One Week Project: Spend Better

Two and a half years ago I wrote down an idea for a business and product directory that would help you find alternative shopping experiences to large corporations like Amazon and Walmart. A place that would highlight businesses that:

• Are local and/or small
• Are women- or minority-owned
• Make everything in the USA
• Support unions or charities

And other various qualities that could entice you to shop with them.

About a year ago, I bought an expensive premium domain for the idea: spendbetter.com.

But, there's nothing there yet. I had hoped that spending the money on the domain would motivate me to do something with it.

With my recent career path fork and a shift into entrepreneurship, and a renewed desire to actually ship things and stop being afraid of failing, I'm giving myself a goal to build and ship Spend Better in one week.

Of course it'll be bare bones. It might only have a few businesses local to me at first. But that's not the point. The point is to have something out there to share.

If things go well, it could turn into a revenue source. If things don't go well, I won't regret never trying.

Day One: Foundations

I already have a pretty good idea of the data (entities, relationships, etc.) that I want to save and display. Today I want to see how I can create the foundations of saving that data to be searched and displayed via the website.

The seasoned software engineer in me always wants to build things myself. I'm hoping to save myself that effort by finding either a suitable CMS of sorts, or a low-code or no-code solution (I already have some data in Airtable).

The largest problem to solve I believe is search. Whatever the solution, it has to have an excellent search solution that includes tags, full text search, and geolocation. Easily finding a business is key.

Happy Halloween! 🎃

Follow along on my progress: Spend Better: Day 2