The graveyard of good ideas
Solutions that were tried, and what stopped them.
Patents that were rejected or abandoned, products that shut down, projects that went quiet. Borrow the idea, avoid the dead end.
796 solutions
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Why doesn't archive.today get shut down?
So far as I can tell you can use archive.ph to bypass paywalls on most news sites. Scientific journal publishers have gotten crackdowns on sites like sci-hub, music companies got Napster shut down, there has been a continuous game of whac-a-mole against torrent sites like the Pirate Bay. archive.ph never seems to be the focus of a controversy, I never hear about anytbody trying to shut them down, they don't even seem to be struggling with technical countermeasures against their paywall bypass. Once in a while you see a crazy rant like https://www.vice.com/en/article/ypw5mj/dear-gamergate-please-stop-stealing-our-shit but there is no real movement against this site. How do they get away with it?
Why it failed: So far as I can tell you can use archive.ph to bypass paywalls on most news sites. Scientific journal publishers have gotten crackdowns on sites like sci-hub, music companies got Napster shut down, there has been a continuous game of whac-a-mole against torrent sites like the Pir
PaulHoule
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?
TL;DR: I'm a founder who had some success, but now I'm disabled, can't seem to hold down a job. I'm close to defaulting on my car. I am (unsurprisingly) depressed. I need help but don't know where to go. I spent the 2010s as a founder. My company was funded by YC and several others. We were moderately successful but didn't see a meaningful exit. After my startup failed, I started consulting to pay the bills. In 2018 I started having problems with chronic pain and gradually became less and less capable on the job. Consulting gigs were letting me go because I couldn't keep up. The last time I worked was over a year ago, and I finally exhausted my savings in early June 2022. I live as cheaply as I possibly can at this point. I live with family and only pay for absolute necessities. It comes out between $1200 and $1500 per month. I'm in the US and I ha
Why it failed: TL;DR: I'm a founder who had some success, but now I'm disabled, can't seem to hold down a job. I'm close to defaulting on my car. I am (unsurprisingly) depressed. I need help but don't know where to go. I spent the 2010s as a founder. My company was fund
thrwtllwy
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: I'm Afraid We're Shutting Down
So it’s with deep professional and personal sadness that I must announce my plans to shut down 70 Million Resources, Inc., the parent company of 70 Million Jobs (the 1st national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records) and Commissary Club (the first mobile social network for this population). When I launched 70MR in 2016, I was motivated to build a company that could short circuit the pernicious cycles of recidivism in this country--cycles that destroy lives, tear apart families and decimate communities. I sought to disrupt the sleepy reentry industry by applying technology, focusing on data, employing an aggressive, accountable team, and moving with some urgency. And for the first time, approaching the challenge as a national, for-profit venture. This approach, which I named “RaaS,” (Reentry as a Service), turned out to be wildly effective, and by the beginning
Why it failed: So it’s with deep professional and personal sadness that I must announce my plans to shut down 70 Million Resources, Inc., the parent company of 70 Million Jobs (the 1st national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records) and Commissary Club (the first mobi
RBBronson123
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: How common is a 4-day work week in our industry?
