The ShareCam 'Side Hustle' - The Story of Victoria's Comet Coast

Victoria's Comet Coast launched a mobile app called ShareCam today and their story will be of interest to entrepreneurial developers coast-to-coast. 

According to their launch blog post, Paul Crawford and Jeff Ward built and launched their ShareCam iPhone app in 3 hours/week over an eight month time frame.

Because we were both working from our homes, we found that we actually wanted to get out and see another geek from time to time to share news, coding tips and to just co-work with somebody. The kinds of things that aren’t as easy when you’re a solopreneur who works from home. And so the Friday 2pm meetup was born!

Our initial motivation wasn’t anything more than to just have co-working sessions at a local coffee shop. But as a couple months went by, our coffee discussions inevitably led to business and what kinds of apps we each were thinking about building. We thought, why not use this small window of time each week to chip away at an idea together? The risk was small and it was the right amount of time to dedicate to a new side-project.

2pm on a Friday was also the right time to do this too. Our clients were winding down for the week and it was the perfect opportunity to unplug and focus on our app. We got a lot done in those 3 hours and this constraint kept us hyper focused.

Crawford and Ward's story is a testament to motivation and persistence. They started in September of 2010 and sketched out, discussed, designed, and built a 1.0 version of an iPhone app. Many developers would have been distracting by their full time jobs or other shiny business ideas but these guys stay focused and hustled on the side.

So what's ShareCam? This first release includes core functionality - the ability to record and share video. This limited functionality allowed them to avoid being overwhelmed by building too much too soon.

Perhaps Crawford and Ward are a new breed of entrepreneur. Not everybody has the personal resources or time to do work on their startup side project late into the night, every night. These guys value their health and spending time with their friends and young families.

So what do these guys do with the rest of their week? Crawford recently moved to New York City to take on the role of lead iPhone Developer for DailyBurn and Ward runs a software consulting company called Animikii (which is also responsible for CMS product YikeSite).

ShareCam is available on iTunes for $2.99 and they plan on rolling out a paid pro account option in the coming months with more features and storage.