A Silly Idea About Cold Showers Turned Into My Favorite Project
10 Lessons from (attempting to) build a product from scratch
I thought I was tough. Every morning after my run, I’d jump into an ice-cold shower, time myself with my watch, and flex to my housemates about how there wasn’t a single drop of steam on the mirror.
But they weren’t buying it.
“Bro, your showers aren’t even that cold.”
Mildly offended and dangerously stubborn, I set out to prove them wrong. I wasn’t just going to measure how cold my showers were—I was going to build a device that did it for me.
Then it hit me: maybe I wasn’t the only weirdo who’d want this as a product.
That’s how this whole thing started.
If you’re new here, I’m Rajveer, author of The SLAM Digest. I write about our company, SLAM Ventures. If you like what you read, maybe you’d be a good fit for our residency program
I was on a run with Declan(SLAM Co-Founder) pouring my heart out about this idea, how I planned to build it, who I thought would use it, how I would sell it, and the anxieties I had surrounding whether this was a good idea of not… and he kinda dropped a banger.
“Raj, just build it. Then use it everyday. If you like using it, that’s a good sign because you aren’t that unique and there are probably others that will also like using it.”
Then came the next step: telling people about my idea and making no progress. Yeah, I’m gonna build a cold shower thermometer! Well, it’s not gonna be that hard (I was wrong). I’m gonna start by doing x and then move onto y and then z is when I’m gonna sell 10,000 units. I would play out scenarios in my head of what this could be, who would use it, how I would build it, and how once it was done all my problems would be solved. I spent way too long plotting and not enough time building.
I kept doing things that felt like work but actually weren’t work. Trying to follow hardware founders on X, reading about Johnny Ive and James Dyson, or just going back and forth with ChatGPT ‘brainstorming’. Then I finally took some relevant action:
2. Create a little bit of buy-in.
I went on Amazon, ordered a Wifi capable microcontroller and a temperature sensor. It cost $25, which didn’t break the bank, but it did create this weird financial guilt.
The parts arrived with a blazing speed, and they sat there on my desk. I had to look at them every day as I attempted to waste time on Twitter or watch Mark Rober's YouTube videos. And it would make me feel guilty.
Finally, the guilt overtook the laziness and I started building.
3. Try to get a win, fast.
I’ve worked on personal projects before and the two most common outcomes are that the project loses steam or I don’t get started to begin with. Since I’d created some buy in and was now rolling, I needed a win. Just an objective or a checkpoint to hit. So that’s what I did, I found the easiest, highest leverage task I could accomplish and got started.
When selecting a task, I often fall into the trap of underestimating the complexity of implementing a feature. My first idea was to get the water temperature sensor to send data to my computer. But then I quickly realized that may be biting off more than I can chew. I broke the task down even further. Just get my microcontroller to connect to WiFi. And I did it.
Once you get a win, it’ll feel ecstatic. Yes! I got this little feature working. And then you’ll pull your roommate in and show him, and he’s a nice guy so he’ll say good job. But that confused look on his face will reveal that he isn’t that impressed.
Then this doubt will creep in once you realize that what you’ve just implemented is a small step in a long staircase. But you must remember:
4. Allow yourself to enjoy the little moments.
Let’s face it, we’re online all the time. And being online can distort our sense of reality. Watching AI Agent demos, humanoid robot videos, and Stripe screenshots can misrepresent what it actually means to be a builder. You must remind yourself that your accomplishment, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction. Just cause your roommate doesn’t get it doesn’t mean it isn’t an accomplishment.
Allow yourself to cherish these moments, because that’s what makes building worth it.
5. Ask your friends for help.
Eventually, breaking down your project into subtasks is gonna stop working. Those checkpoints are going to become more and more cumbersome, and you’re gonna need help.
I hit this point when trying to get a React App setup for cold shower tracking. Our killer software engineer Andrew kindly agreed to help me. His guiding a noob like me through getting GitHub set up, creating a virtual environment, and making my site secure was a lifesaver. But remember:
6. Don’t let your friends do your project for you. Cause then there’s no point.
Andrew is a super programmer, but it’s important for me, as a ‘founder’, to learn on my own. While he set everything up for me expeditiously, It’s really important that I don’t let him take over; not because he will Social Network me, but because it’s important for me to do things myself. At least at the start.
If people offer their help, use it not to just finish the task but rather to understand how an expert is approaching the problem that you’re currently stuck on.
7. Post on Twitter (And All Socials Really) about what you’re building.
I was talking with the team about how I was scared to post on socials about my project because it would give away too much about how I built it. And they all replied to me:
8. Your limiting factor is that nobody will care about what you build, not that someone will try to steal your idea.
Sam Altman said this about founders who are scared that a big company will steal their idea:
“You can put your idea on Tim Cook’s desk with exact instructions on how to implement it and take no risk… it probably is a great idea but everyone is busy with their own things”
Nobody cares about my silly little project (yet). Making them care about it is worth the risk of a copycat.
8. Have Fun
I was talking to the SLAM guys and they told me something that no employer has before. “At no point should this feel like a chore, we want this to be fun for you”. And they’re right: if it isn’t fun, then what’s the point?
9. Surround yourself with positive, yet honest people.
I was told. “Raj, it’s unlikely that this project will be widely used by the public; not that many people care about cold showers… but I still think you should build it.” Honest, yet encouraging. That may be the best way to treat a project in its infancy. Allow yourself to dream and get excited, but remember to be grounded and make actual progress.
10. Try to Sell it
I intend to sell my product. Yes, the financial incentive is exciting, but there’s a deeper reason to put it out into the world.
When you build something for yourself, it’s easy to cut corners. But when you build something for others—something they’ll pay for—you hold yourself to a higher standard. You can’t ask someone to spend their hard-earned money on something you didn’t pour your heart into. Selling isn’t just about making a profit; it’s about proving that what you’ve built is genuinely worth something.
Money isn’t everything, but as Hank Green from SciShow once said:
“Money is a proxy that shows how much value you are adding to the world.”
If people are willing to pay for what I’ve made, it means I’ve built something that matters.
And that, more than anything, is what I’m after.
Keep Building,
Raj
Btw you can check out my shower temps @ ishiver.com