14 ms·

Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

• mStreamTeam 7y ago
  Fog Machine https://fog.fm https://fog.fm It's not dead, but on an indefinite freeze. It lets anyone host a server from any device. The goal was to market it to users who want to host their own Minecraft servers, and IoT businesses that need to do on-premise hosting using an internet connection they don't control
• raksoras 7y ago
  https://www.scanfortable.com/ https://www.scanfortable.com/ No traction so far most likely because of founder not good at sales.
  • speps 7y ago
    Blaming it on the founder is harsh... Restaurants actually like having long queues all the way to outside. It shows they have a good reputation.
    • raksoras 7y ago
      I’m the said founder so Thanks for your kind words :)
  • WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
    This seems like a solid idea but it seems to me like it needs to be marketed on a per restaurant and it needs to be part of a more comprehensive suite that helps restauranteurs get customers into the restaurant, ultimately.
• tapejek 7y ago
  It was the opening of a flower shop. My business didn't make a profit.
  • jcims 7y ago
    Kudos for trying, having taken advantage of these recently it can really help people cope with loss. Finding one you trust is huge as they vary widely in care and competency. On the business side, the supply chain seems like a nightmare. Any specific lessons learned?
    • kozakor 7y ago
      Goods that quickly deteriorate hard to deal with
  • lardikanna 7y ago
    Flowers are difficult to contain small business. That's if it's a greenhouse.
• james_impliu 7y ago
  We launched a 1:1 tool for sales managers that used predictive analytics to suggest which deals needed to be discussed (ie Deal X looks like it's stuck). The reason being, when I was a sales manager, I found people would naturally talk about positive stuff rather than easily giving the whole picture. It failed because quite simply, when we tried to get other sales managers to use it for free (hoping it'd be popular), we found they wouldn't make the time to spend 2 mins planning a 1:1, probably as they're managed on 'selling deals, right now' in many cases, which is a bit sad! Learning: I should have read the Mom Test. With hindsight, I wish I'd built it for engineers based on Pull Requests (PR #181 had a ton of back and forth / NLP shows it got heated). It would have been fun if nothing else!
  • jcims 7y ago
    This would work for customer service ticket systems as well. Having been in that role, i definitely buried a few issues over the years that would have been better dealt with in the open.
  • jimkri 7y ago
    Thats an interesting idea. Have you tried talking with Directors/Executive/VPs? My thinking is to target sales orgs that are going through restructuring or are focusing on major improvements/goals. Execs would push their managers to setup 1:1s for development in the company and career
• jacquesm 7y ago
  If you start a side project with the goal to make money then you are making an error of definition. A side project should have the goal of teaching you something or being useful in some other way. If it doesn't then it has failed. If it makes money that's gravy but it should definitely not be the first factor in deciding whether or not it has failed.
  • modoc 7y ago
    FWIW success for my latest failed side project wasn't making money, it was having people use the tool/find it useful. It's free, no ads, etc... But I missed the mark on market fit.
  • greentrust 7y ago
    The goal of a side project can be whatever a person wants it to be. Make money. Learn something. Improve people's lives. Creative outlet. Your definition limits people's ambitions.
    • exclusiv 7y ago
      Agreed. I started a side project SaaS with the goal of being the top product in it's niche and making enough money that I could live on it passively (if needed) and I accomplished that. I do think you should be highly interested in the subject, so not doing only for the money. And also don't underestimate the value of recruiting subject matter experts to help you. But when I look at side projects for myself, I look at who's making money already in a subject I care about and if I can do it better. In the things I failed at in the past, I was chasing new things that I wasn't particularly interested in or didn't get the subject matter expertise required to succeed - one had an ad supported business model which just ended up causing me to try creating 2 businesses effectively at once instead of 1. Many people underestimate those things and I did that early on and failed. As I've gotten older I mostly look at things where I can compete and just outperform versus trying to do something novel. A lot of people come to me w ideas and get discouraged when they find out that competition already exists for their idea. Very hard to do something entirely new and succeed financially.
• ron22 7y ago
  A crowdfunding site for product feature requests. Stripe closed my account before I was able to launch as it was "unable to accept payments for crowdfunding"..... Their marketing doesn't match their policies.
  • james_impliu 7y ago
    This is a really cool idea. You could add a tag to feature request issues that it'd read from, maybe as a github app or something. I run an OS repo and it'd be really cool to be able to get through them all faster with a bit of money to pay a freelancer, for example. I imagine the users-paying side would be very hard to find though. I'd also love to be able to attach a bounty to PRs with this money, although quality control would make me worry it'd be hard. I imagine Patreon is never an enormous sum for people because the money is goodwill - it isn't tied to receiving anything back. You could make it like this. I'm surprised there wasn't some other way of doing this - clearly other crowd funding sites exists, what do they use?
    • ron22 7y ago
      For open source issues there's already a few solutions, one to look at is https://issuehunt.io/ https://issuehunt.io/ (they use Stripe) Most use Stripe. I guess it's just a case by case thing. I really don't know why they rejected me when they advertise that exact use case [1]. But the policy I was directed to says the opposite [2]. [1] https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/connect-crowdfunding https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/connect-crowdfunding [2] https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses
  • ravenstine 7y ago
    > Stripe closed my account before I was able to launch as it was "unable to accept payments for crowdfunding"..... Their marketing doesn't match their policies. Wow. I understand it's their right to do this, but that's total horseshit IMO. I guess maybe crowdfunding is subject to too many refunds, but IDK.
  • edwinwee 7y ago
    Stripe supports crowdfunding sites. I’d be happy to take a second look if you email me at edwin@stripe.com.
• modoc 7y ago
  https://www.thechillypony.com https://www.thechillypony.com An email alert for horse owners/barn managers when the forecast will be colder than a configured threshold temperature. It's saved us a lot of mental energy this winter (having to check not just the forecast but also making sure to check the temp at 3 AM with windchill factored in, etc...). Got zero interest from various equestrian forums. shrug. I taught myself Spring Boot through so that's a win!
  • NoOneNew 7y ago
    Damn, knowing some horse owners, I don't see why they wouldn't like the extra reminder. Sure, you should always know yourself. But a little backup wouldn't hurt. Are you still pushing it? I don't think you should give up on that as just a magnet idea, at the very least. Maybe try fleshing out an extra feature/service? Out of curiosity, how are you handling the emails? In house or 3rd party service?
    • modoc 7y ago
      I'm going to leave it up, and ideally add to it/improve it, but I'm not actively pushing it because I haven't figured out how to do so effectively... I'm currently using SES to send the outbound notifications.
  • botwriter 7y ago
    forums are a tricky one. It needs multiple accounts to shill for you and praise you. I've got BHW and a few other forums wrapped around my little finger.
    • tyrust 7y ago
      Contributing to the destruction of online trust is a pretty uncool method of growth hacking.
