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 down2010
Please help Suicide hotline non profit
Hi, I belong to a developing nation, where we have almost no suicide hotlines. So i am thinking of starting a suicide hotline but I am facing some technical difficulties. I don't have a large budget to purchase Cisco unified communication system so i looking at something cheaper. This is what i am looking for : 1) People call to one unified number, a standard line number and it gets routed. 2) The calls should be routed to mobile numbers instead of landline numbers. This is a non profit venture which means that i can't employ people.So i want the calls get routed to mobile number of volunteers who are available at that time, despite their location. I have figured out asterisk but i don't know if it is best solution for this. If it is, i don't know my way around that. So guys please advice me on this issue, you might end up saving someones life.
Why it failed: Hi, I belong to a developing nation, where we have almost no suicide hotlines. So i am thinking of starting a suicide hotline but I am facing some technical difficulties. I don't have a large budget to purchase Cisco unified communication system so i looking at something cheaper.
ammarkalim
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Please review our startup: historious
historious is basically a search engine for sites you have bookmarked. Think of it as a cross between delicious and google, you bookmark something and the entire content of the page becomes searchable. It's at http://historio.us/ I have posted it here once before, and you guys were very helpful, giving a deluge of very good suggestions. Right now I'd like to ask for your opinion on the pricing model. Our model right now is a free option, which has a limit of 1000 bookmarks for a month, and then it becomes unlimited. This is to avoid people coming in, importing their 20,000 bookmarks and leaving, never to return. There are also some extra features here: http://historio.us/pricing/ The main problem, and what we'd like your feedback on, is that every bookmark a user adds is expensive, as we have to store the entire page. Right now the service is profitable, but we'd like to improve it so we
Why it failed: historious is basically a search engine for sites you have bookmarked. Think of it as a cross between delicious and google, you bookmark something and the entire content of the page becomes searchable. It's at http://historio.us/ I have posted it here once before, and you guys we
stavros
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: My startup failed. $9k in debt and need to pay most of it in 12 days.
HN, A startup that I am part of failed. Prereq: USA, C-Corp in Delaware. We have $6k in server fees to Rackspace and $3k in debt with our lawyer. We also have a huge amount of credit card fraud that went through our credit card processing account/merchant account (like $8k), which is going to be an ongoing issue for the next year+ and may end up in me and my SSN being blacklisted from Visa and Mastercard. I used to be able to cover this kind of failure, but over the past few months, I've sunk tons of my money into this company and completely depleted my checking and savings accounts. The account goes into collections in the first week of October (which means my credit will be destroyed). I will be leaving the startup after I sort everything out. I need a way to make this $6k in about 12 days. My savings is shot. I have some consulting (WordPress, PHP, Rails) money coming in, but it's onl
Why it failed: HN, A startup that I am part of failed. Prereq: USA, C-Corp in Delaware. We have $6k in server fees to Rackspace and $3k in debt with our lawyer. We also have a huge amount of credit card fraud that went through our credit card processing account/merchant account (like $8k), whic
debtscrewed
- startupShut down2010
I need someone to build my website. My budget is $200 and I need it ASAP.
How many times have you been asked this by friends, colleagues, and referrals. The person generally continues to say... "I really don't need anything too advanced. Just a simple ecommerce/wiki/forum/community website. With a blog. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours. I actually could even do it myself no problem, but its just not worth my time. You know, I used to be the #1 COBOL programmer in the 70s." At this point, I sarcastically interrupt "Would you like me to program your website in COBOL so you can maintain it?" They never get the satire... "Oh, and really important. I like this website (shows random crappy website) that my friend has. Can you make it like this? You know, but different? We're ready to launch, all we need is the website, and we need it done ASAP. If you say its going to take 8 hours, I expect that you could get it done by tomorrow." I usually respond to thi
Why it failed: How many times have you been asked this by friends, colleagues, and referrals. The person generally continues to say... "I really don't need anything too advanced. Just a simple ecommerce/wiki/forum/community website. With a blog. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours. I ac
bdclimber14
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Moving balls to the wall on a fantastic idea?
