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.
1,395 solutions
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: Beware 'Ungrowth' in Your Job
I'm in a situation where my boss really doesn't get me or understand what I specifically bring to the table. She simply needs something different. I've tried to fit myself into what she needs like a square peg in a round hole. I have a very different vision for my role, and a specific understanding of how my strengths contribute to our team. After a year of trying, coaching, assuming I’m the problem, talking to my skip level, hard convos with my boss, and much more etc I'm finally realizing trying to force myself into something that's simply not going to fit. With all humility I admit it may be me that failed. But life is short, it’s time to move on. Cool story bro, why are you telling me? Well I just want to say, the industry has an obsession with "growth" in performance reviews. But the reality is that growth only works when you build on someone'
Why it failed: I'm in a situation where my boss really doesn't get me or understand what I specifically bring to the table. She simply needs something different. I've tried to fit myself into what she needs like a square peg in a round hole. I have a very different vision for my
throwarayes
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Food Addiction
I'm very obsessive and it makes me very susceptible to addictions. I have very poor moderation but I've got strong will power. I was able to stopped smoking, drinking alcohol and playing video games by just getting rid of all the "paraphernalia" and quitting cold turkey. After a good year or so of complete abstinence, I was able to introduce those things back in my life and exercise moderation. I could drink socially and play video games without harming my work productivity, etc. Now I'm struggling with food addiction, which ended up being my escape valve and receiving all my obsession after I quit everything else. I've tried fasting and I was able to do 18h fasts daily with no problem and even go over a week without eating, just on water and herbal tea. But that completely messed up my habits, metabolism and relationship with food, and I'm now struggli
Why it failed: I'm very obsessive and it makes me very susceptible to addictions. I have very poor moderation but I've got strong will power. I was able to stopped smoking, drinking alcohol and playing video games by just getting rid of all the "paraphernalia" and quitting c
magusd
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?
I'm working as a data analyst/scientist for two years and I'm already tired. In theory everything is amazing, the math, the algorithms, until u get a job. Useless and endless meetings, useless requests, arbitrary and weird decisions to make the boss and customers happy. We end working 40+ hours/week but the job could be easily done in 30 or less, that is another thing that kills me inside. We all could be living our lives in those hours that we pretend we're doing something. I know it sounds like I'm depressed and all that but I love life, my problem is with the state of things in the corporate environment, the faking and pretending that all is perfect in the way it is, and in the job but in the end everyone is unhappy and feeling like shit and waiting for friday. I just dont know what to do because it sounds to me that every company is the same. Does anyone
Why it failed: I'm working as a data analyst/scientist for two years and I'm already tired. In theory everything is amazing, the math, the algorithms, until u get a job. Useless and endless meetings, useless requests, arbitrary and weird decisions to make the boss and customers h
boredemployee
- startupShut down2022
I am done. I give up
I'm writing this post because I'm done. I can't do this anymore. After three failed attempts at building a successful startup and spending time institutionalized, I'm giving up on my entrepreneurship dreams. I tried everything - building an audience, making sure my product actually solved a problem, getting paying customers, and writing high-quality content and contributing to the community. But no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to get anywhere. My efforts were fruitless and I'm tired of trying. I barely had 20 followers, my substack and product blogs didn't get any signups, and while I did get a few upvotes (8) on Product Hunt once, I never had a paid customer. It was as if the world was against me and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make any progress. I remember trying to interact and hype up my fellow indiehackers on Twitter, regularl
Why it failed: I'm writing this post because I'm done. I can't do this anymore. After three failed attempts at building a successful startup and spending time institutionalized, I'm giving up on my entrepreneurship dreams. I tried everything - building an audience, making su
wakana
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: How do you deal with the powerlessness feeling of coding?