      • williamdclt 7y ago
        I'm hoping they're talking about multiple legitimate account, held by people that legitimately and individually support what you do. If not, shame
• cdiamand 7y ago
  I launched, and have now shut down oppsdaily.com. https://oppslist.com https://oppslist.com is still up as a zombie. We asked people about problems or inefficiencies in their industry that could be solved by Saas products and then sent those ideas out as a daily newsletter. I learned a lot, but had difficulty making money with it. Also, I'm not totally sure my heart was in it. I think about it a lot. I've recently launched a new project - https://topstonks.com https://topstonks.com where I'm exploring this new speculative culture of investing emanating from places like reddit's Wallstreetbets, and 4chan's Biz. We currently look at the most mentioned equities and send out a list of those. Once or twice a week we'll post an analysis with some comments from those communities (heads up, if you're easily offended, the language can be a bit crude.) There are bigger plans on the roadmap, but we're just starting w/ the newsletter for now.
  • NoOneNew 7y ago
    Those are actual, real world requests in the oppslist?
    • cdiamand 7y ago
      They are responses to surveys. Not users who signed in to post the idea. But yeah, they are real people.
  • supercall 7y ago
    how did you survey people? if you dont mind me asking
    • cdiamand 7y ago
      Hey! I started with Mechanical turk, and then did fair amount of cold emailing.
  • bcherny 7y ago
    I was a subscriber for a while. Fun idea!
  • Geee 7y ago
• RikNieu 7y ago
  https://coddle.app/ https://coddle.app/ Coddle is a service that checks if your sites are online, how fast they load, and lets you know if something is wrong. As a bonus, it takes screen shots of your sites with a selection of device options. It didn't pick up the traction I was expecting, guess this is not really something people need. I learned a lot making it though and will use it for my own sites, so not a complete loss.
  • CaptArmchair 7y ago
    Here's my (uninvited) observations: You seem to have a strong focus on persona's: makers, bloggers, designers, agencies. But have you actually checked if these specific target groups need a service like yours? And if they are willing to pay for it? The vast majority of makers, bloggers and designers, arguably will use cloud services or platforms to get their content out. Those who do host their own website, probably are either tech savvy, or rely on a third party to take care of the operational side. Agencies either go with dedicated hosting parties who include monitoring services in their SLA's already. There's also this weird spread between individuals - bloggers, makers, designers - and agencies, which is a totally different market. You are competing with others who offer the same service either as a part of their offering or as a separate offering but better and far more focussed. Like these guys: https://ohdear.app/ https://ohdear.app/ For instance, you offer basic monitoring, but you also add this concept of "snapshots" and it's entirely unclear how that tacks onto monitoring. Moreover, you're vaguely stating "Coddle will help you check that your work looks tight on various different devices." and "You can choose to take snapshots with a variety of different device options too. Perhaps you could use some of these in your marketing and designs too?" So, what are you offering here to prospective clients? The other guys simply solve one single question through 6 distinct parameters: Is my site still up? Yes or no? That's it. It's crystal clear what they do. They focus on the quality of their service. Do one thing, but execute it to a T. For instance, by offering all kinds of API integrations for their uptime monitoring service with push notifications. Then there's the pricing. It's unclear if those prices are per month, week or year. Also, how does the "checks frequencey" make any difference to the customer? And what does "check logs" mean? What are you actually selling here? Moreover, the other guys offer their service - 50 sites - for 25% cheaper then yours. Plus, their pricing contains far more tiers to cater to different segments of the market. Notice also how they don't differentiate their users. It doesn't matter who you are. The only differentiator they have: do you have this problem? Yes / No. If yes, then this is what we offer without thrills. I don't endorse Oh Dear app. It was the first thing that came to my mind when I clicked on your link. I think you might find it useful to see a comparison on how that might help you in the future. I think my biggest tip would be to clearly define which problem your solving, make sure you ruthlessly stick to the scope (does it help solve the problem) - no matter how interesting tech like snapshots might be - and you make sure your communication / marketing is unambiguous about the solution you provide.
• kenforthewin 7y ago
  https://quickq.app https://quickq.app I'm not willing to spend money on marketing it yet and didn't get any dedicated users after launching on all the usual platforms. Also competitors in the b2b space (stackoverflow for teams and others) have a huge head start.
  • darkhorse13 7y ago
    This is a great idea, but not sure if you can survive the competition.
• simon_weber 7y ago
  https://repominder.com https://repominder.com sends release reminders for your open source projects. It works by monitoring the diff between your development branch and how you release (eg tags or another branch). It works well for me and one other power user, but hasn't grown beyond that. My guess is it's just a failure of marketing -- I make lots of these projects that scratch an itch and then just hope people will find them. At least it's cheap to run ($2/month for the vps plus <$10/year for the domain).
  • elcomet 7y ago
    Where do you run the vps?
    • simon_weber 7y ago
      I've moved everything to https://buyvm.net https://buyvm.net after trying a bunch of cheaper providers. They've been good to me for the ~two years I've been using them: no outages and quick support. If you end up liking them, here's my affiliate link: https://my.frantech.ca/aff.php?aff=3397 https://my.frantech.ca/aff.php?aff=3397
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• bckygldstn 7y ago
  For my first real coding project I set up a book price comparison website. It relied heavily on third-party APIs and scrapers for prices, search, book details, currency conversion, and the PaaS hosting service. Over 8 years many of those services slowly shut down until the site didn't work any more. It was a fun project, both for learning to code, and for better understanding the tradeoffs around third-party dependencies. I wrote more about it here: https://www.ajnisbet.com/blog/maintaining-a-zero-maintenance-website https://www.ajnisbet.com/blog/maintaining-a-zero-maintenance...
• stakkur 7y ago
  Last year, I built a local/regional tech job listing website, targeted at helping 'older' people (35ish and up, of any gender) looking to find work--experienced or not. $100 listings. Plenty of traffic. Totally failed. Started MVP by pulling in listings from elsewhere, but couldn't get a single listing. Why did it fail? I think because: 1. Companies had zero interest in targeting 'older' workers in tech, despite them being the second-largest discrimination group (after women) in technology. I got more than one 'why would we target them?' response. 2. I didn't solicit the right people (or in the right way) for listings 3. Inexperience: I'm not very skilled at marketing, and saw a real need but clumsily approached it
  • botwriter 7y ago
    you could say 'get woke go broke' applied. Why would companies put themselves at a net disadvantage by actively targetting older SE's who are more likely to know their rights and not accept 18 hour days.
    • Turing_Machine 7y ago
      Maybe because they want to avoid the chickens coming home to roost from all those submarine age discrimination lawsuits that are out there just waiting to be filed. Ever notice how U.S. flight attendants tend to be older nowadays, compared to the Cute Young Things you see in old movies (and on many non-U.S. airlines)? The U.S. airlines had to learn a harsh (and expen$ive) lesson there. Some of them are still learning it... United recently had to pay two flight attendants $800,000 apiece after a jury decided that they'd been fired because of their age rather than the technical infractions United had used for cover. Edit: if I were the OP, I'd collect a bunch of age discrimination cases where Big Bucks had been awarded to the employees and make those part of my marketing material. Edit #2: in engineering, specifically, in 2017 Lockheed Martin was ordered to pay $51.5 million to an engineer for age discrimination.
