an e-invite app nobody asked for, still shipping
a digital wedding-invitation product built on nights and weekends. no funding, no team, just repeated shipping until it looked like a product.
a friend needed a digital wedding invitation. the "market" for this in Indonesia is a handful of templated sites that all look the same: a countdown, a gallery, an RSVP form, done. i figured i could build something with actual craft behind it, and that it would also teach me the parts of shipping a real product that a portfolio project never forces you to learn.
what exists now
full CRUD for events, shareable links, multiple visual themes, photo uploads, an RSVP flow that doesn't feel like filling out a government form. nine feature slices shipped so far, each one small enough to finish in a sitting and large enough to actually matter to someone using it.
the boring part is the actual product
the invitation themes took a weekend each. the part that took longer: making sure a link shared in a family group chat renders a decent preview, making sure the RSVP data doesn't disappear if someone's connection drops mid-submit, making sure a phone from five years ago can still open it without a blank screen. none of that is interesting to build. all of it is the difference between "a demo" and "something my friend's aunt can use without calling for help."
where it's going
the side-income plan is straightforward: keep it as the primary product, get outreach going, learn pricing by actually pricing it for real people instead of guessing at a number in a spreadsheet. it's slower than i'd like, and it is real work happening in parallel with a full-time job, which is its own lesson in what "side" project actually means once the day job has opinions about your evenings.
still faster than waiting for the "right" idea to build something with. the invite app was never going to be the idea. building it anyway was the point.