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 down2020
Launch HN: Taiv (YC W20) – Replace TV commercials with content people care about
Hey HN! We’re Noah, Avi, and Jordan from Taiv ( https://www.taiv.tv ). We make a box that lets sports bars and other businesses replace live TV commercials with content their customers actually care about. A year and a half ago, I was sitting in a local bar and saw a commercial showing that the same beer I was drinking was cheaper across the street. The place I was in had other drinks on specials for way cheaper and great happy hour food, but they didn’t have an effective way to tell me about it. I ended up walking away feeling ripped off when I could have left a happy customer if they had been able to more effectively make me aware of their specials. It got me investigating how businesses communicate with their customers. I found out that half of all restaurants close within a year and that one of the most common reasons they fail is because they’re unable to educate their cus
Why it failed: Hey HN! We’re Noah, Avi, and Jordan from Taiv ( https://www.taiv.tv ). We make a box that lets sports bars and other businesses replace live TV commercials with content their customers actually care about. A year and a half ago, I was sitting in a local bar and saw a co
npalansky
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Mindset Health (YC S19) – Hypnotherapy apps for chronic conditions
Hey HN! We're Alex & Chris, brothers from Melbourne, Australia, and the founders of Mindset Health ( https://www.mindsethealth.com ). We create mobile apps to help people manage chronic health conditions at home. Our programs use hypnosis-based techniques, developed by clinicians, to help people manage conditions like anxiety, depression & Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Mindset Health came out of a difficult period after Chris and I wound down our first startup. During this time, we experienced a lot of anxiety and stress. I ended up being prescribed anti-anxiety medication, but the side effects and the lack of control I felt caused me to look for non-pharmacological options, like CBT and biofeedback. Someone we trusted recommended hypnotherapy. Chris and I were skeptical about hypnosis (the 'being made to cluck like a chicken' reputation), but after com
Why it failed: Hey HN! We're Alex & Chris, brothers from Melbourne, Australia, and the founders of Mindset Health ( https://www.mindsethealth.com ). We create mobile apps to help people manage chronic health conditions at home. Our programs use hypnosis-based techniques, deve
alexnaoumidis
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: What is the best way to target restaurants and small businesses?
Hello, We are a chatbot startup, targeting restaurants and other small businesses, brick and mortar that might be affected by covid19. What is the best way to target these businesses, specially that many of them are closing down? We want to help them sell through our delivery system.
Why it failed: Hello, We are a chatbot startup, targeting restaurants and other small businesses, brick and mortar that might be affected by covid19. What is the best way to target these businesses, specially that many of them are closing down? We want to help them sell through our delivery sys
ahmedaly
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Rally.Video (YC S20) – Dynamic video platform for social groups
Hey HN! My name is Ali and I am one of the three co-founders of https://rally.video/ . Rally is a video application that makes it easy to hop between breakout conversations. Users can see and hear other conversations around them, as if they were in a shared space. We started Rally because we needed to host a virtual birthday party, and existing solutions suck for larger groups. At the same time, we noticed bars and restaurants closing, and wanted to build a platform that emulated these physical spaces. With that in mind, we added venues, rooms, and tables. A venue (like a bar or banquet hall) can consist of multiple rooms (like a patio, DJ lounge etc). Each room can fit 35 people, and people can form tables (groups) in a room organically. Tables could have up to 9 people, and can be joined with a simple click. Users can create multiple rooms, allowing for events of all siz
Why it failed: Hey HN! My name is Ali and I am one of the three co-founders of https://rally.video/ . Rally is a video application that makes it easy to hop between breakout conversations. Users can see and hear other conversations around them, as if they were in a shared space.
Ali_Jiwani
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Advice for staying in the job market while homeless?
