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263 points 1ilit | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source

One year ago I open-sourced my very first 'real' project and shared it here. I was a college student in my senior year and desperately looking for a job. At the time of sharing it i couldn't even afford a domain and naively let someone buy the one i had my eyes on lol. It's been a hell of a year with this blowing up, me moving to another country, and switching 2 jobs.

In a year we somehow managed to hit 26k stars, grow a 1000+ person discord community, and support 37 languages. I couldn't be more grateful for the community that helped this grow, but now i don't know what direction to take this project in.

All of this was an accident. But now I feel like I'm missing out on not using this success. I have been thinking of monetization options, but not sure if I wanna go down that route. I like the idea of it being free and available for everyone but also can't help but think of everything that could be done if committed full-time or even had a small team. I keep telling myself(and others) i'll do something if i meet a co-founder, but doubt and fear of blowing this up keeps back.

How would you proceed?

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arcanemachiner ◴[] No.43630349[source]
This looks a lot like ChartDB[0]. Is that correct? If so, how would you compare the two tools, or better yet, distinguish yours from theirs?

[0] https://github.com/chartdb/chartdb

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1ilit ◴[] No.43630532[source]
hehe mine was up and running way before theirs. but we have diverged quite a bit. might be biased but i think mine is easier to jump right in. mine is more like the draw.io of database editors while theirs is the miro, yk?
replies(1): >>43634320 #
1. arcanemachiner ◴[] No.43634320[source]
LOL I don't know actually, but I will definitely give your project a go when I have to mock up my next DB schemas.

It seems like your project is more grassroots than theirs, so hopefully you can use it to make some money... Not sure how your platform works, but do you provide (paid) storage, syncing, multi-user collaboration, etc.? That seems like the predictable monetization strategy.