7 ms·

Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." My only successful product to this date is an app I built

Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." My only successful product to this date is an app I built because my wife asked me to. It is in an non-technical domain which I knew nothing about. I thought it was rather non-promising, but, since it was a pet-peeve of hers, I gave it a try. It was an awesome (and very bonding) experience - she explained me the problem(s), and I tried to simplify and structure it (didn't think gardening could be so complicated). Both of us were in their respective element, and from back and forth an app was forged. To this day I only half-jokingly call her my product manager. The app has brought in 5 digits last year and is rising. Last week, she briefly mentioned another problem, in another hobby domain of hers...

yroc92 7y ago
Any chance we could check it out?
- adamwi 7y ago
  https://m3u-editor.com/ https://m3u-editor.com/
  - codetrotter 7y ago
    This does not seem to be it. GP was talking about something to do with gardening. Edit: I see, you linked without reading what we were talking about, so you linked to the thing OP made, not the thing GP made.
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      Or they accidentally clicked the wrong level and linked there, since it was a little bit irritating that the OP did not provide a link - I mean I was about to ask for one.
  - adamwi 7y ago
    Sry for the confusion my bad, too late to edit unfortunately. As pointed out this is the link to the OP post that was missing initially as well.
- mduerksen 7y ago
  Sure: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/veggie-garden-planner/id1329927332 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/veggie-garden-planner/id132992... Suggestions are always welcome. My friend is also working on an Android version, though it doesn't have feature parity (yet).
  - cdnthrowaway 7y ago
    As a gardener myself... This looks super handy :)
  - libria 7y ago
    Really neat! Have you considered a cross platform framework like Flutter or React Native so you could deploy to both?
  - CallMeMarc 7y ago
    What a coincidence, you're in the same small town as the company I work for! ;) Great app btw and congratulations on last year's success :)
    - tasuki 7y ago
      The world is a small place! I once worked for a startup, one of our investors was from Herford, apparently got rich off Bitcoin. We visited their coworking space, it was pretty fun.
      - CallMeMarc 7y ago
        You're probably talking about Oliver Flaskämper, right? We're renting an office in his coworking space!
        tasuki 7y ago
        Hah, we might have met then!
        7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cosmodisk 7y ago
I remember giving an "advice" on this in one of my comments: developers can discover amazing things once they step away from their day to day stuff,where there are already so many things created that it's pretty hard to come up with something unique. Gardening fits the bill pretty well in this case.
wink 7y ago
Lucky you. I tried to make a game with my (then-girlfriend, now-) wife and it kinda fizzled out. Sure, took on too much, I'm not the best with bringing projects to launch, but whatever. I really can't say who spent more time (she did graphics, I wrote code) but to this day it's a bit of a sore point to talk about, just that we were both absolutely not happy with the outcome and see it as completely wasted time.
- mduerksen 7y ago
  Thanks for the sobering counterpoint to my perfect formula for success :) A game is really a tough one though.
  - keithnz 7y ago
    a game seems less about solving a problem though. Educational games can semi help with solving the problem of learning specific topics, but often hard to pull off well.
- sosuke 7y ago
  I'm sure you've tried but you might want to try and find another perspective. I did a similar joint project with my wife. At more than one point we butt heads. It was pretty tense to say the least I don't want to embellish. On the other hand we did create something and learned much about each other along the way. If you finished something that is a success.
  - wink 7y ago
    I'm not saying it can't be a positive experience, just telling a story how it absolutely wasn't in this case. We've got a ton of those stories, but creating a piece of software is probably not on the table in the next 1-2 decades. :)
- machinesbuddy 7y ago
  My wife and I also started making a game. Though the game didn't go far, I ended up learning new technologies specifically for the game to be scalable that landed me a nice job in another country.
ryantgtg 7y ago
My wife works in fashion and sometimes has SaaS ideas that fill a niche in her world, and which I never would have thought of myself. Unfortunately so far my programming skills are not up to snuff to fulfill her needs. But I’m working on it! The ideas generally fall into “my company is paying lots of money for some really powerful, complicated software, and we use about 5% of what it offers. Why not create cheaper software that just does the 5%?”
- weaksauce 7y ago
  what kinds of ideas?
wikibob 7y ago
Yep. eBay started as a website to sell Pez dispensers for the founders girlfriend. https://time.com/4013672/ebay-founded-story/ https://time.com/4013672/ebay-founded-story/
- delouvois 7y ago
  Yeah. That really was some PR story, completely fake. Omidiyar admitted it later on. I think the first thing to ever be listed on eBay was a broken laser pointer.
  - wikibob 7y ago
    How interesting! Thanks for posting, I had no idea and bought it even though I've been aware of other similar sorts of submarine PR stories. Do you have a link to the debunking?
    - delouvois 7y ago
      Sorry I don't often go on HN. I believe this was in an interview of Pierre Omidyar, although it may unfortunately be in French. He has not done much of these, so I think I may be able find it, I'll check.
      - delouvois 7y ago
        https://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/ https://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/ This is it, a link to the video and the transcript, just type laser on the and you'll find it !
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mcv 7y ago
It makes sense that building something that other people want to use is going to be more successful than building something primarily for yourself. Particularly if "other people" means "non-technical people", because anything you can build for yourself, any other technical person can also build for themselves. (Just look at the crazy number of javascript build tools and dependency managers.) But building for non-programmers, well, that's a potential customer base.
rimliu 7y ago
> Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success > factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." The first unicorn in my country was born the same way.
namelosw 7y ago
> "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." This also strikes me - After I live with my girlfriend for a while, I (or she surprisingly) found I have no interest in social media apps, discounts, traveling, eating tasty foods, mainstream movies/TV series... Being immune to popular things is nice sometimes. But not being able to have empathy with most people is a great disadvantage for product development, since markets which are too niche mostly cannot easily afford rents or just don't worth it at all. It's much nicer to "build ... my girlfriend a tool" TBH.