Hello HN, I've lived as a "hand to mouth" freelancer for a while and can no longer keep up with rent due to clients shutting down. I have over a dozen job applications under way, but obviously progress is slow and even if I do get an offer it won't pay off until I'm "on the streets". I do have good friends who will let me stay on their couches for some time. Given the circumstances I'm afraid that I'll be stuck in this situation until my food budget is used up, at which point I don't know what to do. Frankly I feel like throwing myself into the river right now, but obviously that is not helping anyone. I have a fairly niche skill set that no one wants. My specialty is building and running complex on-prem infrastructure (in the petabytes and teraflops range), though in the recent years I've been doing DevOps in the cloud like everyone
Why it failed: Hello HN, I've lived as a "hand to mouth" freelancer for a while and can no longer keep up with rent due to clients shutting down. I have over a dozen job applications under way, but obviously progress is slow and even if I do get an offer it won't pay off unt
HelpImHomeless
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Quell (YC S20) – Immersive gaming and combat workout
Hey HN, We're Cam, Doug, Lorenzo and Martin, co-founders of Quell ( https://quell.tech ). Quell is an immersive fitness game which guides players through an exciting, effective combat workout at home. Players fight enemies with a low-cost wearable which uses smart resistance bands to simulate real combat training. Our aim is to be Peloton meets gaming meets boxing, at 1/10th of the price. We launched on Kickstarter yesterday, and would love it if you checked us out! Here’s the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/quelltech/quell-real-ga... We started building Quell because for us, exercise wasn’t fun; it was work. We’d tried all the stats tracking apps and the cycling simulators, but they weren’t treating that root problem. Over time, as the novelty wore off, we were left with the feeling that working out was still boring and uncomfortab
Why it failed: Hey HN, We're Cam, Doug, Lorenzo and Martin, co-founders of Quell ( https://quell.tech ). Quell is an immersive fitness game which guides players through an exciting, effective combat workout at home. Players fight enemies with a low-cost wearable which uses smart
douglaspaul
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Castodia (YC W20) – Populate Google Sheets from databases
Hey HN, we’re Jimmy and Ayazhan, founders of Castodia ( https://www.castodia.com ). We help pull data from databases directly into Google Sheets. It’s basically a live database connector for Google Sheets that allows for data refreshes. Before we started working on this, we were working on an idea around data pipelines. It didn’t take off so we had to pivot mid-batch. We had less than 1 month to do user interviews, build our product, get it approved, and launch it. To start with, we knew we wanted to stay in the data space. We spent the first week talking to over 30 people at different companies. In those conversations, we noticed that sales, marketing, and operations teams constantly need to ask developers to help them export data from the database and often have to submit follow-on data requests because they forgot to add a dimension needed for analysis (they often do this by
Why it failed: Hey HN, we’re Jimmy and Ayazhan, founders of Castodia ( https://www.castodia.com ). We help pull data from databases directly into Google Sheets. It’s basically a live database connector for Google Sheets that allows for data refreshes. Before we started working on this
jimmyechan
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Belvo (YC W20) – Financial Data API Platform for Latin America
Hey HN, Pablo and Oriol here, founders of Belvo ( https://belvo.co/ ), a financial data API platform for Latin America. Think Plaid for Latam. We were previously building a payments startup (something like Venmo) in Europe and when expanding to Latam realised how hard it is to connect to legacy infrastructure, whether it is to access data, validate bank accounts or process payments. We’ve also been working in fintech in Europe for the past few years (at companies like Revolut) and one of us comes from a traditional financial services background. We’ve seen the impact open banking technology, which has become common in Europe, has had on providing end-users with more transparent and fair offerings and on lowering barriers for fintech developers to get started and launch innovative new products. But this technology hasn't made it into Latam yet, so we saw a big opportun
Why it failed: Hey HN, Pablo and Oriol here, founders of Belvo ( https://belvo.co/ ), a financial data API platform for Latin America. Think Plaid for Latam. We were previously building a payments startup (something like Venmo) in Europe and when expanding to Latam realised how h
viguerapablo
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