So, for the last 8 or 9 years, I've offered prospective employers a 20% discount on salary if I can work 4 days a week instead of 5. I usually go with start-ups because they're under pressure to hire top-talent but skimp on costs (i.e. they want to offer below-market costs but have trouble justifying why), and they're usually flexible enough to not have a HR policy etched in stone against this kind of flexibility. It also usually takes some sort of warming-up to the idea and a whole pitching and easing process to get it (so I'll work 5 days for the first few months), but it usually works out in the end. I make everything sound like it's economics while discussing it, but I actually get 1000x more enjoyment out of my work and non-work lives under this time-split. There's some stigma around 'lazy' and 'work ethic' that I usually have to get
Why it failed: So, for the last 8 or 9 years, I've offered prospective employers a 20% discount on salary if I can work 4 days a week instead of 5. I usually go with start-ups because they're under pressure to hire top-talent but skimp on costs (i.e. they want to offer below-market co
i_dont_know_
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: SigNoz – open-source alternative to DataDog, NewRelic
We just released a major upgrade to SigNoz with support for Logs management based on ClickHouse. Would love to get any feedback from the community here on what you think and any questions you may have for us Many big companies like Uber and Cloudflare have been shifting to ClickHouse as their main workhorse for Logs management seeing much better performance. for e.g Cloudflare recently shifted from Elastic to ClickHouse and are seeing 8x improvement in memory/cpu resource requirement in ingestion. This is our first release with Logs support and we have added support for: - Filtering logs based on fields - Full text search in logs - Live mode to see logs coming in realtime - Detailed view of logs in table and json format with ability to add filters quickly - Ability to specify interesting fields which will be indexed by default
Why it failed: We just released a major upgrade to SigNoz with support for Logs management based on ClickHouse. Would love to get any feedback from the community here on what you think and any questions you may have for us Many big companies like Uber and Cloudflare have been shifting to ClickH
pranay01
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: Living without electricity in Kyiv
So, rolling power cuts probably begin today, power company says four hours or less. The attacks on power generation are awkward. To my eye, if Putin can keep up the attacks and inflict damage more quickly than it can be repaired, Ukraine ends up with increasingly long blackouts each day, and then maybe days of blackouts. Cities do not work without power, in ways we can hardly imagine - for example, you can’t buy anything, because the tills no longer work. You could in theory use cash, with the shops keeping a pile of ready cash at each till for this, but how do you as a customer get cash when the ATMs are not working because the power is out? The metro shuts down, of course. So do the traffic lights. How do you get into the city, or from A to B? you can walk, but only so far, and when you get to your destination, if it’s an office block, or condo, the elevators are not working. I live on
Why it failed: So, rolling power cuts probably begin today, power company says four hours or less. The attacks on power generation are awkward. To my eye, if Putin can keep up the attacks and inflict damage more quickly than it can be repaired, Ukraine ends up with increasingly long blackouts e
Max-Ganz-II
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?
What's you life work? What is it that you're working on, be it an area, company, game, language, subject, cause etc. That you expect to work until the end of your life? Starting with me it's a little bit hard. I have so many interests that picking a single one out of all of them is hard. But I plan on working on companies, causes, philosophies, books, areas etc. Some of the areas I'm interested in are: Intelligence, IQ, Collective Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Writing, Sleep, Comics, AI, Game Design, Meta Cognition, Zettelkasten, Linguistics, Design, Coordination etc. My current project is: https://github.com/ilse-langnar/notebook. It's a mixture of Roam Research, Obsidian, Emacs, VSCode(in the future), Figma etc. I plan on making an online mode for people to share and collaborate with other people being as easy as sharing a link. I don&
Why it failed: What's you life work? What is it that you're working on, be it an area, company, game, language, subject, cause etc. That you expect to work until the end of your life? Starting with me it's a little bit hard. I have so many interests that picking a single one out
examplary_cable
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: Circumflex, browse HN in your terminal
Some two years ago, I found myself spending a lot of time in the terminal between learning vim and discovering new command line tools. I was surprised to see that the niche of HN clis was (relatively) small, and so I decided to write my own command line tool for browsing HN called `circumflex`(`clx`). `clx` is written in Go using Bubble Tea[1]. You can read the comment section or the linked article in reader mode in the pager `less`. Using `lesskey` to add custom keybindings, the replies can be collapsed and expanded in real-time (but not individual replies, only all replies at once). Behind the scenes I am appending invisible unicode characters to each line so that I can use the custom keybindings to filter them out. The same technique is used to allow for jumping between top-level comments. I spent a lot of time thinking about syntax highlighting and finding relevant bits to highlight
Why it failed: Some two years ago, I found myself spending a lot of time in the terminal between learning vim and discovering new command line tools. I was surprised to see that the niche of HN clis was (relatively) small, and so I decided to write my own command line tool for browsing HN calle
bensadeh
- startupShut down2022
Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023