  • og27 7y ago
    Hey, I might be in a similar boat, building a job listing, still I haven't pushed it out yet. Is there a way to get in touch with you?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• bcherny 7y ago
  Lease.ly, a common app for apartment rentals. - In SF (a seller’s market), prospective tenants only wanted to use it if their prospective landlords asked for it, or if it gave them an advantage over other prospective tenants - Landlords have their existing process that works, and didn’t want to change it. Things like comparison views for tenants, pulling in social media info, and automatic credit reports were helpful, but since for most SF landlords getting new tenants is low frequency (unlike, say, NY), the value was low For each, the value prop was unclear. If I were to try it again, I’d try to understand the market better and find the right subset of landlords and tenants, and the right geo, to focus on first.
  • h00dui 7y ago
    did you pivot to VIN #s?? I'm interested in seeing what you had/have for lease.ly with regards to the common application.
    • bcherny 7y ago
      VIN #s?
• dt3ft 7y ago
  https://20-things.com https://20-things.com - not counting on it to become anything, but as a learning sideproject, I'm glad I spent so much time developing it.
• danfang 7y ago
  https://get.thread-app.com https://get.thread-app.com It's an ad-free social network that is supposed to be a richer and more private alternative to Facebook. It's been adopted by my closest friends and family, but hasn't grown much beyond these initial users. The product itself tries to do a ton of stuff: messaging, photo sharing, event planning, location sharing, video sharing, etc. Perhaps that's part of the problem -- it doesn't do one thing particularly above and beyond existing solutions.
  • goldcd 7y ago
    I've been running a very shitty threaded message board for years ("running" being a very loose term - I mean it's still there). There is a parallel facebook group that exists solely to tell me when I've f'd up. The people still on it, are the people who use it as a "separate space" to all the rest of the bazillion dollar alternatives - hellbent on shoving adverts, tracking and all the rest. I'm only going off on this tangent, as maybe what appears to be lack of traction, could also be (if you squint hard) a benefit. Could you cookie-cutter out instances of your product? If you can, then maybe you could position it as a micro-ecosystem for events people don't immediately want to integrate into their existing mega-social world. e.g. Weddings. Could on-board all people invited to the app (click this link to say if you're going or not), let them get to know each other a bit first, share photos they took of the event, plan stag events, enter dietary requirements, link to the wedding list, buy a nice photo from the official photographer, send a message to that bridesmaid you thought you were getting on well with, click on faces in photos to see who they are etc etc.
    • rolleiflex 7y ago
      Have you thought about using an email group instead of running your own thing? I'm asking this because this is kind of what I'm doing — threaded email groups that act as a message board within the emails. There's a few people using us to do similar things as you, and since we only charge for admins (i.e. you) and not the number of mail receivers, it'd be dirt cheap since you'd only need one seat. In any case, definitely cheaper (and zero maintenance) than running a message board. It's here at https://aether.app/email/#/force https://aether.app/email/#/force. If that turns out to be your thing hit me up and I can extend the trial for you as far as you need to give it a shot.
• nubb 7y ago
  Could someone link the referenced post on successful side projects? Thanks.
  • icer2312 7y ago
    I think this may be one of them https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22309316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22309316
• embrassingstuff 7y ago
  My situation is the complete opposite. I have a great idea, did some decks/mockups/simulation's. Was actually offered 6-figure angel investment (I passed). Yet haven't been able to make reall progress with an MVP. I am a very experienced developer, but never did any web/saas stuff. I feel embarrassed. I have tried joining recently a tracking and discussion forum and it's been really helpful.
  • stazz1 7y ago
    Web is its own beast -- even movie making software has to be learned, certainly true of new software domains. I'd recommend researching your tools thoroughly before diving in, and finally when you choose a few candidate tools try and build small prototypes in each that would become modular chunks of your main app. In this way you can evaluate which tools you'd like to use from some low-risk investment of time and effort, and walk away with clear tool commitment. Once you commit to a toolset, you can dive into development as much as your toolset accommodates expression and feedback. I'd recommend using something that has a REPL (Clojure/script with Selmer and even Python with Django have this) which is a way to get immediate feedback from changes in your code. The feedback loop in traditional web development is way too long to make responsive apps in a reasonable amount of time. Definitely find forums for the tools you are using and ask questions in the beginners channels. No need to be embarrassed, if you've never held a cup it's not a big deal, it just takes time to learn how to hold one. Then time to walk to the river, then time to scoop some water into the cup. But eventually, piece by piece, you'll get a delicious drink that satiates, and you'll know how to fashion a cup even more cleanly for the next time(s) you need a new cup. Aha, at this point one can start seeing code reusability, state management via atomic actions through swaps, and functional approaches as fundamental to achieving incremental progress. Laying the foundation hardly looks like progress, but actual progress is impossible without an excellent foundation.
  • mariushn 7y ago
    Let me know if you could use a partner.
• ilaksh 7y ago
  People need to learn the difference between something being widely popular and something being good and achieving it's technical goals. My project vintagesimulator.com did not become popular, but that doesn't mean it failed. It just means I did not put enough time and effort into creating content and promoting it. I achieved the technical goals. Despite a lack of interest I would never call it a failure.
• woile 7y ago
  https://rentee.app https://rentee.app It's for renting apartments, houses and rooms. We failed at marketing. You can publish, search by place, monument and whatever you want. Our idea since the beginning was to learn and be able to deliver something (with some friends). Next steps are to learn more about growing communities and publicity.
• beatgammit 7y ago
  Mine failed before I could really launch it. Basically, I wanted to do a financial app to help people get out of debt, but the company I was going to use changed their fee structure just before I launched, causing transaction costs to eat all of my margin. I may try to relaunch if I can find a good partner, but it just seems the anything related to finance is going to be a huge pain. I'm currently looking at other options.
  • therealbobby 7y ago
    You could just raise your prices. Look at the value it provides and price it accordingly. Do not price it based on what you personally can tolerate. Different people are willing to pay different prices for a product that works. Start high and work downwards. Find the sweet spot.
• jotm 7y ago
  Spares Outlet - selling home appliance parts salvaged from used washers/dryers/fridges/ovens. I even developed testing methods that don't require the control board to be on an actual machine. It's the hardest part to test properly, I wanted my buyers to get a fully working item that would last. Returns would've really cut into profits, too. That and using intrepid Russian hacking/engineering to make most control boards compatible with any model (essentially a firmware reflash, but by God do the manufacturers make it hard). Really proud of it now, it helped hundreds of people and small businesses while being as environmentally friendly as it gets - all of those broken appliances were headed for landfills in third world countries, and I feel like I actually made a difference. Failed because of my departure from the UK and losing those suppliers. Looking at finding new ones, so far no one wants to work with me, they either sell refurbished complete units or just send all their scrap to landfills. Easier, I guess. Not finding a partner or any employees was a huge part, I even automated replies for buyers - based on specific keywords, it would reply stating availability of parts and delivery time. Again, proud of that, but having more people working with me would've been better.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• total_plus 7y ago
  My two latest failed projects were a SaaS to help landlords manage their properties, including rent payment management, and an analytics tool that consolidated data from real estate property in a excel so people looking to buy or rent could analyse the options in a more effective way than going property by property in the listing site. Both projects failed because I could not attract users in a consistent way. I could not find any paying user during the 2 months that each project stayed online. Nevertheless, it was a good learning experience and it was one of the motivations to derive the project that I am working now (https://turbovar.com/ https://turbovar.com/), which is a full-stack Java Web APP template.
