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12 Apps in 12 Months

May 1, 2026 4 min read startup , 12apps

Tell me if you can relate. You read a lot of business books, you think about your next (actually first) business, you write down all these ideas, you are very much entrepreneur in your head, but not in real life. This is me, and has been for looong time.

Now after years of trying to build stuff and actually never finishing much, I came back to the MAKE book by Pieter Levels, and while reading the introduction, I have decided to go public with the challenge of creating 12 apps/products in 12 months, the same challenge/idea Pieter, underwent years ago.

It is quite scary when I think about my friends and family finding these pages, well, maybe that is exactly what I need. What is the worst thing that can happen?

I definitely don’t want to be a copycat or just drive traffic based on someone elses ideas. This is another one of my attempts to actually break out of me being stuck in a place where I am not moving forward. And as Pieter said, finishing and lunching/publishing are the two main problems for people like me, and I haven’t been able to solve these. I want to try everything I can to move past these roadblocks that has kept me in the same place for years.

In my view, there are 3 problems.

1. Shiny new thing

As many of you might be familiar with the “shiny new object” syndrome, I think tech people have it harder than others. When a civil engineer wants to start a new construction company, they need to buy excavator, tools etc. It is harder to start that type of business, also they don’t get to play with newest excavator every other week. If they commit, it is much more binding and they need to leave their house to do so.

For a programmer, it is very simple to start working on real world business/app from their computer, sitting anywhere in the world (where there is internet). And it is very simple to play with the newest programming “excavator”, be it new framework, new programming language, new code editor, new library, you name it.

We all know how easy it is to “study” tools to be “better” developers. And we all know that it is absolute BS, noone needs to know the newest JavaScript framework or the new programming language that is 4% faster. There is huge software built on old technologies, those minor differences does not matter!

I hope this project will help me eliminate this problem, as I plan to build everything with one tech stack for web and one tech stack for mobile. I want to get better at delivering products to market, not at cutting edge programming. No new latest greatest things. Call me out if I fail and you see me studying the latest greatest BuritoJS full stack framework!

2. Finishing is a huge problem

As Pieter wrote, I (as many other “makers”) have this problem and it is the single biggest one. At least right now, maybe when I solve this problem I will find even bigger problems down the road but that is for the future me, brighter me.

3. Lunching

I want to lunch 12 apps to the world! Shitty or not, fully finished or not (well there will be a criteria for something to be published).

My goal is to make this project my number one priority for the next 12 months (1.5.2026 - 31.4.2027). It will be very hard, as I have full time job and many other responsibilities, we all do, but I want to push aside any side projects and anything other than the absolutely necessary things.

12 Apps

My goal is to create 12 apps in the following year and document the road, which I feel should keep me more accountable. So anyone reading this, thank you, for making me feel more accountable!

I am one of many people who are aspiring to ship ideas and make real products of them, I know. But as Rita Mae Brown said “Doing the same thing and expecting different results” does not really work, believe me, I have tried.

Goals