How to build a tech stack, not a business

Escape Room Creator started with a small and innocent idea. Creating a puzzle game for my girlfriend. It worked, it was quick to build, I enjoyed it, she loved playing it, and I thought, I was onto something... Something big. I was not exactly sure what, or for whom, or how, but it certainly needed a neat interface, a super scalable backend and of course, everything had to be automated.

The project

Over the next half a year I worked on this project and it grew bigger and bigger.

First came a single game. Then a server for managing it. Next a game creation platform. After that, I built an User Interface system. And finally I built a platform to play, and rate games.

Some Results

• Figured out how to represent escape rooms in a data structure
• Explored and worked with a cool tech stack including: React, Netlify Lambda, Node server, GraphQL, Prisma DB, Lerna Monorepo, VPS, Nginx, Docker, Hotjar, Google Cloud
• Written 423.694 lines of code over 457 commits
• Published an open source npm package use-pan-and-zoom
• Learned how to perform in depth user-tests
• Interviewed 2 business owners on potential collaborations

Learnings

I learned a lot from this project and maybe that you can learn from it as well:

• Your first idea is probably off. Make sure you can quickly validate and iterate Eric Ries, The Lean Startup
• Don't try to build for everyone. Making something amazing for a small group is a great start Seth Godin, The Minimum Viable Audience
• Make sure you finish your project: finishing boosts confidence, quiting breaks it down Benjamin Hardy, Confidence: 2 Reasons Most People Don't Have It

Check out Escape Room Creator.