The 20% Time Fantasy
Google's 20% time policy—where engineers could spend one day per week on personal projects—produced Gmail, Google News, and AdSense. It is the most cited example of corporate innovation through side projects. And it is almost entirely irrelevant to your situation as an executive with a side project idea.
First, Google's 20% time was for the company's benefit. The projects were company-owned, built on company infrastructure, and staffed by company engineers. Your side project is a personal venture. Using company resources (including employee time) for personal projects is a different thing entirely.
Second, even at Google, 20% time was largely a myth by the mid-2010s. Engineers reported that 20% time projects still required 100% of their regular work to be completed—meaning 20% time was really 120% time. The model only "worked" because Google attracted people willing to work 60+ hour weeks.
Why the Model Fails for Executive Side Projects
Even if you could somehow adapt the 20% time model—asking one engineer to spend Fridays on your side project—the practical problems are insurmountable. One day per week produces approximately 6 hours of productive work after meetings, context switching, and ramp-up time. At that rate, an 8-week MVP takes 10 months.
The context switching problem is even worse with a once-per-week cadence. Your engineer spends four days in the core product codebase, then tries to make progress on a completely different project with different architecture, different requirements, and different tools. Monday morning, they switch back. The cognitive overhead destroys productivity on both projects.
Most importantly, the 20% time model creates a permanent, ongoing drain on your engineering capacity. An external MVP Sprint consumes zero internal capacity and delivers a finished product in 8 weeks. The comparison is not even close.
What Actually Works
Instead of adapting a broken model, use the approach that thousands of executive founders have proven effective: complete external development with executive oversight. You provide the vision, the domain expertise, and the strategic direction. A development partner like Sizzle provides the engineering team, the architecture, and the execution.
This model works because it respects the fundamental constraint: your engineering team's time is already fully allocated to the core business. Any side project model that draws from this finite resource pool is suboptimal by definition.
The executive who builds externally gets a better product (from a team focused 100% on the project), a faster launch (8 weeks versus 10+ months), and a healthier engineering team (zero distraction from the core roadmap). There is no rational argument for the 20% time approach.
Reframing Innovation Time at Your Company
If you want to encourage innovation at your company, do so through structured hackathons, innovation budgets, or internal incubation programs—all focused on company-owned innovations that benefit the core business.
Keep your personal side project completely separate. Fund it personally, build it externally, and run it independently. This clean separation protects your team, your company, and your reputation.
The most innovative executives are the ones who model the behavior they want to see: disciplined resource allocation, clear boundaries between initiatives, and a relentless focus on core business execution. Building your side project externally demonstrates all three.
Ready to Build Your Side Project?
Executives across every industry are turning side project ideas into real products—without pulling a single engineer off their core team. The key is working with a partner who understands both the technical execution and the strategic context of building alongside a day job.
Sizzle Ventures helps executives go from idea to launched product in as little as 90 days. Our MVP Sprint is built specifically for leaders who need speed without sacrificing quality—and without touching their internal dev team.
Ready to explore what's possible? Start a conversation with Sizzle about bringing your side project to life.