I've been a developer for 7 years. I'm just a random web developer doing random application for random companies. But I have a recurrent powerlessness feeling every time I code. I often get blocked on issue that are not made by me. The last few years I was a front end developer and as you know everything is complicated in the javascript world and everything always change. For example it was recurrent to have issue with webpack or the ES6 compiler. It was the kind of hard issue, the manager doesn't care and doesn't understand, he just wants the new form to work but here I am, just another day and nothing work for no reason because of external issue (webpack here for the example). The problem is this, I don't know how to resolve the issue, (and only a few people on earth know because webpack is so hard to understand), and I don't have the skill to resolve the
Why it failed: I've been a developer for 7 years. I'm just a random web developer doing random application for random companies. But I have a recurrent powerlessness feeling every time I code. I often get blocked on issue that are not made by me. The last few years I was a front end d
BoumTAC
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around
I've been programming on and off since the age of 16. Unfortunately, I have never been a rockstar programmer. I've always pieced code together from multiple sources to create programs but I've always failed to come up with a solution from scratch of my own and provide any value. I've always wondered how other smart people are able to come up with libraries, services and various solutions from scratch. I've devised countless ideas only to never execute them for various reasons or get started with them only to never fully complete them and see it all the way through. I've already wasted my entire teens and 20s, current 28 years old, working as a software engineer (Full-Stack) at a startup for ~4 years. I've been feeling like a loser and not good enough for this career even though I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very
Why it failed: I've been programming on and off since the age of 16. Unfortunately, I have never been a rockstar programmer. I've always pieced code together from multiple sources to create programs but I've always failed to come up with a solution from scratch of my own and prov
RoseBuckler
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Only person assigned to certain task, and I'm alone and tired
I've been tasked with creating marketing videos for my B2C corp on YouTube, since - I'm the only one who knows how to make videos - No one else is interested The videos include content like: - How-tos - Comedy sketches - Interviews with biz partners Here are the issues I face: - Alone This assignment placed me in a single-person department (myself only), and I've been churning out videos ever since. However, since there's no one to bounce around ideas with (or get inspired by), I find myself alone in a tedium. Working alone puts me in a creative rut, so I've been asking for new ideas from my colleagues, but they don't contribute. They still enjoy watching my new video whenever it comes out. Their reaction makes me both happy and leeched. - No collaborators when needed Furthermore, I produce comedy sketches at the request of my boss, who likes SNL and thinks
Why it failed: I've been tasked with creating marketing videos for my B2C corp on YouTube, since - I'm the only one who knows how to make videos - No one else is interested The videos include content like: - How-tos - Comedy sketches - Interviews with biz partners Here are the issues
tiredthrowaway
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Am I an arrogant or am I surrounded by incompetent people?
I've generally stuck to the mantra in life that "If it smells like shit everywhere you walk, check your shoes". I'm currently a Junior in college - I've had an internship at Amazon last summer and now, for my final summer I have an internship at Google. I go to a state school not really known for CS, although we have a huge CS undergraduate body. A lot of classes in CS require group work - which for the most part, I think is really helpful since most engineering in industry is done in teams. I've had 3 classes where the majority of the grade is made up by projects, and many classes where we do many projects. In each class, I've had to carry the bulk (~90%?) of the workload - half the groups don't know how to code (mostly webapps), and the other half don't care to try. I've tried many approaches - I find that if I recommend tech stacks tha
Why it failed: I've generally stuck to the mantra in life that "If it smells like shit everywhere you walk, check your shoes". I'm currently a Junior in college - I've had an internship at Amazon last summer and now, for my final summer I have an internship at Google. I
AmIAnElitist
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: How do a prepare mentally for war?
I've seen some posts here about preparing for a nuclear attack, but I don't think I'm prepared mentally for war of any kind. I grew up in the UK during the 90s so I've obviously had a very sheltered life. The two most difficult things I've ever gone through is losing a job and having my heart broken. If nuclear war happened, assuming I survived I'm not sure I'd be able to cope with the real suffering that would follow. I'm also not sure how I'd cope if I was drafted into a more conventional war. The idea of being cold, dump, tried and hungry for weeks on end seems unbearable to me. I also have no idea how I'd cope without seeing my partner for what could be months not knowing if she's safe, or even still alive. I'm terrified that the world I was raised for will not be my future. I am scared and I've not been able to focus o
Why it failed: I've seen some posts here about preparing for a nuclear attack, but I don't think I'm prepared mentally for war of any kind. I grew up in the UK during the 90s so I've obviously had a very sheltered life. The two most difficult things I've ever gone throu
kypro
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: Download Twitter data without API keys
In April last year I started thinking about using Twitter in a smarter way. I wanted to do analytics on my tweets and find out more about people following me on Twitter. What kinds of things do people who follow me like and retweet? I decided to dig into the data and find out. When I went to try and download Twitter data in raw form I found I quickly got bogged down writing API wrangling code and fiddling with API keys. I just wanted to crunch some data but here I was wrangling Twitter's API. This was such a frustrating experience it suddenly looked like an opportunity to me. Was there room for a product here? A product which does one simple thing: help people extract Twitter data painlessly without writing any code. I did some research and discovered some tools that purported to do this, but none of them worked well for my use-case and all were badly designed and/or expensive.