  • kioleanu 7y ago
    Hi, I am in your target for Turbovar, but it's not clear to me why I would chose it (and pay) instead of JHipster
    • total_plus 7y ago
      Good question. I am not a specialist in JHpister, but I think that two of the reasons that would drive you to choose TurboVar are: you prefer code over configuration and want more control over the code base; you do not want to learn/use Spring on the server side/back-end; Feel free to leave any additional question or feedback.
      • kioleanu 7y ago
        Hey thanks for answering. I'm actually thinking of building something like this if my current project fails, but on different programming languages. I'd love to bounce some ideas back and forth with you. Could you drop me an e-mail at the e-mail I have listed in my profile, please?
        • total_plus 7y ago
          Sure. I am aware of some other products with similar premises that are based in other programming languages. I will drop you an e-mail.
• NoOneNew 7y ago
  A little bit ago I stopped a twitter bot I created for game development news. It was a php script that aggregated gamedev news from ~10 different sources every hour. It took the raw headline, converted them in tweets, then filled up the remaining character count with a link and #hashtags. I had a safe list of hashtags that it was supposed to match against in the headline first, convert those if possible. Then fill in hashtags at the end, setup a drip feed and post a random tweet every ~30 min. I randomized the time and set a window between 7am-9pm. Gained 1k following in about 2 or 3 months. But after investigating twitter traffic, I noticed most followers are bots and tweets I put up trying to sell some game assets gained lots of likes and retweets, but never a sale. It was a fun project on its own and confirmed that I'm not missing out by avoiding twitter. The web scraping portion was actually the most fun to it.
• ad31mar 7y ago
  https://binnedart.com https://binnedart.com A marketplace to connect artists looking to recoup the cost of supplies with art lovers who are looking for a bargain. Didn't pick up, even tho the initial feedback was great - guess the demand wasn't there after all, from both sides. It's still live, only losing money. https://damnshort.com https://damnshort.com Recently launched a service to serve nice (or so I thought) dotcoms at well below market value, however it doesn't seem to be picking up the traction I was expecting.
  • juped 7y ago
    For the latter - that's because I can find better domains than the ones on your front page for free by looking at expireddomains.net every so often. Also, many have given up on .com, in which case they may use something like park.io for a shot at prime singleword.io domains. Domains are a tough business.
  • Igrom 7y ago
    Thanks for linking to Binned Art - I am very fond of both the concept and the website. Could you delve more into how you've managed the project? How did you market it? How significant are your operating costs or losses?
  • bmm6o 7y ago
    I really like the idea of binnedart. I checked out the site. Are the prices USD? Measurements in cm seem incongruous. And maybe I'm not really the target market, but i didn't see anything i liked.
    • ad31mar 7y ago
      Good catch, thanks! I changed the currency from EUR to USD recently and forgot about the measurements. As for not liking anything, I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• 1337n008 7y ago
  one of my last projects was a website for real estate(including warehouses, garages, parking spaces, offices...) rental and sale that was made for global(!) market with main goal being to get rid of real estate agents and connecting buyers and sellers directly, for free. i would sell ad space as source of income. i had no problem paying for the infra out of my pocket from the start so that was not an issue. it had a UI with a big map with a filter with similar feeling to airbnb. one of the main features was the filter itself - it worked on scoring system that took the criteria and ranked all ads within selected area accordingly, so if all criteria matched it gave it 100% score so there was no sorting by price, area, distance or anything typical like that. it had many more features but that is not important. anyhow, i closed it down because today, in order to succeed, your idea or execution does not matter. you need to put all your money into promotion. it is not like in the early 2000s when you had a chance to build something new(software, service, ...). today, everything has been done and all markets have its established players. so even if you do it better, it does not matter anymore. it is only about budget for PR. and i was not willing to spend a ton of money on ads so I shut it down. another project I made around that time as well was an online website builder service. drag&drop essentially. but even after it has been finished and connected to braintree payments and functional invoicing i came to realize that the PR is again a massive issue and that it would take a lot of time to build new widgets and try to compete with the best in the market. so i closed it down. my third project that i will mention here is one that i am working on close to 10 years now. this is a big one. i stopped and got back to it multiple times. it evolved in concept, architecture and all other areas. currently the project's goal is to provide a single place for online B2B and B2C. if i would be able to get it up and running it would seriously threaten big players like amazon, aliexpress, shopifiy and so on. the thing is that i came to realize that for this iteration(as i have mentioned, it evolved from something simpler throughout the years into something much, much, bigger) to work, I am just unable to do it myself. It is way too big of a project for a single person. In the past in its simplified version(it started as a shopping cart software back in the day) I was betting on the fact that I can overcome money with time, which I had plenty of(still do). But you see, 10 years later, I am still not done. I took various paths in architecture and it just kept on evolving and finding itself. I reacted to the current state of the markets and tech and so it go me to where I am right now - massive concept where time no longer suffices. So I am currently trying to figure out how to simplify the architecture so it could be made by a single person within a year. So far I am stuck. I would have gave up a long time ago but this is just something I don't see being beating with a better idea to do in my spare time. It also served as a learning tool that allowed me to get to be a pro at what I do and earn and live like I do. So I have lost no time by working on this at all. One could say that this is my Moby Dick :)
• harrisreynolds 7y ago
  Chartly [1] is a project I worked on for about a year and launched but is no longer under active development. It failed because we spend so much time building lots of random features and never got much feedback. In retrospect I think the data vis market is just too saturated to get noticed at this point. I am sure it is possible for someone, but it wasn't for us. Current "side" project is Webase [1] where we incorporate many ideas that were in Chartly, but addresses a broader and much earlier market. [1] https://chart.ly https://chart.ly [2] https://www.webase.com https://www.webase.com
  • brahyam 7y ago
    Hey!, tried Webase and looks very good. While testing it I found something that could be a bug?. I created a new app, and a new table with just one string field, and then whenever I create a new row it gets added twice. (Name of the app/table is Test App/Robot). Keep it up!
• aberry273 7y ago
  While I'm still working on it, I currently have 0 DAU and have been in a perpetual MVP / beta for a while now. I'm still collecting signups however it doesn't have great growth numbers at this stage. https://bustl-app.com https://bustl-app.com A Trello + Zapier productivity app that acts like a PA, scheduling your events, reminders, etc. There's going to be a point sometime this year where I decide if its dead in the water or whether to keep going.
• jotto 7y ago
  https://www.roast.io/ https://www.roast.io/ I launched it shortly after https://www.prerender.cloud https://www.prerender.cloud, which server-side renders JavaScript SPAs, to make integration easier. Prerender.cloud kind of sells itself, but roast.io does not. I've wondered if it appears too complex.
  • winrid 7y ago
    Maybe try partnerships with paid but self hosted software, is that a thing?
  • snisarenko 7y ago
    Dude, you need better SEO. I heard about your product last year and didn't bookmark it. I was trying to find it on google with no luck. (talking about prerender) Also what does https://www.roast.io/ https://www.roast.io/ do better than netlify. I think you should highlight it on your homepage. Thats your main competitor as far as I see it.
• impostervt 7y ago
  https://www.sprinterval.com/ https://www.sprinterval.com/ It's like Couch-2-5k for sprint intervals. I think that not a lot of people are into sprint intervals, or understand why they should be. Got around 70 users of the app per day on ios&android combined, but just couldn't get it to get any more traction. Pretty much mothballed now, removed from app stores.
