Side Project Separation

Dharmesh Shah shares his experience building Wordplay.com, a Wordle-like game that became a significant side project. He emphasizes the importance of keeping certain projects separate from main business operations and using side projects as learning opportunities.

Key Points:

• Project Origins and Motivation:

  • Built over a weekend in response to Wordle's acquisition by NYT
  • Created to demonstrate programming concepts to his 11-year-old son
  • Used as an opportunity to learn new technologies (Vercel, Next.js, TypeScript)

• Growth and Traffic:

  • Reached 45 million games played
  • Attracts 9.5 million users
  • Maintains 2-3,000 concurrent players
  • Initial launch brought 50-100,000 users in first week

• Viral Growth Mechanics:

  • Implemented unlimited play (vs. Wordle's once per day)
  • Added friend challenge feature
  • Users share links through WhatsApp and social media
  • Average user engagement increased from 4 to 14 minutes

• Monetization Insights:

  • Generated $90,000/month through Google AdSense
  • Removed ads after learning monetization potential
  • Estimated value: $2-3 million (based on 5x multiple of annual revenue)

• Project Philosophy:

  • Keeps game projects separate from main business (HubSpot)
  • Values low-friction, web-based experiences over mobile apps
  • Uses side projects as learning opportunities
  • Explores community building potential with existing user base

• Distribution Strategy:

  • Leveraged existing social media following (1M LinkedIn, 300K Twitter)
  • Used multiple channels: blog, email, social media
  • Focused on solving the "cold start" problem for initial users