Hi HN, I’m Taylor Cooney. My co-founder Lucas Playford and I are launching ( https://www.openunit.com ) - software for managing self-storage facilities. Lucas and I met 5 years ago at a startup in Toronto. Since leaving the startup, we’ve been looking for ways to “get the band back together” ever since. I would hack on side projects, such as an order-ahead food app and applicant tracking system for recruiting tech employees, but most of these fizzled out after a few weeks. Despite our best efforts to get something started, we quickly realized that good startup ideas don't just happen out of nowhere. Or do they? 12 months ago my landlord came to me with an offer: they wanted to sell the place I was renting, and they’d give me a surprising amount of money if I could be out with just a few days notice. Pulling that off though meant finding somewhere to keep all of my stuff wh
Why it failed: Hi HN, I’m Taylor Cooney. My co-founder Lucas Playford and I are launching ( https://www.openunit.com ) - software for managing self-storage facilities. Lucas and I met 5 years ago at a startup in Toronto. Since leaving the startup, we’ve been looking for ways to “get t
taylorcooney
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Goodcover (YC S17) – Cooperative renters insurance for half the price
Hi HN, we’re Chris and Dan, co-founders of Goodcover ( https://www.goodcover.com ). Goodcover provides renters insurance (only in California at the moment) and operates as a cooperative. We take a fixed fee on every policy, pool the premiums to pay claims, and then return what’s left over back to Members through an annual dividend. Thanks to this model and good technology we’re able to cut the price of renters insurance in half. I (Chris) worked in traditional insurance for 8 years. That time taught me to love insurance and how it picks people up after disasters, but it also gave me first hand exposure to the things people hate about it – the ever-increasing prices, the adversarial claims negotiations, the mountains of paperwork, and the byzantine decision making. All these inefficiencies kept us from really understanding and working for our policyholders – the people we were m
Why it failed: Hi HN, we’re Chris and Dan, co-founders of Goodcover ( https://www.goodcover.com ). Goodcover provides renters insurance (only in California at the moment) and operates as a cooperative. We take a fixed fee on every policy, pool the premiums to pay claims, and then retu
chrisplotz
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Edlyft (YC W20) – Paid Support Program for CS College Students
Hi HN! We’re Erika and Arnelle, friends since high school and co-founders of Edlyft ( https://www.edlyft.com ). We help college students pass their most challenging computer science classes, by offering them group tutoring sessions, study groups, and guidance from peers who’ve done it before them. Arnelle and I came into college as freshmen not knowing how to code, but wanting to graduate with a CS degree. We found the steep learning curve discouraging, the lack of support frustrating, and felt like everyone else was always ahead. Impostor syndrome hit hard. But we made it through! In the end, what made the difference was connecting with students and mentors who had come before us. My junior year out of desperation, I wrote a letter to a grad student who was willing to meet with me weekly to review concepts and connect me with other CS students. Without that support system, I p
Why it failed: Hi HN! We’re Erika and Arnelle, friends since high school and co-founders of Edlyft ( https://www.edlyft.com ). We help college students pass their most challenging computer science classes, by offering them group tutoring sessions, study groups, and guidance from peers
ehairston
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Data Mechanics (YC S19) – The Simplest Way to Run Apache Spark
Hi HN, We’re JY & Julien, co-founders of Data Mechanics ( https://www.datamechanics.co ), a big data platform striving to offer the simplest way to run Apache Spark. Apache Spark is an open-source distributed computing engine. It’s the most used technology in big data. First, because it’s fast (10-100x faster than Hadoop MapReduce). Second, because it offers simple, high-level APIs in Scala, Python, SQL, and R. In a few lines of code, data scientists and engineers can explore data, train machine learning models, and build batch or streaming pipelines over very large datasets (size ranging from 10GBs to PBs). While writing Spark applications is pretty easy, managing their infrastructure, deploying them and keeping them performant and stable in production over time is hard. You need to learn how Apache Spark works under the hood, become an expert with YARN and the JVM, manual
Why it failed: Hi HN, We’re JY & Julien, co-founders of Data Mechanics ( https://www.datamechanics.co ), a big data platform striving to offer the simplest way to run Apache Spark. Apache Spark is an open-source distributed computing engine. It’s the most used technology in big da
jstephan
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Nestybox (YC S20) – Containers beyond microservices