Why it failed: In April last year I started thinking about using Twitter in a smarter way. I wanted to do analytics on my tweets and find out more about people following me on Twitter. What kinds of things do people who follow me like and retweet? I decided to dig into the data and find out. Wh
chr15m
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: To have (system) design sessions or not?
In my team, I suggest that before starting coding/implementing any middle-size/big feature (e.g., an HTTP endpoint that, supposedly, needs a new db table) the engineers involved (which usually involves all the backend engineers) should have a "design" session where: - potential high-level solutions are discussed - potential implementations are discussed (not low-level details, but at least the important/risky ones) - and once a "final" decision is made, whoever is in charge of pushing the feature live to production can start with the implementation. The rest of the team can review the implmentation later on knowing that it should follow the final decision the team agreed on The team doesn't like the approach that much because: - it takes time ("Omg, yet another meeting?") - "review of the design can be done at PR code review time&quo
Why it failed: In my team, I suggest that before starting coding/implementing any middle-size/big feature (e.g., an HTTP endpoint that, supposedly, needs a new db table) the engineers involved (which usually involves all the backend engineers) should have a "design" session
danwee
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information?
In the pre-Internet era, when you were curious about tech X, you'd walk to a store, skim through a bunch of books, pick the one you liked the most, and take it home. The whole process of searching took less than an hour, and then you were committed, because back at home, it was the only material about X you had physically available. If something wasn't mentioned in the book, you couldn't Google it, tough luck. And reading that book was genuinely exciting, because with TV and offline games being the only alternatives, it was your strongest source of dopamine. You'd be picking it up instinctly, just like today you pick up a smartphone, because it was the most mysterious thing to explore within your reach. These days, you type X into Google, and you get hit with an avalanche of tutorials, ebooks, video series, paid courses, online lectures, all available constantly and i
Why it failed: In the pre-Internet era, when you were curious about tech X, you'd walk to a store, skim through a bunch of books, pick the one you liked the most, and take it home. The whole process of searching took less than an hour, and then you were committed, because back at home, it
johnny_castaway
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development
In this dynamic world and specially tech space, there are numerous things coming up and evolving. To stay competitive, we have to improving our skills on technical, business, and other soft skills. As there is a wide variety of things to learn, how do you create learning plans (specific path towards a direction)? Also how do you avoid participating in the sessions which offer beginner-friendly content? How do you find good quality in learning materials? I find most of them offering just basic introductory lessons. But I find them overly repetitive, and want to focus on practical use cases more than theoritical aspects.
Why it failed: In this dynamic world and specially tech space, there are numerous things coming up and evolving. To stay competitive, we have to improving our skills on technical, business, and other soft skills. As there is a wide variety of things to learn, how do you create learning plans (s
adityam582y
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Is RSS dying? Or coming back?
Is RSS still actively developed as a protocol? If not, why not? Are there any viable alternatives on the horizon? I find it really troubling that we seem to have resigned ourselves to web content discovery and distribution belonging to corporations like Google and Meta. Also grateful for any reading recommendations on this subject, both on RSS specifically and on the question of web content discovery/distribution broadly. (I’ve read through most of the stories/posts pronouncing RSS dead or resurrecting it and I’m not convinced either way.)
Why it failed: Is RSS still actively developed as a protocol? If not, why not? Are there any viable alternatives on the horizon? I find it really troubling that we seem to have resigned ourselves to web content discovery and distribution belonging to corporations like Google and Meta. Also grat
bundleunbundle
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Has GitHub stars become a gamed metric?