  • bko 7y ago
    Fitness apps are brutal. I have my failed fitness side project [0]. I thought a killer feature would be to have the popular 7-minute workout free with nice images, and customizable intervals. I even paid for some adwords and facebook but the market it brutal. The funny thing is alternatives were at the time (IMO) not better. They were corny, had ads or crazy permissions. I also made a free calculator as I was frustrated no ad-free calculator existed for ipad (at least one first few search pages). That was a dud too. Sometimes having a good product is not enough [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twelve31labs.lujafitness&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twelve31la... [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/luja-fitness/id997566972 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/luja-fitness/id997566972 [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opencalc/id1403173317 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opencalc/id1403173317
    • gherkinnn 7y ago
      Thanks for making OpenCalc. I can’t explain why Apple doesn’t add a calc app to iPad OS. And the amount of shitty, ad-infested alternatives borders on horrifying.
    • wolco 7y ago
      Apps look great. Where it fails is the thumbnail. It has the correct feel but something about it prevents me from considering clicking it. What did you use to make the logos?
      • bko 7y ago
        Affinity Designer
• hermitcrab 7y ago
  Launched https://www.easydatatransform.com https://www.easydatatransform.com earlier this year. It has sold some licenses and I wouldn't call it a failure yet, but the visit to download ratio is low compared to my other 2 commercial products. Not sure why. I'm pretty sure the traffic is targeted, I am solving a real problem and the website explains what it does. Any feedback would be welcome!
  • 3pt14159 7y ago
    Hey I remember you from the early days of HN! Please take this feedback as coming from a good place with good intentions. 1. The website and product would benefit from having a designer involved. There is a design fashion that changes about every five years or so and you're a couple cycles behind. 2. Get someone that needs your software to talk through the copy. "Merge, split, clean, dedupe, reformat and more" into what? From where? Is this online or downloadable? Does this work for my specific workflow? 3. Screenshot looks like it is on a Mac. Is it Mac only? If not, put a Windows screenshot right next to it. I know after you scroll down it shows Windows support, but that can be easily missed. 4. Block quote testimonials: Bold or highlight the most relevant part. I'm not reading a paragraph, I'm scanning. 5. Fix the about page. Many Excel files have sensitive data and people click about to make sure that they can trust the company. You need better, more reassuring copy and a better picture. Asking for feedback is fine, but the current copy borders on "this is really new and may not be reliable" territory. 6. If your target demographic is Excel pros, explain why user defined functions or macros couldn't or shouldn't accomplish the same task that you help with. Hope this helps and best of luck!
    • hermitcrab 7y ago
      Thanks for the feedback. 1. It looks pretty modern to me. I'm not selling to web designers, so I'm too bothered with keeping up with all the latest trends, I just need the web design to be 'good enough' to be credible. 2. I think that information is all on the front page, isn't it? I don't want to make the tag line too wordy. 3. The screenshot is Mac. But it says Windows and Mac further down. 4. I've kept the testimonials short, but bolding might be worth a try. 5. Pretty much the same 'about' page seems fine for my other 2 products. Also, no-one much goes to the 'about' page. One of the advantages of my product is that your data stays on your computer. 6. Fair comment, but I don't think they would be on my website if they we happy with just Excel!
• hermitcrab 7y ago
  I wrote up an analysis of 13 failed commercial software products here: https://successfulsoftware.net/2010/05/27/learning-lessons-from-13-failed-software-products/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2010/05/27/learning-lessons-f... it is from 2010, but I think it still pretty relevant. (TL:DR mostly a lack of market or marketing)
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• __john 7y ago
  https://atlas-api.com/ https://atlas-api.com/ I probably need to promote it better, and get a better landing page set up. It could probably benefit from an interactive map as well.
• redman25 7y ago
  https://parepdf.com https://parepdf.com A web app for comparing PDF files. Figured that a more intuitive comparison experience would be an obvious advantage. It didn’t gain traction although I still use it personally on a weekly basis.
  • eschutte2 7y ago
    Hey, cool idea and implementation. I think even a single screenshot (of a diffed part in the sample PDF) front and center on the homepage would go a long way, if you ever update it.
    • redman25 7y ago
      That's not a bad idea, I had an example in an earlier comp design, but removed it for some reason...
  • NicoJuicy 7y ago
    Diffpdf would be a much better name, I think
• WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
  Given what I've read here, it seems that most people here forget or don't know that most apps need a strong marketing plan from the start to give it a decent chance to succeed. Writing an app that sells itself is very rare and even if it takes off it needs constant marketing. If you read the financials from most software companies that are public you'll see that marketing costs are way higher than development and maintenance costs. It's the primary way to get customers to buy or use your app.
  • umvi 7y ago
    Why can't you build it first, and then market it? You can pretend it is still under development if that will convince more people to sign up, but I don't understand why marketing needs to be there from day 1. But also marketing seems like a money black hole to me. I could sink tons of money into marketing and have little to show for it.
    • stanmancan 7y ago
      You can, but it takes time to build an audience and find potential customers. Starting that process early can make all the difference. If it takes 3 months to build that’s 3 months you could have been finding potential users.
      • gentleman11 7y ago
        And up to 3 extra months of product development time if the marketing takes a lot of time too. The time cost of marketing is important to be wary of - it really has to pay off because it costs you completed features (as a small team). The marketing is critical but I’m just saying there is a cost also
    • erikrothoff 7y ago
      As developers we often assume ”build it and they will come”. Or that marketing or sales is something that is bolted on afterwards. What we forget is that marketing is a full time job that requires a full set of skills, experience and intuitions to do well. If you build something for 6 months and THEN start the marketing, its like starting from scratch all over again. You have zero experience to work from or iterate on and havent built any of the foundation. It’s like waiting to build the backend until the frontend is 100% complete. While building assumptions change based on things you learn. Marketing for your product works the same way. By putting the effort into marketing (meaning any form of reaching out: blog posts, direct sales, social media or even paid) you might even avoiding building features that nobody wanted anyway.
• dukoid 7y ago
  http://flowgrid.org http://flowgrid.org Idea was that on mobile, programming would be simpler graphically, taking advantage of the touch screen. It wasn't really. Or I gave up too early... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • rusticpenn 7y ago
    I think you should explicitly market it as an educational tool for kids.
    • dukoid 7y ago
      One option might be to turn it into a game but I was really aiming for something that I might use myself on a boring flight...
  • quickthrower2 7y ago
    Well scratch is popular as a learning tool. I think there is something in the space between “code” and “nocode”.
• Tepix 7y ago
  Came up with an innovative 360° camera accessory. Built a first functioning prototype. Then i came up with a much improved design concept and changed way too much at once about the product (electronics including SoC, code, development tools, case, other components). It also required a PCB at that point. It overwhelmed me with my limited time budget, extinguished my motivation and has been sitting unfinished in my basement since. I guess hardware is hard. I hope to get back to it someday, perhaps when VR enjoys its next comeback.
