I first heard the term “sitcom startup ideas” from Paul Graham. They define a class of ostensibly good ideas that sound good and could ostensibly be good businesses. They’re are plausible but they don’t necessarily solve a problem that many people have.

But if we’re thinking about an idea, there’s probably a reason. There’s always a reason; but only sometimes do we understand it. When we don’t, that’s called a “hidden payoff.”

I’ve always been self-conscious about making things that are not sitcom startup ideas. I used to call myself “a builder,” but not anymore; I have bigger ambitions than just that.

Time is precious and ideas can feel special. I try to navigate this by being deliberate about how I am spending my time. Not deliberate enough: you solve the wrong problem. Too deliberate: you overthink the project to death.

“Know when you’re investing and know when you’re speculating.”

– Ben Graham

Know when you’re building a business and know when you’re building for you. And do both exceedingly well, because they both have their place.

“Personal Project” versus “Building a Business”

Borrowing from the style of Surfaces and Essences, what exactly separates a “project” from a “business” or “startup”?

Some distinctions:

• The Motive: Is there a mandate for profit?
• The Audience: Am I building this for me, or for others?
• The Reality Check: Do I actually want this to exist, or am I just trying to brute-force and reverse-engineer a path to achieving some other goal (fame, wealth, legend status, my story, etc.)?

The difference lies in the definition of the end state. For a startup, the end result is Return on Invested Capital (ROIC), growth, and building a machine that will eventually be valued at a multiple of its discounted future cash flows.

For a personal project, the end result is “done.” It is entirely unceremonious.

The Framing Trap (A Motivating Example)

I have been writing a lot of personal journal entries by hand. I love writing. It works for me. I don’t care about disrupting the “journaling industry,” and I don’t care about persuading others to adopt my habit. I do it purely for myself. It works for me and that’s enough.

Recently, I started thinking about how to build a pipeline to get these handwritten entries digitized into my Obsidian daily logs. I was brainstorming what it would do and wrote:

“It reads your handwriting and starts to understand your handwriting, your specific phrases, your vocabulary, topics, and how you write.”

Immediately, something felt off. Like missing the third note on a musical scale.

It stopped sounding like something I was doing just for me, and instead, I shifted into the “how big could this be” and “how do I acquire users” mode. I was instinctively applying the “Lean Startup” methodology to my own hobby.

This framing can lead to a toxic cycle; the waiting place. You start cutting features that seem “unnecessary” for an MVP. You tell yourself to focus on a landing page and acquiring 100 beta users. You completely ignore the core utility you actually wanted in the first place.

You end up building a users table and looking for domain names.

And the thing you actually wanted?

You don’t finish it because you probably never started. You get paralyzed by an identity crisis. You confuse “do it for the lulz” with “profit motive” and instead wonder: “Is scanning entries from canonical journals the most important problem for humanity right now, and is it how I should spend the years of my life? Do I really care about this problem? How big is the Total Addressable Market? Does Gen Z even know how to use a pen?”

Feel that anxiety?

The Antidote: Ask the right questions

If you’re doing something for yourself, none of those questions matter. They’re category errors applied to product questions.

I just want my handwritten journal in my Obsidian. Not “any document into any note-taking repository.” Not “RTL language support,” and not “SOC2 compliance.” No. Stop. You have good intentions, you have ambition, but you’re doing it wrong.

I am changing the vocabulary of how I build.

• Instead of: “It reads the user’s handwriting.”
• I write: “It reads my handwriting.”

It doesn’t have to work for anyone else’s handwriting. Sure, it could be cool if it did, but there is a massive, hidden cost to that ambition. If it works for others, now I have to build a users table. Now I have to engineer encryption protocols instead of just relying on my Mac’s encrypted hard drive. I have to deal with OAuth tokens, grant refreshes, set up a server, and engineer a “forgot my password” flow.

• Instead of: “Users will take pictures with an iOS app.”
• I write: “take pictures.”

I don’t need App Store approval. The app can stay in Developer Mode on my personal device forever. Or I can just take photos. Do I really want to deal with the complexity of making a mobile app today?

Nobody else will ever use this tool. Not because it lacks value, but because I have no profit motive in building a universal journal scanner.

There is the ambition/legacy/wealth/save-the-world motive and it advances civilization / maximizes shareholder value / <insert your battle cry>.

There is also the “lulz” motive, and honoring your own desire for the lulz is one of the finest luxuries in life.

Epilogue

shipped