Hi HN, This is Cesar Talledo and Rodny Molina, co-founders of Nestybox (www.nestybox.com). Nestybox has developed a new container runtime that sits under Docker/containerd (it's a new type of runc) and enables containers to act as virtual-servers capable of running software such as systemd, Docker, and Kubernetes, easily and with proper isolation. The motivation came from noticing that containers are great at running microservices but struggle to run system-level software in them such as those mentioned above. That is, in order to run such software in a container, we needed unsecure privileged containers with complex images, custom entrypoints, volume mounts, etc., or alternatively a heavier virtual machine. This did not seem right. We studied the problem and noticed that the container abstraction was not complete enough, meaning that inside the container a root process lacked
Why it failed: Hi HN, This is Cesar Talledo and Rodny Molina, co-founders of Nestybox (www.nestybox.com). Nestybox has developed a new container runtime that sits under Docker/containerd (it's a new type of runc) and enables containers to act as virtual-servers capable of running soft
ctalledo
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Visual One (YC W20) – Event recognition for security cameras
Hi HN. My name is Mohammad Rafiee and I am the founder/CEO of Visual One ( https://www.visualone.tech ) We are building software for security cameras enabling them to recognize specific events. People use security cameras (aka IP cams) for various purposes—to monitor their properties, their kids, their pets, for elderly care, as doorbells, etc. But a shortcoming these cameras have is they rely mainly on motion detection to alert users and that leads to too many false alarms. What led me to work on this problem initially was my personal experience with the IP cameras which I used to watch my dog and also as a doorbell at my house which I rented out on Airbnb sometimes. After trying some of these cameras (Ring, Nest and Wyze), I realized motion alerts are pretty much useless and person detection that some like Nest offer is not broadly useful. For example, for my dog, I only
Why it failed: Hi HN. My name is Mohammad Rafiee and I am the founder/CEO of Visual One ( https://www.visualone.tech ) We are building software for security cameras enabling them to recognize specific events. People use security cameras (aka IP cams) for various purposes—to monit
mrafiee
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Terusama (YC W20) – We help warehouses schedule trucks
Hi HN, Andrew and Chris here. We’re building Terusama ( https://www.terusama.com ), a truck appointment system for logistics teams at warehouses and distribution centers. We automate the labor-intensive process of coordinating arrival times with a trucking company, checking a truck in at a facility, and keeping track of everything. Oh, and we have a theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyp4O4s5tk4 The status quo here is really antiquated software that is really hard to use. Not only is the current way of doing things inefficient for logistics folks, it has a big impact. The inefficiency created by poor supply-chain coordination costs $30B a year in the U.S. and generates billions of tons of C02, mostly from trucks idling in parking lots. On top of that, it has a huge impact on the lives of truck drivers, who are legally limited to 11 hours of driving time
Why it failed: Hi HN, Andrew and Chris here. We’re building Terusama ( https://www.terusama.com ), a truck appointment system for logistics teams at warehouses and distribution centers. We automate the labor-intensive process of coordinating arrival times with a trucking company, chec
adenta
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: SuperTokens (YC S20) – Securely manage session tokens
Hi everyone! My name is Advait and I co-founded SuperTokens along with @rishabhpoddar ( https://supertokens.io/ ). SuperTokens helps companies securely manage their session tokens, saving developer time and preventing identity theft. We started SuperTokens 1.5 years ago when we were building a consumer app and wanted our users to be logged in for a long time in a secure way. When it came to managing user sessions, there was a lot of ambiguity. We read many forums (Reddit, Stackoverflow) and blogs, and found that developers were arguing about best practices, such as using local storage vs cookies, implementing JWTs, etc. We had to do a lot of the first principles thinking ourselves to understand the tradeoffs. Around the same time, Facebook, Docker, Gitlab, Youtube, Uber were in the news for session vulnerabilities. Stealing a user’s session allows you to access their accou
Why it failed: Hi everyone! My name is Advait and I co-founded SuperTokens along with @rishabhpoddar ( https://supertokens.io/ ). SuperTokens helps companies securely manage their session tokens, saving developer time and preventing identity theft. We started SuperTokens 1.5 year
advaitruia
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: GitDuck (YC S20) – Zoom for developers with real-time code sharing
