9 decisions I make before I open Cursor

📰 Dev.to AI

Learn to make informed decisions before starting a side project to avoid wasting time and resources

intermediate Published 21 Jul 2026
Action Steps
  1. Evaluate your project idea using the 9-decision framework
  2. Assess the market demand and potential revenue streams
  3. Define your target audience and their needs
  4. Determine the unique value proposition of your project
  5. Estimate the required resources and timeline
  6. Identify potential roadblocks and mitigation strategies
Who Needs to Know This

Entrepreneurs, product managers, and software engineers can benefit from this lesson to prioritize their projects and allocate resources effectively

Key Insight

💡 Making informed decisions before starting a project can save time and resources by avoiding unnecessary work on the wrong idea

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🚀 Don't build the wrong thing! Make informed decisions before starting your side project 📊

Key Takeaways

Learn to make informed decisions before starting a side project to avoid wasting time and resources

Full Article

I've shipped a lot of side projects. Most of them went nowhere. Not because the code was bad. The code was fine. Cursor and Claude Code made the code the easy part. They went nowhere because I built the wrong thing, confidently, for six weekends in a row, and only let myself notice after I'd already sunk the time. That's the trap nobody warns you about when building gets cheap. Marc Lou shipped 35 startups. Thirty flopped. Five pay his bills. The lesson everyone misreads from th
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