• bunya017 7y ago
  Catalog platform for SMEs in Nigeria. Clothing vendors (whom were my primary target) find difficulty putting their products online, major ecommerce players in the country require one to be residing in Lagos before one can use their platforms, and most them took lion share of the profits. I felt a catalog platform (where no buying and selling between vendors and their customers occur) will be best, since the vendors prefer dealing with customers directly as they get their money in full. I ran it by some vendor friends and stranger vendors, they promised to signup for the beta phase. When the project was in beta, they bailed. Without users to help me with feedback, I felt demotivated and abandoned it. I think the fault is from my failure to get an MVP ready asap, I ran into problems with my PC at that time. To add salt to injury, whatsapp business accounts added catalogue feature, pushing me out of market I never entered. After all, if the vendors can get it for free, why pay. I'll shut the server down month ending and focus on freelancing gigs. link to a demo store/catalog on the platform https://dashboard.getgalleria.com.ng/stores/galleria-demo-store https://dashboard.getgalleria.com.ng/stores/galleria-demo-st... edit: Fix typo
• askvictor 7y ago
  Column Tools - a FOSS (&free) add-on for Google Sheets that adds missing functionality (e.g. horizontal sort, convert columns to named ranges). Google's increasingly onerous, specific, and ever-changing requirements for market place listings takes up too much time for a free project. I could try to monetize, but then I'm having to spend too much time in bureaucracy-land (between working out billing and complying with Google's requirements) rather than making good product. At least the source is there for anyone who wants to set up themselves.
  • saadalem 7y ago
    Can you give tips about this ? I'm trying to build a Gmail add-on that works with Spreadsheet(contacts + headers to filter) and reverse chrono counting unread emails
    • askvictor 7y ago
      Tips about what specifically?
      • saadalem 7y ago
        About working with Spreadsheet as database ? About running it automatically etc..
        • askvictor 7y ago
          I used Google Scripts for everything. Can programmatically read and edit a Google Sheet easily enough; true DB queries are trickier. Running is based on triggers you can set up for a script; or I think a script can programmatically set them up. Look up the Google Developer site; it's a good resource.
          • saadalem 7y ago
            Ok thank you, so the google server is always running and fetching, this is actually something good ! TY
• benibela 7y ago
  My library app (http://www.videlibri.de http://www.videlibri.de) is failing since 2006 It reminds the users when they need to return books borrowed from public libraries to protect them from paying late fees. It is extremely useful for library users, but they do not know that it exists. First I wrote it for Windows and Linux, told the librarians about it and they said, we do not want any apps. Now the libraries have Android apps, so I ported it to Android, but when I tell the librarians about it, they say, we already have an app, we do not need two apps. But they still do not Windows and Linux apps. I cannot test it without traveling in person to the public library in Germany and renting some books, so when the librarians changes something on their webpage, it stops working; and I cannot fix it, until someone from there tells me what was changed, so it is losing functionality every year
  • karatestomp 7y ago
    Do German libraries not email reminders? Also I usually shy away from projects that can be replaced with a “hey Siri”—if people aren’t already taking the 5 seconds to set a reminder, they probably don’t care that much.
    • benibela 7y ago
      Some send email reminders and some do not. But I primarily wrote it because of a library that sends reminders. I borrowed books there, did not set a reminder myself, since they always send reminders, and then they did not send reminders. "We had a mail server failure", and then I had to pay 60€, because they cannot maintain their servers properly. And it has more features. It also renews the books automatically to extend the lending period. Siri cannot renew the books. And it keeps a list of all books. Before I had it, I had read books that I would like to read again, but I do not remember which books that were
      • karatestomp 7y ago
        Whoa. German libraries don’t mess around with the late fees I guess.
      • 7y ago
• WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Those that will eventually happen: Turning a Ender 3 3D printer into a belt printer was put on the back burner pending TaxAmmend.com TaxAmmend.com was put on the back burner pending AmIAccessible.com AmIAccessible.com was placed on the back burner pending my AWS Certifications. My AWS Certifications were put on the back burner pending a Computer Forensics research paper into Consumer Grade Forensics. My research paper was put into the back burner pending an IDE 3.5" hard drive from ebay. The IDE 3.5" hard drive is coming but I am now 3D printing a cosplay nailgun for going as Kohta Hirano from high school of the dead, rebuilding my Open Media Vault machine (as it has had a critical software failure) and publishing a Computer Networks paper that I had kicking around since 2019. So I am probably going to be a busy busy boy for the foreseeable future.
• jamil7 7y ago
  Offline article reader for scraping, tagging and playing articles as audio. I built it mostly for fun and to use myself but released it anyway, I failed to market it as I don't really know how to and I it doesn't work as well as the existing solutions. So it remains basically something for me and some users who found it organically.
• brlewis 7y ago
  First I'll explain what I mean by "failed". I'm not shutting down or ceasing development. But since I have a previous side project that never became profitable, I made an agreement with my wife that if I didn't get 10 paid users in February, I'd de-emphasize this project and focus on other things. So far I have 2 paid users, and they're both people I know. It's pretty obvious February won't see 10 paid users. Now the project moves to the back burner; fail. What is the project? I hesitate to describe it. One person I described it to said, "Nobody will ever pay for that." When I finally developed it and showed her the intro video, she clapped and later paid for it herself. HN readers might understand it as a personal Kialo or an Evernote/Keep for trees of reasoning. You write pro and con statements under a main statement, evaluate their truthfulness, then evaluate the main statement. Click into a pro and con to explore its pros and cons. Here's the introductory video: https://youtu.be/PXvU1h44jVw https://youtu.be/PXvU1h44jVw OK, so why did it not succeed in the allotted time? There are many possible explanations. It could be that people are not feeling the pain of how difficult it is to explain your reasoning to yourself and others. Sure, there's a lot of useless arguing online that could turn more useful with this tool, but perhaps at this point people who are frustrated with this have given up arguing online, and the only people left are ones who have adapted and gotten really good at prose, or who like useless arguing. Perhaps the problem is that, even when you have a tool that makes it easier, exploring the reasons for why something is true or false is still work, and people aren't inclined to do that work. Maybe there's a chicken-and-egg problem here, where people will only find the tool useful after other people put good content in it that they can copy/use. Perhaps this is a tool that people are mainly going to use for their own personal decision making, so there's no motivation to use the paid version, and worse, no viral coefficient. Perhaps I'm just a tweak or two away from making it take off. I'm excited about the core functionality that's there now, but maybe others will only be excited about when some tweak makes that core functionality appeal to them more. I really wanted this to be the kind of thing that people want so badly that they'd put up with it not working exactly how they want, but I guess that's not the case. Perhaps the simple design I use that's supposed to look neutral and be the opposite of flashy, is just too bland. Perhaps if I had spent money on marketing I would have encountered that first really enthusiastic user who would have made it go viral. Perhaps there's a niche where this thing could have a strong start, and I just haven't discovered it yet. I know the goal of this Ask HN post was to gain some lessons about things that cause side projects to fail, but unfortunately I don't know. I suspect in most cases people don't know. I'm open to suggestions. You'll still see comments from me on HN that include links to https://en.howtruthful.com/ https://en.howtruthful.com/ whenever I think a prose comment isn't enough to explain my reasoning, but I'm not expecting that to be a successful marketing campaign.