Hi everyone! We are Dragos and Thiago from GitDuck ( https://gitduck.com ). We are building GitDuck, a Zoom for developers with direct integration to the IDE so software developers can talk and collaborate in real-time. It all started by accident, Dragos and I were working on something else, a screen recording tool and we started to use it internally to record short videos of our code. At first it was just for quick code reviews and to debug, but soon we realized how helpful it was to have a video explanation of the code. Kind of rubber duck debugging with video. ;) After talking to almost 300 developers and learning that other people were facing similar collaboration issues we decided to focus 100% on building this tool. We are the first users and we use GitDuck internally for quick assistance, pair programming, code reviews or just discussing ideas. It has the features you wo
Why it failed: Hi everyone! We are Dragos and Thiago from GitDuck ( https://gitduck.com ). We are building GitDuck, a Zoom for developers with direct integration to the IDE so software developers can talk and collaborate in real-time. It all started by accident, Dragos and I were work
borisandcrispin
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Papercups (YC S20) – Open-Core Intercom Alternative
Hi HN! Kam and Alex here. We’re founders of Papercups ( https://papercups.io ), a live customer chat app written in Elixir. We offer an open-core self-hosted alternative to Intercom for companies that are security and privacy conscientious. Alex and I met in SF around 6 years ago, and have been hacking on small projects together for the past couple years. Before covid, we would spend many Sunday afternoons in coffee shops building prototypes of whatever our latest and greatest idea was… most of these fizzled out after a few weeks or so For 2020, we wanted to take the idea of “building something people want” a bit more seriously. We started off trying to build SaaS tools for ocean freight logistics companies. That failed, but we learned a ton in the process. After our experience in freight we wanted to work on tools that are a little closer to home and tried a completely new ide
Why it failed: Hi HN! Kam and Alex here. We’re founders of Papercups ( https://papercups.io ), a live customer chat app written in Elixir. We offer an open-core self-hosted alternative to Intercom for companies that are security and privacy conscientious. Alex and I met in SF around 6
cheeseblubber
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Sunsama (YC W19) – Daily Planner for Busy People
Hi HackerNews! I'm Ashutosh, one of the founders of Sunsama ( https://sunsama.com ). Sunsama is a daily planner for busy folks. Each day, Sunsama walks you through a guided daily planning process that helps you create a calm, focused, and intentional plan for the day. Sunsama pulls together your calendar, emails, and tasks from other SaaS tools into a single place. Travis and I started building products in the calendar and productivity space a couple years after graduating and working our first jobs. The idea that we were going to spend the next 40 years behind computers, working, and that Outlook or Google calendar would be the best way for us to be thoughtful and intentional with what we did at work felt unacceptable. Before Sunsama, we built, launched, and shut down six different products in this space over the course of four years. I’ll spare you the postmortem on each
Why it failed: Hi HackerNews! I'm Ashutosh, one of the founders of Sunsama ( https://sunsama.com ). Sunsama is a daily planner for busy folks. Each day, Sunsama walks you through a guided daily planning process that helps you create a calm, focused, and intentional plan for the d
priyadarshy
- startupShut down2020
Show HN: Remake – A server-rendered framework for building CRUD web apps fast
I wanted to have a framework that would let me build web apps faster than ever before. I didn’t care if it was a little hacky or didn’t use best practices — I wanted to be able to get a multi-user application out the door in hours instead of months. I researched the CMS space for months before deciding to build something from scratch. My goal was to be 90% done building a web app once I had the static HTML and CSS finished. I’m not a big fan of building out API endpoints over and over again for every new app, fiddling with a database, or doing lots of config. What I ended up with was a syntax that lets developers tag HTML elements as containing data (i.e. objects or arrays), thereby transforming the tree structure of the DOM into a JSON tree that can be saved to the current user's account. It took a while after that to evolve the syntax and make it easy to use. I call the project Re
Why it failed: I wanted to have a framework that would let me build web apps faster than ever before. I didn’t care if it was a little hacky or didn’t use best practices — I wanted to be able to get a multi-user application out the door in hours instead of months. I researched the CMS space for
ollerac
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: How can we solve politics?
