makerfellowship

FAQ

Get paid to ship your side project

We offer $500 grant to indie makers to ship something useful within four weeks.

No strings attached.

Ship something useful

Whatever you need to ship your side project

The world needs more makers.

Grant

Get $500 to ship your next side project in the next 4 weeks, and we ask only one thing in return – that you ship.

Duration

For a side project, four weeks is enough time to think of a minimum useful version, build it, and show it to the world.

Office Hours

Once every week, fellows will get to discuss their current struggles and get unstuck to move forward.

What's next? Maker fellows, ship.

For a maker, the aha moment is when they ship. When a handful of users use what they have made, there's no emotion that comes even close. What happens next?

If the side project that you ship, gets accepted by the users in any sense or form, there's no way it shouldn't be grown. It becomes your duty to get your product in the hands of more and more people – and make their lives easier.

We empower you.

Seed investment of up to $50k

Making a product that a few people find useful is almost catching lightning in a bottle. We want you to focus 100% of your attention for the next 6-12 months improving the product, and getting it into more hands.

We will help the maker incorporate, and invest up to $50k as the first check into the company, and spread the word around.

What happens if the side project fails?

We all learn our lessons and move on.

Who is behind the Maker Fellowship?

Maker Fellowship is offered by Mohit Mamoria, who has been making side projects for the last eight years, and have used them for starting new ventures, market other products, hire great people, and everything in between.

Mohit Mamoria
Mohit Mamoria

With the experience of shipping 30+ side projects, starting many failed ventures and a few successful ones, and investing in 50+ startups, you can be sure to be in an uncomfortably good company.

Why am I giving away free money?

A decade ago, when I was starting out, there were a few helping hands, who took blind bets on me. They asked me one thing in return – when it'll be my time, I'd pay it forward. This is me just holding my side of the promise.

Make and ship your side-project with

Build
Foundership
You?

Are you a part of a maker community that could make use of the fellowship? Write to us.

Frequently Asked Questions

Anything. Totally upto you. Buy the domain, purchase the subscriptions to the tools you need to make your project, hire some freelancers to get help when you need, or maybe, just spend it on coffee while you are busy writing code.

We don't care how you spend the money, and we don't ask about it, as long as you ship your side project.

The maker comes before their individual ideas. We like to understand what kind of ideas does one come up with, and whether they can make and ship it by themselves.

If there are more than one ideas, you should put all of them in your application. It'll give us better context about your idea-generation muscle.

We want to encourage indie makers, who can make and ship a side project on their own. You’d be better of applying at other programs, like Y Combinator.

Nothing happens. The grant comes with no strings attached. We would want to work together to make sure that together, we are able to ship within the four weeks. If it’s delayed, no big deal. If the project shuts down altogether, no big deal, either.

No big deal. The life is long, the world is big, and we hope to work together at some other time in the future.

The grant doesn’t come with any strings attached.

Maker Fellows

We have backed the following makers and their projects.