Howdy HN. I've been sucking on an idea for the past few weeks that seems to get exponentially better and better every time I discuss it out loud. Tonight's conversation with my girlfriend is what inspired me to go absolutely batty with it. All of us have felt this way one time or another. The thing preventing us from executing or going all-out on it always comes down to a handful of things. 1) It's a brilliant idea that we came up with all on our own, but it's been done before, sometimes better, and sometimes worse. 2) We don't have any time. We're too busy with X, Y, or Z gig that is paying the bills and is therefore more important. 3) We don't have the resources to execute on it. 4) A combination of all of the above. I'm stuck with items 2 and 3 in the list. I'm a freelancer who is working hard right now to support myself. 20 years old, skipping college, writing my own ticket. I've man
Why it failed: Howdy HN. I've been sucking on an idea for the past few weeks that seems to get exponentially better and better every time I discuss it out loud. Tonight's conversation with my girlfriend is what inspired me to go absolutely batty with it. All of us have felt this way one time or
whalesalad
- startupShut down2010
How You Can Directly Help Haiti
Howdy. ++This is at least a double-scroll message, so I appreciate you taking a couple minutes to read it++ I'm currently working on growing my startup (a YC company), but previously I spent 2 years building a non-profit that sets up volunteer centers in disaster areas and I'd like to ask you for your help in supporting it. We are a super lean organization with an executive director that takes a $0 per year salary. Donations are being gathered to directly help the people in Haiti. Haiti has suffered a catastrophic disaster. It's quite hard to fully conceptualize what something like this does to a country. For those of you who have experienced life in a 3rd world country, you know how shocking everyday life can be for some people... add on top of that chaos, pain, fear and a collapse of basic services... The people in Haiti are greatly suffering now and will be for the months if not years
Why it failed: Howdy. ++This is at least a double-scroll message, so I appreciate you taking a couple minutes to read it++ I'm currently working on growing my startup (a YC company), but previously I spent 2 years building a non-profit that sets up volunteer centers in disaster areas and I'd li
dariusmonsef
- startupShut down2010
Sign of the times?
I have been following posts on Hacker News, albeit, not religiously. I wish I had time to neatly categorize posts based on the content in the post but in general, a few themes standout: (1) sagely start-up wisdom (2) another day, another web application (3) another day, another debate about the best MVC framework for the web app (4) VC gossip (5) gossip around Apple, Google and Facebook (6) Another post about how language X sucks, a contrarian spinning his/her wheels on why language Y rocks. That pretty much sums up hacker news. The Signal/Crap ratio is scary if you rip apart fluff masquerading as technology. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the site. What bothers me is this penchant to appropriate the "start-up" cool as opposed to focusing on the idea, product, or service that is being innovated -- as if a start-up is the end-all-be-all in life. Is start-up association the tec
Why it failed: I have been following posts on Hacker News, albeit, not religiously. I wish I had time to neatly categorize posts based on the content in the post but in general, a few themes standout: (1) sagely start-up wisdom (2) another day, another web application (3) another day, another d
cherenkov
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: What makes you happy? What is your American Dream?
I am working on a documentary on the "new" pursuit of happiness. The "old" pursuit of happiness and the American Dream seem to have gotten tangled in money and possessions, but there seems to be some movement toward a non-material, or less material, pursuit of happiness (i.e. The Small House Movement, downshifting, Slow Movement, neo-homesteaders, etc.) No one really created The American Dream, but we inherited a national charter that promised us "inalienable rights" that included happiness. Somewhere along the line the American Dream has become associated with "a consumeristic nightmare" (to quote Vanity Fair writer David Camp http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904 ). But there are some- my husband being one- who would argue we're at a moment of change. Given the world's economic crisis, a heightened awareness of our earth, and a new post Baby Boom gener
Why it failed: I am working on a documentary on the "new" pursuit of happiness. The "old" pursuit of happiness and the American Dream seem to have gotten tangled in money and possessions, but there seems to be some movement toward a non-material, or less material, pursuit of happiness (i.e. The
kirstendirksen
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Does anyone use the Amazon Mechanical Turk API?