• tonystubblebine 7y ago
  I had been working on a Copyright enforcement company modeled on Patent Trolls, but, in my opinion, operating for good. The idea is to buy up the copyright on content that you know is being infringed on and then sue the infringers. I got side tracked by other things that seemed faster and easier, but I still wish someone would take up this idea and use it to purge the internet of large-scale willful plagiarizers. This is not about suing platforms like YouTube. What clued me in to this opportunity was actually the company Upcounsel, which is/was a sort of eLance for lawyers. I caught them cut and pasting one of my articles. When I looked into it more deeply, it looked like they'd hired an SEO firm to build a massive content farm around the basic strategy of taking the top two results for a search term, merging the content into a single article, rearranging a few words, and then publishing the result as their own. All of those articles live in one of their sitemaps. It's about 10k articles. I spot checked them and could find the original plagiarized sources for 70% of these articles within five clicks. Just search the article title and start clicking on other search results. So that's maybe 14k potential instances of copyright infringement. The reason I thought Upcounsel was a reasonable target is for two reasons. A) They passed my own moral filter, which is higher than just "what makes me money." I think it's outrageous to pass off plagiarized legal advice as legitimate. These are people who should know better too. And I reported this to one of their investors who reported it to their CEO, so I know they know. B) They briefly had money. It actually seems a little bit expensive to file these lawsuits. I'm not 100% on the details, but it's things like needing to actually register the copyright ($800) and only have the ability to sue in federal court ($10k to really get going). Upcounsel raised a $12M round and I thought you could probably win a chunk of that just for the fact that an embarrassing lawsuit could really cripple a company that's trying to move quickly from milestone to milestone. The key to making the financial side work is proving willful infringement. That can allow up to $150k/instance. The key operational issue for this side project it a process for buying copyright. I never practiced the actual pitch. "Hi, I want to buy your copyright for the purpose of suing someone who is infringing on it. I will give you a perpetual license back, i.e. I have no interest in using this content myself." There are a couple of variants on the pitch and you'd probably have to experiment. This is something that really needs a lawyer and I only talked to a lawyer about one issue. I bought a session with someone on Upcounsel (thinking that using their services to sue them would make for a good story). And what I asked was about acquiring of copyright. Would it be enough to just acquire a license or would I need to be the actual copyright holder? I thought the license would make for an easier pitch to copyright holders. But the legal advice I got was very clear that I needed to be the actual copyright holder in order to file suit. Part of the underlying theory here is my belief that this work was done for Upcounsel by an SEO firm rather than invented in house. If it's a firm, then that means there are other past clients who would be targets for a lawsuit. Unfortunately, Upcounsel has basically announced they've gone out of business and so they aren't a good target anymore. Summing all that up, it looked like a decent risk where you might spend $50-100k per target to win/settle for $500k+ with the most annoying thing probably being how slow this would move. That's a good business, right? Plus, these people are in the wrong, so it's something you could feel good about. I mean--suing people is a pretty violent act. But the target balances it out. You'd be like Omar in The Wire executing Rip&Runs on drug dealers. Last, as a publisher myself, this sort of thing wouldn't worry me. I'm sure one of our authors has passed plagiarism by us, but there's no way we ware willful infringers. We pass articles through plagiarism checkers, respond immediately to reports, ban authors, etc. What makes this whole idea work is that there are companies now who made plagiarism core to their business strategy. They aren't necessarily wrong to do this since there aren't any forces, legal or social, which seem to be punishing them.
• rrivers 7y ago
  Free election campaign platform for local candidates. (501c3 Non-profit w/ a revenue model) Purpose is to remove the financial barriers from running for community office (Mayor / Council / School Board). We incorporated a number of UX features to make the process as easy and convenient as possible for users to better understand which candidate options best aligned with their personal values. In 2018 we ran a beta test in central NJ that was well received. I am the non-technical founder and our entire team was volunteer based. I also self-funded the project (outsourcing development) and although the beta went well the product is unfinished. Now on the back burner because we have no team anymore and I don't want to invest more personal cash into it at this time. I pay to keep it live for interested parties. Site: https://oursociety.org https://oursociety.org Git: https://github.com/OurSociety/OurSociety---Free-Local-Campaign-Platform https://github.com/OurSociety/OurSociety---Free-Local-Campai...
  • ARCarr 7y ago
    I love this idea! I was recently trying to scrounge up information for the primary about who these local candidates were using Ballotpedia, but a lot of them had no website, or if they did it was it was _terrible_(both visually and information-wise). It was honestly a lot of effort to determine who to vote for.
• jamestimmins 7y ago
  I made https://www.hackersubscribe.com https://www.hackersubscribe.com as a way to get email notifications when certain people post/comment on Hacker News. So I get an email with patio11, Patrick Collison, or Alan Kay posts. When I first made it, I submitted a Show HN thread, but got zero response.
  • NoOneNew 7y ago
    Add in a list of interesting people you would recommend on the site. I never thought about actually paying attention to who posts on HN, only what's posted. It seems obvious now that you've mentioned it.
    • jamestimmins 7y ago
      That's a good idea! I'll update it to include a few suggestions.
  • rolleiflex 7y ago
    This is a great idea and I already set up a bunch of these with multiple people. Cheers!
  • snisarenko 7y ago
    This actually seems useful to me. Seconding the comment that you should make a suggestion list of users to follow. In fact discovering good HN users, might be the core feature.
• ryandrake 7y ago
  All of my side projects are technically failures because I cannot release them. I have worked in software for a few decades, and all of the companies have IP assignment clauses in their non-negotiable employment agreements that specify that any project I do, even on my own time and with my own equipment belongs to them. There’s no point to releasing something that will be seized by court order if it becomes profitable.
  • snisarenko 7y ago
    You might want to check your state laws, and consult with a lawyer before making that conclusion
• juliend2 7y ago
  Failed project: The Daily Wordpress Reference[1] I wanted to give an easy way for people to learn the intimidating WordPress API[2], bit by bit, every morning, in their email. It failed because monetization was an afterthought. Even though it gathered a steady 1100 subscribers (daily emails) at the end (for about 6 months), I was unable to make a buck with ads (Amazon books related to wordpress). Now I'm on my way for another failure with my online course on WordPress plugin development[3]. This one, I think I failed because I'm not a public figure in WP development so it's harder for people to trust me, and (related reason) I don't have much reach on social networks. [1] https://www.juliendesrosiers.com/2012/03/10/the-daily-wordpress-reference-newsletter.php https://www.juliendesrosiers.com/2012/03/10/the-daily-wordpr... [2] https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/ https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/ [3] https://statusmachine.com/online-courses/ https://statusmachine.com/online-courses/
• woutr_be 7y ago
  Private emails; Forwarding emails to random addresses for privacy reasons. It supported multiple recipients, black listing of senders and domains, muting addresses. I know it had been done before, but I wanted to see if I could improve existing solutions. I never ended up launching because I felt insecure about my solution (even though I tested it).
• shireboy 7y ago
  I published Trello Dojo https://leanpub.com/trellodojo https://leanpub.com/trellodojo a while back. I’m not sure it’s a complete failure: Joel tweeted it, it helped some people, and I made about 20k in royalties. But they have since added templates and other features and I haven’t updated the book in a while. I’ve been trying to find time to update it for a few years now, and just haven’t. I also have a company that wants a developer specific version and haven’t gotten to that either. I also have a Trello board of a hundred or so ideas, but have learned ideas are cheap- making time and energy to actually build and market is the hard thing.
