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Countless posts and comments here on HN strongly suggest that it's precisely the vision and passion of a founder that brings life to a startup which is itself j

Countless posts and comments here on HN strongly suggest that it's precisely the vision and passion of a founder that brings life to a startup which is itself just a hypothesis; the only reason to exist is to prove or disprove that hypothesis. If you place stock in the notion that ideas are worthless without execution, paying money to inherit someone else's unsuccessful idea that they lost interest in will only appeal to software developers that have no ideas or inspirations of their own. You'd have a hard time convincing me that buying someone else's codebase of unknowable quality is going to be (or feel) any definition of "better" than designing and building your own MVP. At least your code will be familiar and not constrained by another dev's [aborted] vision.

rohamg 13y ago
> If you place stock in the notion that ideas are worthless without execution, paying money to inherit someone else's unsuccessful idea that they lost interest in will only appeal to software developers that have no ideas or inspirations of their own. Actually, paying $x to acquire someone else's product, try your hand at marketing it, and failing fast for yourself could be an absolute god-send for non-technical founders who waste months/years trying to outsource development or find technical cofounders to execute on a mediocre idea that has been done 100 times before. Now that I think of it, just having this marketplace and being able to see what's been attempted before will hopefully increase the quality of startups that make it to the product stage in the first place. That will be welcome: a lot of talent / energy today is wasted building things that are doomed to fail from the get-go. We kill most of our ideas when they should be killed: as ideas. Paying $20-1000 to buy a packaged product that lets us test some of our hypotheses immediately is a nice option to have. Thumbs up from me for this reason. I could also see brilliant developers who love building things using this as a means to connect with brilliant hustlers looking for things to sell/market. Maybe it will be a long time before any individual side project bought from here gets to itself be a major product (and maybe not!), but there's an entire spectrum in between that still adds value to the ecosystem: this could be a very interesting way for cofounders to serendipitously connect based on mutual interest, and of course it's a gold-mine for potential employers and head-hunters. Edit: I think it's disingenuous to suggest that a side project is a "baby" and should not be abandoned, or if it is it should necessarily be open sourced. A product may be of commercial value but someone doesn't want to pursue because they have no ability to market it, or their interests changed, or they stumbled upon an even more profitable idea that is taking up all their attention, or they got a job at Google, etc etc.
- thenomad 13y ago
  This is an excellent response! I'll just add an anecdote - in the past I've bought a friend's unsuccessful business and promptly made a decent profit from it. Sometimes a different skillset is just what a project needs.
- stevekemp 13y ago
  > Paying $20-1000 to buy a packaged product that lets us test some of our hypotheses immediately is a nice option to have. Have you seen how much people want to sell their sites/projects for though? I've seen todo-lists being offered in the past for $1000+. Which is just scary.
petercooper 13y ago
paying money to inherit someone else's unsuccessful idea that they lost interest in will only appeal to software developers that have no ideas or inspirations of their own. Not sure I see that, mostly because not all side projects by developers will be pure code/apps. Quite a few developers seem to be creating e-mail newsletters but then are failing to monetize them or run them regularly long-term. I'd buy those on the right topics at the right price even if I could rip off the idea myself because there's still value there.
delimitted 13y ago
I think you are right in assuming that the buyer side of the market is not going to consist of developers. However, there is certainly a market here if the right people are targeted and the projects are presented as businesses in a box as opposed to abandoned side projects. Potential buyers include MBA's who can't code, or don't have time to, and all of those many people who tell you "I have an idea I just need you to build it and we will split everything 50/50". If the grand vision was presented to them properly, they just might shell out a few thousand for it.

rohamg 13y ago

> If you place stock in the notion that ideas are worthless without execution, paying money to inherit someone else's unsuccessful idea that they lost interest in will only appeal to software developers that have no ideas or inspirations of their own. Actually, paying $x to acquire someone else's product, try your hand at marketing it, and failing fast for yourself could be an absolute god-send for non-technical founders who waste months/years trying to outsource development or find technical cofounders to execute on a mediocre idea that has been done 100 times before. Now that I think of it, just having this marketplace and being able to see what's been attempted before will hopefully increase the quality of startups that make it to the product stage in the first place. That will be welcome: a lot of talent / energy today is wasted building things that are doomed to fail from the get-go. We kill most of our ideas when they should be killed: as ideas. Paying $20-1000 to buy a packaged product that lets us test some of our hypotheses immediately is a nice option to have. Thumbs up from me for this reason. I could also see brilliant developers who love building things using this as a means to connect with brilliant hustlers looking for things to sell/market. Maybe it will be a long time before any individual side project bought from here gets to itself be a major product (and maybe not!), but there's an entire spectrum in between that still adds value to the ecosystem: this could be a very interesting way for cofounders to serendipitously connect based on mutual interest, and of course it's a gold-mine for potential employers and head-hunters. Edit: I think it's disingenuous to suggest that a side project is a "baby" and should not be abandoned, or if it is it should necessarily be open sourced. A product may be of commercial value but someone doesn't want to pursue because they have no ability to market it, or their interests changed, or they stumbled upon an even more profitable idea that is taking up all their attention, or they got a job at Google, etc etc.

thenomad 13y ago
This is an excellent response! I'll just add an anecdote - in the past I've bought a friend's unsuccessful business and promptly made a decent profit from it. Sometimes a different skillset is just what a project needs.
stevekemp 13y ago
> Paying $20-1000 to buy a packaged product that lets us test some of our hypotheses immediately is a nice option to have. Have you seen how much people want to sell their sites/projects for though? I've seen todo-lists being offered in the past for $1000+. Which is just scary.

petercooper 13y ago

paying money to inherit someone else's unsuccessful idea that they lost interest in will only appeal to software developers that have no ideas or inspirations of their own. Not sure I see that, mostly because not all side projects by developers will be pure code/apps. Quite a few developers seem to be creating e-mail newsletters but then are failing to monetize them or run them regularly long-term. I'd buy those on the right topics at the right price even if I could rip off the idea myself because there's still value there.

delimitted 13y ago

I think you are right in assuming that the buyer side of the market is not going to consist of developers. However, there is certainly a market here if the right people are targeted and the projects are presented as businesses in a box as opposed to abandoned side projects. Potential buyers include MBA's who can't code, or don't have time to, and all of those many people who tell you "I have an idea I just need you to build it and we will split everything 50/50". If the grand vision was presented to them properly, they just might shell out a few thousand for it.