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Startups & Side Hustles
Hey there,

This week, I put some of the finishing touches on a long guide I've been writing especially for non-technical founders. The most common question I get from new startups is, "How can I get my MVP built with little money and no developer?" So I wrote a this post on what you should know and what tools are available:

The Complete Guide to Building a Web Application Without a Developer

I'd love your feedback or suggestions, so feel free to reply if there's anything I missed here.
Recommended Reading*
First off, you don't have to be a computer scientist or even technology-savvy to appreciate this book. What Algorithms to Live By gives you is a straightforward understanding of how mathematics rules our daily decisions and the journey that pioneers in the field went through to unravel these secrets.

Around the Web
One thing we can all agree on is that there's probably too much hype in AI right now:

"Hype will make enterprise customers trigger-happy to pilot AI solutions, but at the end of the day, they buy the best solution available and don’t care whether it comes in the form of SaaS software, a consultancy or an AI product."

Vue.js started as a side project, but now it's Evan You's primary source of income. This is pretty much a dream job for any programmer.

It's short and sweet, but Altman has seen enough startups to be worth listening to.

I think this kind of retrospective would be interesting. Most of my projects haven't gotten as far as Josh's though.

They're not all great ideas, but sometimes a brain dump is good for inspiration.

Sponsor*
I've tried dozens of tools like Buffer, Recurpost, and Tweetdeck, but none have gotten as close to my ideal social media automation workflow as RiteKit. Schedule posts, automatically enhance them with hash tags, mentions, and emojis, and add custom calls-to-action on each of your links.

Tools
If you've ever wondered how far your side project could go with a little marketing push, wait no longer. My latest project is entering Beta this month.

If you've ever wanted to give someone a gift that's sort of out of the box, take a look at Wordnik, a not-for-profit dictionary that adopts out words for just $25 a year.

Having just gotten married last year and gone through the annoyance of creating a wedding website, I really like how simple Jolly Moments is. Plus the creator is a dedicated subscriber to this newsletter, so keep up the good work!

I haven't taken any of these courses, but it looks like a pretty thorough introduction to entrepreneurship.

Another way to convert traffic by using reviews to build trust on your site.

Drag and drop modules to create services. End up with a REST API and no code to maintain.

If you just want to put your skills to work, volunteer for a side project here.

If you want daily inspiration for marketing tips, look no further.

Landing page validation is a great way to see if there's really a market for your product. Here's a tool focused on validation for side projects.

Good gut check for early stage startup costs.

Thanks for reading,

Karl Hughes, Portable CTO