I'm working on a project that relies on a human workforce to perform some simple image identification tasks. AWS Turk seemed to fit the requirements pretty well, and I have the basics working with externally-hosted tasks. Does anyone here actually use Turk, though? The forum seems nearly abandoned (http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/forum.jspa?forumID=11), and no Amazon employees have responded to any questions. The API has not had any updates in years. Is the Mechanical Turk now a walking corpse? Read on for a description of the problem I've run into. Maybe a fellow enterprising HN reader dealt with something similar and found a solution. :) I need to enforce that the same worker does not look at closely-related images. I can enforce that in my app, and basically show a task that says "please return this task and try some of our other tasks in a couple of hours". This is ann
Why it failed: I'm working on a project that relies on a human workforce to perform some simple image identification tasks. AWS Turk seemed to fit the requirements pretty well, and I have the basics working with externally-hosted tasks. Does anyone here actually use Turk, though? The forum seem
gcv
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Loosing Faith - the startup killer
I'm coding for 15 years, I've met a bunch of of bright, skilled and motivated people trying to build "their own project": Nearly everyone of them had on some point the idea to build a startup, a small web project, a passive income business. And mostly everyone, including myself, failed. We've failed not because nobody wanted our product. Or because of missing programming skills. We've failed because we've lost faith in our product! We may have started, wrote weeks of code, played with it. And finally abandoned it without finishing it. I'm not talking about "missing market"/lack of customer acceptance. We just were not able to finish it. What I wonder: We're all intelligent enough to understand, that it probably takes some time to finish a product (SaaS app for example). We all now, that it takes some time to get a few beta customers and even more time and hard work to attract paying cust
Why it failed: I'm coding for 15 years, I've met a bunch of of bright, skilled and motivated people trying to build "their own project": Nearly everyone of them had on some point the idea to build a startup, a small web project, a passive income business. And mostly everyone, including myself,
rmoriz
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Why do no other laptop manufacturers get it?
I don't own a Macbook, but when people ask me what they should get it's hard to recommend a good alternative. For every other manufacturer - do the model names and numbers have to be so opaque? They could all cut it down to 5 or 6 well designed, sensibly named models and still sell more units. Whenever a friend is looking for a machine they try and wade through the HP, Dell and Sony websites. Eventually they give up trying to decipher the model names, and whether they should be looking iin "Everyday", "Performance", "Thin & Light" or "Business" categories and end up ordering a Macbook. The HP G62-105SA? The Dell Latitude E5410? HP you also sell the Compaq Presario CQ61-406SA? What are these machines? What the hell is wrong with you? I've owned the 13 inch Dell XPS machines. They were pretty good, but are apparently discontinued.
Why it failed: I don't own a Macbook, but when people ask me what they should get it's hard to recommend a good alternative. For every other manufacturer - do the model names and numbers have to be so opaque? They could all cut it down to 5 or 6 well designed, sensibly named models and still se
SandB0x
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Surprised by your revenue? Easier than you thought?
I'm slowly hacking away at a niche B2B SaaS product after work and on weekends. I'm looking forward to the prospect of some extra monthly cash. I get a kick out of thinking, "At $30/mo, I only need 200 users to bring in a cool $6000 a month!" (gross, of course) ...but wait. Will I get even 200 subscribers? Maybe I'll struggle to reach 10. What if I'm underestimating my market here - what if I get 2,000? I bounce ideas around in my head: "Of course I'll get 200 subscribers. 1.3 million people live in New Hampshire alone, and we're just one small state in the USA!" Even though my product is for a niche market, my local Yellow Pages confirms there are a dozen likely candidates for my application. I sometimes think I could secure 200 subscribers from just New York City alone, never mind the rest of the country, world. I'm genuinely interested in the product I'm working on and the experience
Why it failed: I'm slowly hacking away at a niche B2B SaaS product after work and on weekends. I'm looking forward to the prospect of some extra monthly cash. I get a kick out of thinking, "At $30/mo, I only need 200 users to bring in a cool $6000 a month!" (gross, of course) ...but wait. Will
route3
- startupShut down2010
Ocelot: The story of a torrent tracker
I took this directly from a newspost on what.cd, and I have no association with anything written here. Just thought HN would find it interesting. What.CD is a private tracker. Thus, the entire site, staff, and community all revolve around a common piece of software - the tracker backend. Complementing the site frontend, which you're looking at now, the tracker itself handles connections between peers. With over five million peers, our tracker receives an average of 3,500 hits per second, although after a period of tracker downtime, load can spike up to past 12,000 hits per second. This means that, when your client announces, the tracker has 80 microseconds to search through its database of over 900,000 torrents and 5,000,000 peers, compute a response, and send it back to you. That's a lot of stress on a piece of software! We anticipated this problem, of course, back before the site even
Why it failed: I took this directly from a newspost on what.cd, and I have no association with anything written here. Just thought HN would find it interesting. What.CD is a private tracker. Thus, the entire site, staff, and community all revolve around a common piece of software - the tracker
