Sideprojects
BarfPlan
It's an application that I originally did for my wife and myself. We feed our dogs (two Red Irish Setters) with raw meat. This type of diet is usually called RAW or BARF. Dogs (or cats) eat raw meat, giblets, bones as well as some fruits and vegetables.
Similar to humans' nutrition plans, it's not straightforward to keep a good diet where everything is properly balanced. Here, with raw meat, you should also give your pet supplements so they eat everything they should... and that makes it even harder. So the app is helping A LOT!
The app has paying customers which makes me very proud and puts a bit of pressure on me to deliver more good stuff and invest more in marketing and customer service.
checknlearn (discontinued)
It’s a service that helps you adopt new vocabulary much quicker. It kind of scratches my own itch but I hope other people will find it helpful as well.
Whenever you encounter a new word when reading online you no longer have to open a new tab with a dictionary. With the checknlearn extension installed you just have to double click on a word and definition (or translation) will appear. Now, let’s face the truth, do you create flashcards for all new words you’ve „just learned”? No? So how you make sure you are increasing your vocabulary? Well, I’m lazy so at some point, I realized that sometimes I check the meaning of the same word. Checknlearn has you covered here. With a mobile app installed you will be reminded to practice words that you’ve gathered.
Project status - discontinued:
For now the project is discontinued. I focus my efforts on BarfPlan. Maybe I'll get back to this idea one day.
ZaklepSchronisko (closed)
You can think of ZaklepSchronisko as a booking.com for mountain chalets. I hate descriptions like „Uber for X” but in this case, it’s quite ok to use it. You can make a reservation for mountain chalets in Poland. We plan to expand to other countries. Especially our neighbors - the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Together with Łukasz Prętki (co-founder), we realized that people owning mountain chalets hate booking.com. This service is not designed for them. The dynamics of mountain chalets, the standards, and the language is completely different. We understand that niche, although learning new things every day. That helps us adapt the product to people’s needs.
Free Polish lesson: „Zaklep” „Schronisko” means something like „Dibs on chalet”.
Project status - closed:
At this point the project is closed. We were struggling to get traction. After all, the service we wanted to provide is a platform. Platform connects group A with group B. We were able to easily attract one group (tourists) but not the other (shelters).
I definitely have a lot of insights and learnings from this project. I also have an idea how to reactive this but that's unlikely to happen due to my commitment to other projects.