I don’t know if peer review already does this, but it seems simple to solve politics if we had one place to list all points. The hard part is getting the other side to acknowledge and really understand the points of the opposing side. Twitter is a shouting match. Hotness algorithms black hole discussions in Reddit and HN comments. 1. List all points from both sides. 2. Force both sides to acknowledge all points of the other side. 3. Respond to all points. 4. Acknowledge all responses. 5. Respond to all responses. 6. Repeat. We should be tracking whether each side has acknowledged points from the other side. For every issue, we should have a list of latest responses to points. Why isn’t it easy for us to see where the experts disagree for an issue? Discussions usually start from the root and go down 2 or 3 levels before hitting a wall. When everyone knows where to go to see who’s ignoring
Why it failed: I don’t know if peer review already does this, but it seems simple to solve politics if we had one place to list all points. The hard part is getting the other side to acknowledge and really understand the points of the opposing side. Twitter is a shouting match. Hotness algorith
username3
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Are YouTube ads getting worse?
I opened a ~1 hour video and saw notches in the timeline for 10 different ad breaks. This is as bad as live TV now. Ads play at the end of videos. More videos have long, unskippable ads. More ad breaks in the middle of videos. Multiple people in my circles said they noticed this too when asked, but it could just be a fluke/some kind of group confirmation bias. Has anyone else experienced this? Or even better, collected data on it?
Why it failed: I opened a ~1 hour video and saw notches in the timeline for 10 different ad breaks. This is as bad as live TV now. Ads play at the end of videos. More videos have long, unskippable ads. More ad breaks in the middle of videos. Multiple people in my circles said they noticed this
Kye
- startupShut down2020
How we reached $6250 monthly recurring revenue in 77 days from launch
I build SaaS products for living and recently, launched Helpwise (https://helpwise.io) - shared inbox for teams to manage team emails like help@, jobs@ etc. Here I'm going to share how we reached $6k MRR within 77 days of launch. We built this product because we had tried the two other main players in the market and felt that these products are 1)expensive 2)complex On 2nd Dec'19, we launched on PH. Kept following things in mind: 1.Use GIF in the thumbnail 2.Product screenshots 3.Post close to 12:00 am PST 4.Never indulge in fake voting We ended that day @ 4th position! Coming in top 5 on Product Hunt opens a lot of early PR opportunities. So, we go covered by number of niche blogs. We spent $1k on SEO & $200 in FB Ads targeting job profiles like Support Manager, HR Manager etc. To break some users (similar to us) from existing players, we built 1-click account mi
Why it failed: I build SaaS products for living and recently, launched Helpwise (https://helpwise.io) - shared inbox for teams to manage team emails like help@, jobs@ etc. Here I'm going to share how we reached $6k MRR within 77 days of launch. We built this product because we ha
saasfounder
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Getting depressed about money. How do I make a meaningful amount “fast”?
I am a software developer and like the company I work for. I am smart and capable but have few connections. I have a family and several people rely on my relatively high income so I can't drop everything and do a startup. I live in a place where cost of living is obscene and I have no option to move due to family. I am (finally) debt free, but projecting the rest of my life, I will be able to retire at 72-75. I want to get our early. Every day I watch people get stupid rich. I know the startup route and have done that a couple of times, though the products didn't take to their markets. I've tried stock trading, crypto trading, investment, small businesses, various passive income schemes, etc. None of this seems to return any decent investment. My portfolio can give me a solid 6-8% a year return, but unless I already have a couple of million to gamble it will still mean a s
Why it failed: I am a software developer and like the company I work for. I am smart and capable but have few connections. I have a family and several people rely on my relatively high income so I can't drop everything and do a startup. I live in a place where cost of living is obscene and
mcdoug