  • doingmyting 7y ago
    I wish people would start sharing their ideas. I am at a point I can't even come up with an idea PS: oppsdaily is in this list so not sure if sharing ideas make a good business
• jotakami 7y ago
  Tried to start a local in-person meeting for CGAA (Computer Gaming Addicts Anonymous). Posted flyers all over my university campus, which has like 30k undergrads. Nobody showed up, week after week. Not sure how to let people know and I’m not a “growth hacker” type so I gave up.
  • hn_acc_1 7y ago
    To be fair, that was probably a tough crowd to "market" to... most addicts need a pretty significant kick to force them into a change, and flyers don't provide any kick and are easily ignored.
• hmvipin1 7y ago
  https://youtu.be/6BfaZOkKh2U https://youtu.be/6BfaZOkKh2U
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• allie1 7y ago
  Built https://gotmemo.net https://gotmemo.net . Couldn’t find a way to identify where/how I can target potential customers. Got listed on asana as an integration but interest seems very low. My plan was to rely on paid ads (fb) but their costs ended up higher than expected. In retrospect, launching a lander to see if I can even get some emails before building a product is a must.
• powmikepow 7y ago
  I built an android app called NisekoPow which was for the backcountry skier + snowboarders. I got annoyed going on three websites every morning and refreshing to see: * Recent snowfall * Avalanche report * Forecast So I built a backend service to send a push notification when available. I was out there for a season and it was good but I didn't return the next year and I lost the urge to fix an issue I no longer faced. Was a great learning experience though!
• vivan 7y ago
  Outlook add-on to give the ability to "undo" sending email. It just mimicked the functionality in Gmail where it holds your email for 10/30/60 seconds before sending, which gives you a chance to stop the message being sent if you notice an issue. For some bizarre reason Microsoft built this in their web app but never in the desktop version of Outlook, which is what most people in big corporate environments use. Finished the project, built the tool and it worked great, had a bunch of people using it. Then I got to the point of having to actually distribute/market it and I gave up - the idea of having to actually support a desktop application was just too much for me. I'll probably throw the code up on GitHub at some point so people can still get some value out of it, since a lot of people have been asking.
• bemmu 7y ago
  Felt like playing with Twilio, and not having released anything in a long time, I thought I'd push myself to finish something. Since I happened to need to send & receive a fax, but didn't like to commit to a longer subscription plan, I made this website for doing that: https://5dollarfax.com/ https://5dollarfax.com/ I had a plan to promote it by writing a deep blog post about the contents of a fax handshake, and got pretty far into it, but at one point it required some signal processing knowledge I didn't yet have and the post languished.
  • enayetn 7y ago
    Writing and publishing longer blog content in parts can help shorten the ‘go to market’ time which I’ve found helps with keeping motivation up and shorter articles rend to have higher readership
• Max-20 7y ago
  https://transfershops.com https://transfershops.com a marketplace for ecommerce businesses and shops, I am currently trying to sell it. The problem is that with two sided marketplaces you have a chicken and egg problem. Without buyers nobody will take the time to create a sale listing and vice versa.
• zkmon 7y ago
  I have started worktheme.com and planning to shut it down. It pulls h1b case data from govt web pages and some nice visuals around it. It also has has a message board with thousands of people talking. it has about 32k messsages posted at the moment. The reason for shutting it down is, it is just my playground area and I have done everything I wanted to do. Not sure if I can make it any bigger. So closing it down.
• snisarenko 7y ago
  https://www.weekendpal.io https://www.weekendpal.io What I learned from talking to people, the only people who have trouble finding weekend activities are travelers, or couples. But I am not sure if those markets are big enough considering the complexity of building this. I have some iteration ideas that i might try in the future. I also discovered existing solutions that are "good enough" (sffuncheap etc.).
• dizzydiz 7y ago
  My last project QuoraScanner was a browser addon that helped marketers decide what questions to answer next on Quora based on views and tracking users. https://24hrstartup.com/products/quora-scanner https://24hrstartup.com/products/quora-scanner It failed as Quora changed how much info could be seen/scraped on the frontend without a login. Even if they hadn't I likely wouldn't have been able to get enough LTV from each user to spend enough acquire them at a decent pace. No regrets though, it was my first experience doing user feedback sessions over Skype, which I can't recommend highly enough vs. asking them to fill a form.
• skreenr 7y ago
  Something I started as a "Scratching itch" thing: - new way to personalize a smartphone with Wallpaper which plays animation aka Greets you! at Unlock: see example videos at wakeanimation.org Seeking validation of the idea, I posted on Reddit at /r/androidapps which routinely gets 700-800 people hanging out at any time. Only 3 replied actually, which I interpreted as lackluster interest, although comments were strong positives. Since then I built this little page explaining the concept, but had difficulty getting more definite hands up- or hands down- signal. The app would take a bit more work and testing before it's ready for release. So I really would like to get better handle if this can get traction. Looking at monetization figures on SensorTower, the Android Personalization category is not anywhere near the Games; only one/two apps really make decent sales. Appreciate any pointers or thoughts, if anyone have experience and ideas to try.
• SebastianKumor 7y ago
  I have tried to build a language learning app called Talking Ninja, heavily based on voice. I started with danish as thats where I live and its hard fro me to learn new language without being able to speak to someone/something. It was not the best choice of language to start and also the complexity of the voice tech behind it grew beyond my one man army skills at the time. Maybe one day I will try again.
• sethlivingston 7y ago
  I launched a little consulting side gig on Fiverr to build dashboards and reports on Google Data Studio. The good: - I got plenty of customers (side gig volume) from all over the world. - Many of them were very happy with the results. - Collecting requirements for reports and dashboards is notoriously difficult and volatile, but I was able to keep this under control. I credit my age (48) and experience for that. The bad: - I hitched my wagon to a tool that is not ready for prime time: Google Data Studio. I spent too much time wrestling with the tool. - The success of many projects depended not on my skills with Data Studio, but with the quality of the data sources and APIs that were feeding into Data Studio. Almost half the time, the quality was well below expectations, and I spent too much time wrestling with the integration. In the end, I wasn't even close to making a reasonable hourly rate, and getting to the point where I could get past an hourly rate and make money at scale seemed impossible. I happily shut it down after six months.
  • jpasden 7y ago
    This is why I like using Fiverr as a buyer... Occasionally you find someone doing something cool for an absurdly low cost as an experiment or an exercise. Those are the good deals, and they're ephemeral offerings. Glad you enjoyed your time there!
• jackthebadcat 7y ago
  I created Frifrofru (https://www.frifrofru.com/ https://www.frifrofru.com/). Another china stores dedicated coupons/promo-codes website build using free stuff (Azure free, Mongo Atlas, Docker Hub, Github Actions). The domain is also free (2 years free). It's alive but with no more development. Why? Most of the stores that I want to share, only provide files that I can't get automatically, no API's and from my side no time to do it manually. The project started because some friends start asking if I know some promo codes. Most of them stop buying things 1 years ago. Bonus note: it's something that I'm against (consumerism). I prefer some of the other side projects that are focused on "green" things or in helping animals and persons.