Goonbaggins
- startupShut down2010
HN Domain Exchange: Add your unused domains
I registered a domain for a project a year ago and lost interest after about six months. Still I think it is a decent domain name and I don't want to release it in the void. I'd much prefer if a HNer would get it from me and build it into something great. If you are similarly sitting on cool domain names from abandoned projects or weekend hacks, here is a google spreadsheet for you to share them: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aue8w7GPjATXdF9jSW1IV3BlWE1TYjM3R0JMV1hYUHc&hl=en
Why it failed: I registered a domain for a project a year ago and lost interest after about six months. Still I think it is a decent domain name and I don't want to release it in the void. I'd much prefer if a HNer would get it from me and build it into something great. If you are similarly sit
oozcitak
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Show me the money - Advice needed
I'm not asking for legal advice (it's trivial to use the small claims system in the UK). I mostly need advice on dealing with people here. DETAILS I am owed money for some web design by a small (~5 man) company. As a student this represents a couple of months rent and forms a significant part of my budget for the summer. We are both in the UK, and the client was invoiced about five weeks ago. A friend of mine works at this place, and most of my correspondence has been with him, rather than the company owner. I have twice chased it up with my friend, who has in turn nagged his boss. All I'm getting is that it's on the to-do list, cashflow is tight but it's coming at some point. I asked "does some point mean before the end of the month?", and got an "oooh, not sure". I know the boss is not short of money, and I'm not getting a good vibe from this. We did not set a credit period, but the un
Why it failed: I'm not asking for legal advice (it's trivial to use the small claims system in the UK). I mostly need advice on dealing with people here. DETAILS I am owed money for some web design by a small (~5 man) company. As a student this represents a couple of months rent and forms a sig
SandB0x
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Have any of you filed "$0" in your Tax return?
I have been working on my startup for the past couple of years and have been drawing no salary and living on personal savings. I am in the process of filing for my Tax return by oct 15th (the extended deadline). Does this mean I put a big fat "$0" on my tax returns? I know it sounds obvious, but I find it quite strange to do that. I used to make quite a bit before I did my startup and I was also married till my last filing where even if I was making no money, my former wife's income would atleast show some income in the tax return. Do all startup people who live of my personal savings actually file a "$0" in thier tax return? I know this is not a tax/CPA forum but I am curious about other founders experiences.
Why it failed: I have been working on my startup for the past couple of years and have been drawing no salary and living on personal savings. I am in the process of filing for my Tax return by oct 15th (the extended deadline). Does this mean I put a big fat "$0" on my tax returns? I know it sou
taxquestion
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?
I have spent the last hour reading articles from HN I've saved over the last few weeks. They are all the same. Lean startup this, A/B test that, Design is important, I failed, Build a community then revenues, etc. After years of reading the same articles, I have learned very little. Everyone is repeating the same stories/advice, and, as a community, I don't see any progress. Are we doomed to continuously repeat the same sad stories over and over again? Can we finally kick this habit? I don't know- but I am tired of reading the same articles written with slightly different adjectives.
Why it failed: I have spent the last hour reading articles from HN I've saved over the last few weeks. They are all the same. Lean startup this, A/B test that, Design is important, I failed, Build a community then revenues, etc. After years of reading the same articles, I have learned very litt
emilepetrone
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: How much is too much?
I'm a cofounder in a small Canadian-based startup. We think we're on to something big, but we're pretty much out of cash and need a couple more months to get to revenue. As luck would have it, we have been approached by an angel investor who's willing to give us the injection we need, but at no small cost. Since this is an anonymous disclosure, I'll just open up and give some numbers. The investor is successfully running his own large company and has no burning need to see a monetary return on his investment. He's openly stated that he is more interested in vicariously living the startup life through us, and is also excited about exploring a new space from the same level as the founders. He runs a large company and pines for the days of a young, scrappy, agile startup. To that end, he has asked for an equal stake in the company and a directorship. The valuation on the table is quite low
Why it failed: I'm a cofounder in a small Canadian-based startup. We think we're on to something big, but we're pretty much out of cash and need a couple more months to get to revenue. As luck would have it, we have been approached by an angel investor who's willing to give us the injection we
seaking
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: What Python web programming frameworks and tools are you using?
I'm interested in hearing from the community about what tools you are using for building web applications in Python. This was last asked about half a year ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357925) and 2 years before that (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=153487), but things are changing fast, especially with the recent popularity of NoSQL, so I think it's worth bringing up again. So, what tools, databases, web servers and frameworks are you using for your latest Python web application projects? Or, if you've abandoned Python, what language have you moved to, and why?