Your current IoT Core Services will remain available through August 15, 2023. Start your migration to alternative solutions. Hello [NAME], We’re writing to let you know that Google Cloud’s IoT Core Service will be discontinued on August 16, 2023 at which point your access to the IoT Core Device Manager APIs will no longer be available. As of that date, devices will be unable to connect to the Google Cloud IoT Core MQTT and HTTP bridges and existing connections will be shut down. Your current IoT Core Services will remain available through August 15, 2023, unless you terminate your usage of IoT Core at an earlier date. What do I need to do? We recommend that you take action early to migrate from IoT Core to an alternative service. As an initial step, connect with your Google Cloud account manager if you have questions about your migration plans. Your account manager can also help you lear
Why it failed: Your current IoT Core Services will remain available through August 15, 2023. Start your migration to alternative solutions. Hello [NAME], We’re writing to let you know that Google Cloud’s IoT Core Service will be discontinued on August 16, 2023 at which point your access to the
borner791
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: Postcard – Easy way to make a personal website
Today I'm launching Postcard! I started Postcard when I deleted most social media, but still wanted a way to keep in touch with friends and my network. When I worked at Webflow, it became clear to me that most website builders are way too complex for individual users. So, I drew inspiration from social media - where all you need is a couple photos and text fields to get a great site online. So, I think I’ve about achieved a site builder that even my Mom could use. The product seems simple, but there are many under-the-hood optimizations. There's caching, CDNs, custom domain support, TLS certificate issuance + management, dynamically-generated open graph images, image optimizations, email sending, full-text RSS feed, email reputations, and more. It also uses a couple new products to make the domain connection process easy. Let me know if you have any feedback or questions! PS -
Why it failed: Today I'm launching Postcard! I started Postcard when I deleted most social media, but still wanted a way to keep in touch with friends and my network. When I worked at Webflow, it became clear to me that most website builders are way too complex for individual users. So, I
philip1209
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: A Demo Day without the investors
When Harry (my co-founder) and I started Trevor.io we obviously needed customers. We'd often bonded over Paul Graham's "Do Things That Don't Scale", so it was a no-brainer that every month, like clockwork, we'd get on that €50 Ryanair flight to London, to spend a week pitching potential customers / partners / anyone who would listen. We tried as best we could to rotate which lucky friend or family members' sofa we would be sleeping on each time, so as not to out-stay our welcome. One event that we ended up doing again and again was called TechHub Tuesday Demo Night. It was an epic monthly event (first Tuesday of every month) hosted by the most sought after startup co-working space on London's famous "Silicon Roundabout" (yes, us English can't quite fill a valley yet with our startup scene, but we sure can fill a roundabout!
Why it failed: When Harry (my co-founder) and I started Trevor.io we obviously needed customers. We'd often bonded over Paul Graham's "Do Things That Don't Scale", so it was a no-brainer that every month, like clockwork, we'd get on that €50 Ryanair flight to Londo
tagspace
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: How do you handle being assigned Ops tasks knowing you joined to do Dev?
Title is pretty much it. I joined Oracle a few months ago after applying to a dev position. As soon I joined, I was assigned Operations work which to be honest is not what I was hoping for. I was wondering if anyone else in the HN community experienced something like this before? Is this common in bigger companies where it's more "Closing Jira Tickets" than actual coding work? Is this gonna paint me as an Ops person from now on? I started seriously thinking about quitting and looking elsewhere. Thanks in advance for any feedback.
Why it failed: Title is pretty much it. I joined Oracle a few months ago after applying to a dev position. As soon I joined, I was assigned Operations work which to be honest is not what I was hoping for. I was wondering if anyone else in the HN community experienced something like this before?
ahil95
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Favorite product that got shut down?
Trying to launch a search fund to acquire VC backed businesses that couldn't scale. Would love your recommendations and get on a mission to revive a favorite product of this community.
Why it failed: Trying to launch a search fund to acquire VC backed businesses that couldn't scale. Would love your recommendations and get on a mission to revive a favorite product of this community.
rajarshc
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: I shut down my company, now I need a job
Two weeks ago, I announced ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598978 ) that I was shutting down my companies, 70 Million Jobs and Commissary Club (companies that helped the formerly incarcerated get on with their lives). The overwhelming volume of support I received just through Bookface and Hacker News stunned me; my heart overflowed with pride and gratitude. Now I am facing another challenge: I need a job. I’ve spoken with many recruiters and HR professionals, along with people who are interested in either acquiring my company(s), funding them or just want to make themselves available for a chat. I’ve received offers for leadership positions at nonprofits, but I haven’t yet discovered the right fit. Maybe I love the startup life too much. Maybe my criminal record hurts my chances. (Maybe!?!) Maybe my age is a deterrent. Before I accept a position that doesn’t thril
Why it failed: Two weeks ago, I announced ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598978 ) that I was shutting down my companies, 70 Million Jobs and Commissary Club (companies that helped the formerly incarcerated get on with their lives). The overwhelming volume of support I r
RBBronson123
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Project maintainers in Ukraine – which projects are in danger?
Ukraine has (had) a vibrant developer community. The war has made many folks switch from the IT side to the military. Do you know of any Open Source projects that are at risk of being abandoned because their lead dev / maintainer has left to fight (with a risk of never returning)?
