Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight

• 28 February 2021
• v1labs-makers,
• pocus-labs,
• business,
• planning,
• adventure-kit,
• chats-with-dane

Pocus Labs (my dba, legally Hocus Pocus Labs LLC) was started as a sort of catch all for personal projects. That doesn’t really fit your typical startup story.

First things first, I've been writing an absolute ton at makers.v1labs.com lately. I'd highly recommend you check it out. This blog is more for self-reflection at this point, more of a journal and less of a public-facing blog sort of vibe, I guess.

Anyway, the dream was to eventually build an R&D firm, dedicated to the research of whatever-the-hell-I-feel-like. This, also, does not fit a typical startup structure.

A typical startup has a single product, a laser focus on one use case or maybe a couple within the same app, with an eventual goal of reaching the apex of a given sub-industry.

I think I have something like the latter. I want to create “Adventure Kit”, a tool for making your own old-school role playing game (I’ve written about this a bit before).

So I have my apex, but I don’t have a singular product to work on to get there. Rather, I have many many small projects I’d like to release a few weeks at a time.

Simultaneously, I’d like to make gradual progress on the long-term project that is Adventure Kit. I can go into more detail on Adventure Kit in another post, but it could easily take 10+, 15+ years, even a lifetime of work.

My concern is more with these manifold short term projects, specifically:

• It doesn’t fit the pattern of most startups or small businesses.
• I have no path to product or monetization built into any of the ideas I have so far.
• Focus can easily be misappropriated such that a good product is neglected or otherwise given the short end of the stick. More projects means more time spread across maintenance.

There are a few answers to these issues:

• Just because something doesn’t fit the pattern of a previously existing business doesn’t mean that the business isn’t viable.
• Paths to monetization can be made for each product, especially with usage. Give me good usage and there is a way, but with no usage there is no good way.
• Common groundwork can be made, especially if the products are focused around a theme such as creative software.

The last point is especially interesting, since it means the focus could be open source components which feed into the main reservoir of creative mini apps...I’m only just coming to this conclusion, as I write, honestly. But I’m starting to think that an open source basis for these creative apps is the route to take.

This open source approach was suggested to me by Dane Lyons, so I’ve got to give credit where it’s due. It’s just only occurred to me how it might work, with the plans I already had in mind! So, am I on track? Have I lost my marbles? Or is it somewhere in between?

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