Why it failed: I'm interested in hearing from the community about what tools you are using for building web applications in Python. This was last asked about half a year ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357925) and 2 years before that (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=153487), but t
akamaka
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Do you have any startup related regrets? Epic failures?
I've heard so many optimistic stories of "failed" startups where the founders continue on to new startups, or end up leading better lives afterwards regardless. But the whole time I'm thinking "there's got to be some downside to all this..." There just seems to be this great optimism within the startup world that even if your idea or company fails, you're still fine, and I'm curious to if anyone has any stories of that not being the case. Where are the startup stories of terrible regrets and failures? Is there anyone who's said "I wish I never tried that" or "those years were a waste of my life?" and why? I've just found the startup industry to be extremely optimistic about things, and with so much attention on all the epic successes, I'm looking for some truly epic failures; mainly to keep my feet on the ground and in touch with reality.
Why it failed: I've heard so many optimistic stories of "failed" startups where the founders continue on to new startups, or end up leading better lives afterwards regardless. But the whole time I'm thinking "there's got to be some downside to all this..." There just seems to be this great opti
makeramen
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: Successful entrepreneurs, what (non-startup) areas in life did you fail?
My mentor once told me, "you can have it all, just not all at the same time." Time and time again I forget and try to do it all, and I end up frustrating myself. I know this, but I often forget: If I want to succeed at the things that are important to me in my life (such as building a successful startup), there will be areas in my life that I will have to be ok with getting a failing grade in. (e.g. relationships will suffer, etc.) It's one thing to try and fail (negative "ROI"), it's another to knowingly accept and say, "ok, I'm going to get a C- in certain areas so I'm not going to invest too much of my finite resources in this area (non-negative ROI)." Would successful entrepreneurs share with us here what they had to give up? Personally, I find it hard to keep up with my relationships. If I know that others went through the same, it would make me feel a lot better that it's not just
Why it failed: My mentor once told me, "you can have it all, just not all at the same time." Time and time again I forget and try to do it all, and I end up frustrating myself. I know this, but I often forget: If I want to succeed at the things that are important to me in my life (such as build
jayliew
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: I'm 20 and I need advice.
If you were 20 years old today, what would you be doing? I am 20. My goal is to amass $1m (Australian) by 35 so I can do some substantial things later in life (I've got an idea for a business of maintaining water wells built by various charities in African villages and charging the US government for it.). I could do this by getting a high paying job within 5 years and getting above average returns investing $50,000 a year. I could also do this by building a successful small business and reaping a high income or even gasp selling that business for $1 million. I imagined that if I was 35, and I became 20 again and asked myself what I would be doing... I'd be saving money, learning how to invest in stocks, a girlfriend, learning to drive, finding a part time IT job, building random stuff and trying my hand at making a mini-business. I've saved up several thousand dollars which I've invested
Why it failed: If you were 20 years old today, what would you be doing? I am 20. My goal is to amass $1m (Australian) by 35 so I can do some substantial things later in life (I've got an idea for a business of maintaining water wells built by various charities in African villages and charging t
meric
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: What is your workflow for saving bookmarks?
Interested in hearing the various services/methods folks use to save url's. Especially with delicious likely shutting down (which I used), I'm interested in hearing about this. The only requirement is that the url's are available everywhere and not (just) stored locally. Thanks.
Why it failed: Interested in hearing the various services/methods folks use to save url's. Especially with delicious likely shutting down (which I used), I'm interested in hearing about this. The only requirement is that the url's are available everywhere and not (just) stored locally. Thanks.
mr_november
- startupShut down2010
Ask HN: "Is that work?"
It's a commonly heard phrase in my office. I'm the only developer where I work, based in a [car] dealership, which is one of the franchise locations of a car dealer group which owns [more than a few] (or so) other dealerships in quite a large area of the United Kingdom. For the record, I am not writing this on company time [half an hour lunch break, although he still does this even if I AM on my lunch break] I build websites, web apps, microsites, soon to be Android Apps and iPhone apps. I am in charge of slicing and dicing photoshop templates which we get from our designer (Who sits behind me in the same office) into HTML templates to use with Drupal, CakePHP et al. I am in charge of inputting the copy for said microsites and websites from MS Word documents, this copy is written by the "Marketing Manager", who currently sits behind and to the right of me. To the right of where I sit, is
Why it failed: It's a commonly heard phrase in my office. I'm the only developer where I work, based in a [car] dealership, which is one of the franchise locations of a car dealer group which owns [more than a few] (or so) other dealerships in quite a large area of the United Kingdom. For the r
throwaway_burn