In the last week of 2006 and couple weeks before the launch of our site, I had what I thought was a great idea(thankyou2006.com). I shared the idea with my partner, he liked it, we worked on it for a day and launched it.
I had to break my own promise to not work on anything else. And it made me a little nervous that this might cause the distraction we didn't need few weeks before our launch.
Keys:
1. Know your and your team's limits from past experience. What has happened in past when you worked on side projects?
2. Find some angle where the side project has the potential to compliment your primary company. In our case, if the side project it would have given us some much-needed $$$s for our main start-up.
If you allow "much-needed $$$s" to determine what you work on, you'll never get your real project done. This is how consulting businesses are born (and products die).
I had to break my own promise to not work on anything else. And it made me a little nervous that this might cause the distraction we didn't need few weeks before our launch.
Keys:
1. Know your and your team's limits from past experience. What has happened in past when you worked on side projects?
2. Find some angle where the side project has the potential to compliment your primary company. In our case, if the side project it would have given us some much-needed $$$s for our main start-up.
--Zaid