It seems that FOSS and “open core” has become a hard requirement to gain street cred, especially for dev tools. Businesses and VC-backed projects are doing it, but they need to monetize, somehow. For established businesses, they have lots of resources and sharing a wide range of tools that are orthogonal to their core business, and low risk. For startups, they go with the open core model for their flagship product. I’ve noticed some VC backed startups having thousands of GitHub stars but very little online presence, sometimes with zero references on HackerNews. Also, merge requests go abandoned or closed when you dig deeper. Has fraud detection proof bots for GitHub become more prevalent and accessible?
Why it failed: It seems that FOSS and “open core” has become a hard requirement to gain street cred, especially for dev tools. Businesses and VC-backed projects are doing it, but they need to monetize, somehow. For established businesses, they have lots of resources and sharing a wide range of
diceduckmonk
- startupShut down2022
Remote workers, how do you stop thinking about work?
It’s the end of your work day. You close your laptop. You step away from your desk. Your head is hurting from eye strain. You’re telling yourself to chill out but your mind keeps going back to work. You’re thinking, did I rub people the wrong way with my presentation? How am I going to solve this problem that seems so hard to solve? What if I fail? What do you do to stop ruminating about work and get on with your life outside of work?
Why it failed: It’s the end of your work day. You close your laptop. You step away from your desk. Your head is hurting from eye strain. You’re telling yourself to chill out but your mind keeps going back to work. You’re thinking, did I rub people the wrong way with my presentation? How am I go
ampham
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: Worst AWS service and support team experience
Its been about 10 hours now that our core business operations is down because AWS security system decided that our account has unauthorized service usage and place a restriction on some part of services we can have access to. One of them is obviously AWS Lambda. Two weeks ago we started processing large volume of transactions (We provide wallet and digital assets infrastructure for businesses) and needed to increase our services performance from request time out to memory to even our RDS instance to be able to accommodate the kind of requests we are currently processing. However yesterday (29th of July) at around 5:04PM we got an email from AWS about unautorized service charges due to some unauthorized activity and could be a potential account hack or compromise. My heart first sank because I was just waking up from a nap after reviewing the new lambda functions the teams worked on and p
Why it failed: Its been about 10 hours now that our core business operations is down because AWS security system decided that our account has unauthorized service usage and place a restriction on some part of services we can have access to. One of them is obviously AWS Lambda. Two weeks ago we
citguru
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: Runops YC W21 scraped my email from Git and keeps spamming me
Last month I got an unsolicited email from Runops founder @andriosr. After receiving a follow-up email, I asked him to stop. Unfortunately, the emails keep coming. This is unethical and annoying. I have no relationship with this company and they must have extracted my email from a repo on GitHub. I get that you're a scrappy startup trying to growth hack into some traction, but spam is just spam. It's not that big of a deal, but this is the kind of behavior I expect from a shady company. As a small tech startup hoping to serve technical customers, I expect you to be better. One spam I'll ignore, two, I'll ask you to stop. Continuing after that is worth calling you out within the community that we share. On August 01, 2022 07:58, Andrios Robert <andrios@t****s.com> wrote: Hi, saw you forked redis on Github and wanted to ask for a quick help. I'm the founder o
Why it failed: Last month I got an unsolicited email from Runops founder @andriosr. After receiving a follow-up email, I asked him to stop. Unfortunately, the emails keep coming. This is unethical and annoying. I have no relationship with this company and they must have extracted my email from
eloisius
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: Infisical – open-source secrets manager
Last month, we open-sourced Infisical ( https://github.com/Infisical/infisical ) - a simple, end-to-end encrypted tool to sync environment variables across your team and infrastructure. You can use it to store environment variables and inject them into your applications locally or into CI/CD and production infrastructure. It can be used with any language/framework and is platform independent with a super easy setup. We know secret managers exist but, in our experience, they’re too complicated, not comprehensive, not user-friendly, or a mix of all three — other nicer ones are closed-source and don’t have self-hosted options available. That’s why we’re on a mission to make secret management more accessible to every developer — not just security teams. We’ve launched this repo under the MIT license so any developer can use the tool. The goal is to not charge in
Why it failed: Last month, we open-sourced Infisical ( https://github.com/Infisical/infisical ) - a simple, end-to-end encrypted tool to sync environment variables across your team and infrastructure. You can use it to store environment variables and inject them into your ap
