-with-creating-software-that-saves-electricity\/belchatow\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/images\/2015\/08\/belchatow.jpg?fit=940%2C627&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"940,627\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;11&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS D60&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1160994782&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;17&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;200&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.011111111111111&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Power plant in Belchatow\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/images\/2015\/08\/belchatow.jpg?fit=604%2C403&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-352\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/images\/2015\/08\/belchatow.jpg?resize=604%2C403\" alt=\"Power plant in Belchatow\" width=\"604\" height=\"403\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/images\/2015\/08\/belchatow.jpg?w=940&amp;ssl=1 940w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/images\/2015\/08\/belchatow.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 604px) 100vw, 604px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Following Lean Startup methodology I conducted a lot of client interviews. People were generally interested in saving electricity. The problem was that I wanted to create a software solution, without any hardware component.<\/p>\n<p>Finally I settled on software that would monitor electricity usage by integrating with smart meters.<\/p>\n<p>Also I decided to build my audience first. I have created a registration page. On that page I offered &#8220;5 Easy Tips to Save Electricity&#8221; report. People would have to enter their email address to receive it by email. This is how I would build my subscriber list of people interested in saving electricity.<\/p>\n<p>I got few subscribers that way but not many. That page didn&#8217;t rank high in Google search and I couldn&#8217;t get others\u00a0to share the link to my page with their list.<\/p>\n<p>In April 2015 I have read an influential book &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00NZFKB8S\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00NZFKB8S&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=pavechuc-20&amp;linkId=JKZS7XZTI27TTZVM\">The 7 Day Startup<\/a>&#8221; by Dan Norris. The main idea of the book is to launch new product or service\u00a0very quickly to learn if it&#8217;s something that people would buy.<\/p>\n<p>One idea from the book struck me: if you are building your first product it&#8217;s going to be very hard to create something unique and visionary. You can&#8217;t afford to be Steve Jobs, not yet. You have to wait until you launch one or two successful products.<\/p>\n<p>As the first product idea it&#8217;s much better to stick to something that people already pay money for. That&#8217;s when I realized that people don&#8217;t spend money on saving electricity. So it&#8217;s going to be tough for me as a single developer\u00a0to build something revolutionary in that area, something that would change people&#8217;s habit.<\/p>\n<p>In the end I decided to give up on my idea. Surprisingly I experienced enormous sense of relief. I felt much better after making that decision.<\/p>\n<p>Lesson learnt: make the cycle\u00a0to test my ideas much shorter by launching new products very quickly. I highly recommend reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00NZFKB8S\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00NZFKB8S&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=pavechuc-20&amp;linkId=JKZS7XZTI27TTZVM\">The 7 Day Startup<\/a> book &#8211; it&#8217;s very short but powerful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In September 2014 I decided to stop active development of Fotrel and create a new product instead. This time I wanted to build software in environmental area. I envisioned software that would help to make the Earth cleaner somehow. I was inspired by Peachjar\u00a0company. They built a software solution that helps environment by reducing amount &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/2015\/08\/my-fiasco-with-creating-software-that-saves-electricity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">My Fiasco with Creating Software that Saves Electricity<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[32,20],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-idea","tag-lean-startup"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuchuva.com\/pavel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}