Why it failed: Ukraine has (had) a vibrant developer community. The war has made many folks switch from the IT side to the military. Do you know of any Open Source projects that are at risk of being abandoned because their lead dev / maintainer has left to fight (with a risk of never retur
oger
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Shut down a startup despite strong traction?
We are showing strong traction (100k monthly users) but we're struggling to find investors for our pre-seed round. We're first time founders without a big network and the current market downturn makes it even harder for B2C startups to raise money. Did you ever have to shut down your early-stage startup despite strong traction?
Why it failed: We are showing strong traction (100k monthly users) but we're struggling to find investors for our pre-seed round. We're first time founders without a big network and the current market downturn makes it even harder for B2C startups to raise money. Did you ever have to
Freddie111
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: Stop Accepting Shitty Interviews
There was a long discussion on HN the other day regarding why companies are having trouble hiring engineers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892437 One of the recurring themes is the "leet code" interviews. I will go further and say that any interview that doesn't mimic the job is a guaranteed way for me to turn the company down. Stop accepting shitty interviews When I was talking to trading firms about coming back to the finance industry, about half of them admitted they already use my open-source software. And yet, only one firm bothered to ask me about how some of my stuff was implemented. That's the firm I'm working at now. Instead, I got plenty of firms that still insisted on asking me questions that are not remotely related to the job. Tons of Hacker Rank and Codility, even though I've never had a time limit when building somethin
Why it failed: There was a long discussion on HN the other day regarding why companies are having trouble hiring engineers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892437 One of the recurring themes is the "leet code" interviews. I will go further and say that any interv
chrisaycock
- startupShut down2022
Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
There’s just been two more explosions. The first was unheralded, but for the second, first there was gunfire - I grabbed the camera and went to the window, opened it, and I could hear a loud droning noise, an engine - and then I saw a bright white missile in the sky, completely uncamouflaged, flying at a moderate altitude, perhaps 500m? it flew slowly, right-to-left in my field of view, and then began to dive towards its target, the sound of the engine becoming increasingly louder and stronger, and then it plunged below the line of buildings (I’m on the 15th floor) and I could see it no more, then the inevitable crack-bang - different to the explosions from a few days, not so large, but where I had the window open I felt the blast wave come to my face and body, and then of course with sick certainty the unfurling column of dark grey smoke shooting up from the impact site. I’m hoping not
Why it failed: There’s just been two more explosions. The first was unheralded, but for the second, first there was gunfire - I grabbed the camera and went to the window, opened it, and I could hear a loud droning noise, an engine - and then I saw a bright white missile in the sky, completely u
Max-Ganz-II
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: I got into MIT. Should I go?
This is a really big decision that has been weighing a lot on my mind recently, and I would appreciate any candid advice that you may have. Here’s the skinny: I applied to two schools: MIT, and a bigger-but-less-prestigious school we'll call Z. Growing up, I always wanted to go to Z: my parents met there, my extended family lives in the area, and I have friends and cousins there. But MIT has also always been a dream (and I have friends there too). My original plan was to go to Z for my undergrad, then go to another school like MIT for grad school. I applied to MIT for the sake of completeness, and honestly didn't expect to get in. For that reason, it’s pretty easy to see how getting into MIT has thrown a big wrench in my plans. To make matters worse, MIT hasn’t offered me any financial aid. My parents have saved enough money to help me pay for some of the tuition costs of Z (wh
Why it failed: This is a really big decision that has been weighing a lot on my mind recently, and I would appreciate any candid advice that you may have. Here’s the skinny: I applied to two schools: MIT, and a bigger-but-less-prestigious school we'll call Z. Growing up, I always wanted to
throwaway7819
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Does anyone actually Use GCP?