yroc92 7y ago

Any chance we could check it out?

adamwi 7y ago
https://m3u-editor.com/ https://m3u-editor.com/
- codetrotter 7y ago
  This does not seem to be it. GP was talking about something to do with gardening. Edit: I see, you linked without reading what we were talking about, so you linked to the thing OP made, not the thing GP made.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    Or they accidentally clicked the wrong level and linked there, since it was a little bit irritating that the OP did not provide a link - I mean I was about to ask for one.
- adamwi 7y ago
  Sry for the confusion my bad, too late to edit unfortunately. As pointed out this is the link to the OP post that was missing initially as well.
mduerksen 7y ago
Sure: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/veggie-garden-planner/id1329927332 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/veggie-garden-planner/id132992... Suggestions are always welcome. My friend is also working on an Android version, though it doesn't have feature parity (yet).
- cdnthrowaway 7y ago
  As a gardener myself... This looks super handy :)
- libria 7y ago
  Really neat! Have you considered a cross platform framework like Flutter or React Native so you could deploy to both?
- CallMeMarc 7y ago
  What a coincidence, you're in the same small town as the company I work for! ;) Great app btw and congratulations on last year's success :)
  - tasuki 7y ago
    The world is a small place! I once worked for a startup, one of our investors was from Herford, apparently got rich off Bitcoin. We visited their coworking space, it was pretty fun.
    - CallMeMarc 7y ago
      You're probably talking about Oliver Flaskämper, right? We're renting an office in his coworking space!
      - tasuki 7y ago
        Hah, we might have met then!
        7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cosmodisk 7y ago

I remember giving an "advice" on this in one of my comments: developers can discover amazing things once they step away from their day to day stuff,where there are already so many things created that it's pretty hard to come up with something unique. Gardening fits the bill pretty well in this case.

wink 7y ago

Lucky you. I tried to make a game with my (then-girlfriend, now-) wife and it kinda fizzled out. Sure, took on too much, I'm not the best with bringing projects to launch, but whatever. I really can't say who spent more time (she did graphics, I wrote code) but to this day it's a bit of a sore point to talk about, just that we were both absolutely not happy with the outcome and see it as completely wasted time.

mduerksen 7y ago
Thanks for the sobering counterpoint to my perfect formula for success :) A game is really a tough one though.
- keithnz 7y ago
  a game seems less about solving a problem though. Educational games can semi help with solving the problem of learning specific topics, but often hard to pull off well.
sosuke 7y ago
I'm sure you've tried but you might want to try and find another perspective. I did a similar joint project with my wife. At more than one point we butt heads. It was pretty tense to say the least I don't want to embellish. On the other hand we did create something and learned much about each other along the way. If you finished something that is a success.
- wink 7y ago
  I'm not saying it can't be a positive experience, just telling a story how it absolutely wasn't in this case. We've got a ton of those stories, but creating a piece of software is probably not on the table in the next 1-2 decades. :)
machinesbuddy 7y ago
My wife and I also started making a game. Though the game didn't go far, I ended up learning new technologies specifically for the game to be scalable that landed me a nice job in another country.

ryantgtg 7y ago

My wife works in fashion and sometimes has SaaS ideas that fill a niche in her world, and which I never would have thought of myself. Unfortunately so far my programming skills are not up to snuff to fulfill her needs. But I’m working on it! The ideas generally fall into “my company is paying lots of money for some really powerful, complicated software, and we use about 5% of what it offers. Why not create cheaper software that just does the 5%?”

weaksauce 7y ago
what kinds of ideas?

wikibob 7y ago

Yep. eBay started as a website to sell Pez dispensers for the founders girlfriend. https://time.com/4013672/ebay-founded-story/ https://time.com/4013672/ebay-founded-story/

delouvois 7y ago
Yeah. That really was some PR story, completely fake. Omidiyar admitted it later on. I think the first thing to ever be listed on eBay was a broken laser pointer.
- wikibob 7y ago
  How interesting! Thanks for posting, I had no idea and bought it even though I've been aware of other similar sorts of submarine PR stories. Do you have a link to the debunking?
  - delouvois 7y ago
    Sorry I don't often go on HN. I believe this was in an interview of Pierre Omidyar, although it may unfortunately be in French. He has not done much of these, so I think I may be able find it, I'll check.
    - delouvois 7y ago
      https://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/ https://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/ This is it, a link to the video and the transcript, just type laser on the and you'll find it !

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mcv 7y ago

It makes sense that building something that other people want to use is going to be more successful than building something primarily for yourself. Particularly if "other people" means "non-technical people", because anything you can build for yourself, any other technical person can also build for themselves. (Just look at the crazy number of javascript build tools and dependency managers.) But building for non-programmers, well, that's a potential customer base.

rimliu 7y ago

> Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success > factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." The first unicorn in my country was born the same way.

namelosw 7y ago

> "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." This also strikes me - After I live with my girlfriend for a while, I (or she surprisingly) found I have no interest in social media apps, discounts, traveling, eating tasty foods, mainstream movies/TV series... Being immune to popular things is nice sometimes. But not being able to have empathy with most people is a great disadvantage for product development, since markets which are too niche mostly cannot easily afford rents or just don't worth it at all. It's much nicer to "build ... my girlfriend a tool" TBH.