vmatsiiako
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: I was tired of being a perfectionist so I built an app within 24 hours
Like probably many of you, I'm kind of a perfectionist coder/creator. Recently I'd been bookmarking interesting dark mode sites just because I liked their aesthetic, and because for some of the SaaS I want to make, I wanted to make it dark mode first rather than light mode like most sites, so I was looking for inspiration. I'd amassed around 20-30 and I told my friends about these cool sites yesterday. They mentioned that me linking to each one was kind of annoying and they wanted to see all of them at once, similar to how Awwwards and other web design inspiration directories worked. I thought a making a dark mode directory was a great idea as I could just link one site to my friends rather than bombarding them with links. I'd previously worked on other projects but I always spent too long nitpicking every detail. It always took so long that I lost interest after
Why it failed: Like probably many of you, I'm kind of a perfectionist coder/creator. Recently I'd been bookmarking interesting dark mode sites just because I liked their aesthetic, and because for some of the SaaS I want to make, I wanted to make it dark mode first rather than li
satvikpendem
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: What was life like before and after a baby
My first is due 3 days ago. I'm told that I'm going to have no time any more and good sleep is a thing of the past. I'm worried, I don't work well when tired. I'm just starting to get in the habit of investing in myself as a developer and am reading a lot, practicing a lot. This has made me, in my estimation, a much better programmer. Does this end when you have kids? What was it like for you out there that have gone through this change in life?
Why it failed: My first is due 3 days ago. I'm told that I'm going to have no time any more and good sleep is a thing of the past. I'm worried, I don't work well when tired. I'm just starting to get in the habit of investing in myself as a developer and am reading a lot
xupybd
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: I Built a Gaming GeoGuessr
My friend and I made a fully featured gaming geoguessr - complete with 360 degree panoramas, movement, leaderboards, and multiplayer. We had made a Fortnite geoguessr a while back, and although this was well received, our goal always was to bring the worlds of all games to the browser. A much harder task considering the scale and scope of many open world games. We had to make a bunch of tools to be able to achieve this. World of Warcraft alone took us roughly 3,000,000 images to do (and will likely need another 1,000,000 for Dragonflight once it releases). We are finally at a point where we are happy to release this into the wild and let people try it, although we are still working hard on adding all the games that are listed as coming soon. If you're ever bored, and would like to test your gaming map knowledge - or would just like to explore the world in your browser akin to Google
Why it failed: My friend and I made a fully featured gaming geoguessr - complete with 360 degree panoramas, movement, leaderboards, and multiplayer. We had made a Fortnite geoguessr a while back, and although this was well received, our goal always was to bring the worlds of all games to the br
lewisedc
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: My startup is running out of fund. What should I do?
My startup is running out of fund soon. We have no revenue and failed to raise external capital. Our product development is almost done, but we need a lot of money to launch our product to market (we are in fintech business). We don't have that amount of money, and it is not even close. So the real question is what to do after the company die? If I keep working on this, the company can stay in zombie mode for years. I honestly think we should shut the company down. My cofounder is telling me if I don't keep working on this startup (using the money out of my cofounder & me's pocket after the company die), then I am being guilty to him, guilty to current investors and guilty to employees, because I am not all in. What are your guys thought?
Why it failed: My startup is running out of fund soon. We have no revenue and failed to raise external capital. Our product development is almost done, but we need a lot of money to launch our product to market (we are in fintech business). We don't have that amount of money, and it is not
whentojoin
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: Salesforce has globally revoked Slack's holiday shutdown benefit
The workplace policy has been in effect for many years, and was until recently an advertised perk of working for Slack. It allowed all employees access to free paid time off from 24th until the New Year (some employees like incident responders would take shifts, but even Customer Experience (their support team) ran skeleton shifts). Today they have announced this policy has ended as a result of the economy as well as making the workplace more equitable (as Salesforce employees could not access this benefit).
Why it failed: The workplace policy has been in effect for many years, and was until recently an advertised perk of working for Slack. It allowed all employees access to free paid time off from 24th until the New Year (some employees like incident responders would take shifts, but even Customer
SadSlackbot