We are building a product to improve the DevEx of GCP and IaaS cloud. We are evening building and running this app on GCP! Gasps (we're not sure GCP even runs on GCP). For context, the search bar in the GCP web console can't even do proper substring searching on assets such as App Engine. In less than a month/16+ hour days, our two person team has already built superior search capabilities. My co-founder has been sold on the pain-points on GCP, but the question becomes: why does anyone even bother? We believe there is some scale and inflection point at which GCP makes sense, but GCP products are disconnected from hobbyists. This month, we've received 10k visits and paid $120 on CloudRun (app server) and CloudSQL (Postgres). We used the lowest cost configuration including 1 CPU each. Yes, $120 for 2 x 1 CPU, 10GB SSD, 5GB ram total. It's not even been a month, act
Why it failed: We are building a product to improve the DevEx of GCP and IaaS cloud. We are evening building and running this app on GCP! Gasps (we're not sure GCP even runs on GCP). For context, the search bar in the GCP web console can't even do proper substring searching on assets
diceduckmonk
- startupShut down2021
Launch HN: FirstIgnite (YC S21) – Matching scientists with relevant businesses
Hi, HN! I’m Cody Pawlowski and my co-founder is Chase Bonhag and we’re FirstIgnite ( https://firstignite.com/ ). We help researchers at universities connect with companies interested in funding or licensing their research. Currently, a vast majority of all research goes uncommercialized. This includes everything from new cancer therapies to energy storage improvements and other solutions to universal problems. By connecting research to relevant companies, we increase the probability that research will be commercialized. We met while I was running a natural language processing startup at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Chase was working at Illinois Ventures, the venture capital arm of the university. U of I conducted over $900M a year worth of research, much of which was going uncommercialized. Because university research portfolios are massive, diverse, and
Why it failed: Hi, HN! I’m Cody Pawlowski and my co-founder is Chase Bonhag and we’re FirstIgnite ( https://firstignite.com/ ). We help researchers at universities connect with companies interested in funding or licensing their research. Currently, a vast majority of all research
codypilot
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?
Hi, after a long job hunting period I joined a small remote first company 5 months ago. Problems showed up immediately in the form of chaos and dysfunctions in the microservices cloud project I was hired in. Let's put it this way: say you get the seminal book on microservices and the seminal book on CICD. Now imagine reading along and doing almost everything from code up to project management the wrong way (essentially keeping on-prem 2000's philosophy and revamp it as microservices). On top of that add vendeta-developers in Asia (I'm in a small offshoot team in Europe) handing down half-baked frameworks (not-invented-here and reinventing the wheel are strong) with minimal documentation and a culture based on meetings instead of documenting things. Developer sandboxes that just don't work and unrealistic deadlines. In short a huge draining mess where I felt burnt out
Why it failed: Hi, after a long job hunting period I joined a small remote first company 5 months ago. Problems showed up immediately in the form of chaos and dysfunctions in the microservices cloud project I was hired in. Let's put it this way: say you get the seminal book on microservice
itistricky
- startupShut down2021
Launch HN: Hotswap (YC S21) – Easily migrate customers away from competitors
Hi! We're Jay and Len (kevlened) from Hotswap ( https://www.hotswap.app ). We automate the process of changing software vendors by helping you migrate user data during your onboarding process. In other words, we make it easy to steal customers from your competitors! We've built a lot of enterprise software and done a lot of painful migrations over the years. I (Jay) have managed engineering teams at Frame.io, Squarespace, and Rent the Runway. Len was an early employee at Okta. At every single company we've worked at, we've spent a lot of time doing painful migrations. At Rent the Runway, we migrated our warehouse from UPS to FedEx. We changed credit card processors. We migrated ERP systems. It always took a ton of time, was not career-building work, and consultants charged $250/hr or more. We also were often stuck using platforms that weren't optim
Why it failed: Hi! We're Jay and Len (kevlened) from Hotswap ( https://www.hotswap.app ). We automate the process of changing software vendors by helping you migrate user data during your onboarding process. In other words, we make it easy to steal customers from your competitors
memset
- startupShut down2021
Launch HN: Govly (YC S21) – Making it easier to sell to the U.S. government
Hi, we're Mike, Jon and Nick, founders of Govly ( https://www.govly.com ). We’re building a place for companies, resellers, and distributors to work together to bid on government contracts. The U.S. government buys lots of things. In 2021, over $218B will be spent purchasing technology products alone. The problem is, it's super confusing to participate in the market. You have to understand the rules, have the right connections to government contractors, have a record of strong performance selling to the government, and usually a sales force focused specifically on government sales. This friction leads to fewer companies (especially smaller companies) participating, less competition, and ultimately the government buying the loudest or most insider-connected products instead of the best or most innovative. Jon and I have been experiencing this problem for the last 15 ye
Why it failed: Hi, we're Mike, Jon and Nick, founders of Govly ( https://www.govly.com ). We’re building a place for companies, resellers, and distributors to work together to bid on government contracts. The U.S. government buys lots of things. In 2021, over $218B will be spent
mikeweiland