Mikael Cho is the co-founder and CEO of Crew, a marketplace that helps you find designers and developers for your website or app. And at one point in the business’s history, he says they were running straight towards a brick wall. They had three months of cash left in the bank, few customers converting and even fewer investors willing to take a meeting.

So, being a creative entrepreneur, what did Mikael do? Did he search for some mundane, well-wrought tactics on how to convert new business? (I mean, probably. Wouldn’t you? I mean your entire company is about to go under…)

But along with all those things, Mikael did one seemingly small thing: He published 10 stock photos that they just happened to already own onto a site for anyone to use.

He called this site Unsplash, and nobody on his team thought the project would do anything for the business. Today, the site generates 1 billion photo views every month, driving more paying customers than any marketing initiative in the company’s history. Apple uses Unsplash photos on its iPad pages. TIME Magazine generates fewer views for its cover photos than Unsplash’s top-ranked photos each month. The project is, on no uncertain terms, a massive success.

And yet Mikael didn’t aim for massive success. In fact, it was Unsplash that helped him realize what a side project is truly great for, whether you’re trying to find meaningful as a creator … or trying to save a startup.