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.
3,100 solutions
- 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: 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: 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
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: 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
- 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: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
It seems like most book recommendation threads end up being filled with a load of self improvement type books. Do you have any fiction book recommendations that have positively impacted your life? Maybe a book that helped you through tough times or made you change your outlook on life?
Why it failed: It seems like most book recommendation threads end up being filled with a load of self improvement type books. Do you have any fiction book recommendations that have positively impacted your life? Maybe a book that helped you through tough times or made you change your outlook on
sondog
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Have you abandoned Next.js for another front end framework/library?
I'm starting a new project as a technical lead. The last React app I built from scratch was as a freelancer using Next.js. Generally my experience with Next.js has been positive, but while I can still debate my options I'm wondering if anyone has run into problems that caused you to move away from Next.js? And if so can you please tell me about them.
Why it failed: I'm starting a new project as a technical lead. The last React app I built from scratch was as a freelancer using Next.js. Generally my experience with Next.js has been positive, but while I can still debate my options I'm wondering if anyone has run into problems that
ritchiea
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Have you ever witnessed or had a racist incident?
I'm not sure why there are no discussion threads about racism and what is currently happening. So I thought I initiate one. Sorry if this is not the place for it. Please state: 1 - Incident(s) if any 2 - Main issues that you think are causing/fueling racism 3 - what solution do you think of I'll start: 1- Incident(s) if any I was working and went out for lunch and had a sandwich and was coming back to work. the street was nearly empty. I saw a guy walking toward me who suddenly pulled his phone out and started talking and faking a conversation. He started using slur against my race and how they should get rid of us because we(as in me and my race) are not like them. He walked past me and continued with abuse. I was in schock and didn't process what was happening until after he left. He then did the same months later. I was advised to call the police on him, but was to
Why it failed: I'm not sure why there are no discussion threads about racism and what is currently happening. So I thought I initiate one. Sorry if this is not the place for it. Please state: 1 - Incident(s) if any 2 - Main issues that you think are causing/fueling racism 3 - what sol
Goesby
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
I'm at my wits end. I was made homeless and had my financial support dropped at the beginning of the year, and am currently staying in squats etc in the Netherlands. I have nearly no income - 10 euros a week in donations towards an open-source project I'm working on to build a live video streaming platform for the fediverse, and occasional requests for solidarity funds. My situation is... not great. Half my time is taken up by anxiety around police violence, illegal evictions, my friends being arrested. Still, in the immediate term, it's better than sleeping rough. I'm not sure how to find work; I've not had a paying job in the last 8 years. I've worked on software for myself and others in hackerspaces and the like; and helped run a volunteer cafe for a large portion of last year (sinking 20+ hours a week into that fairly consistently), but I can't seem
Why it failed: I'm at my wits end. I was made homeless and had my financial support dropped at the beginning of the year, and am currently staying in squats etc in the Netherlands. I have nearly no income - 10 euros a week in donations towards an open-source project I'm working on to
vertex-four
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: How should open source support critical dependencies?
In something slightly similar to the infamous leftpad issue, many NPM builds started failing yesterday because 'npm audit' now reports a security vulnerability for lodash. lodash is currently in use in over 7 million Github repos, and it's nearly impossible to use NPM without some transitive dependency that depends on lodash. This security vulnerability was reported in October (https://hackerone.com/reports/712065) and there have been 2 PRs open for 2 months that fix this issue, but lodash hasn't had any releases for a year. There is essentially one (unpaid) person who has power to release lodash, a library that a huge majority of reasonably-sized javascript projects now depend on. How should the open source community address essentially abandoned projects that have become critical in the ecosystem?
Why it failed: In something slightly similar to the infamous leftpad issue, many NPM builds started failing yesterday because 'npm audit' now reports a security vulnerability for lodash. lodash is currently in use in over 7 million Github repos, and it's nearly impossible to use
hn_throwaway_99
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: 5K 27“ computer monitor recommendation?
I'm looking for a 5K 27" computer monitor but it seems there is literally only one option on the market: the LG/Apple UltraFine 5K 27" display. I prefer this resolution at this size because it amounts to 220 PPI, which is 'Retina' (HiDPI) at macOS's native integer scaling. Apparently there were a few models some years ago, such as the Dell UP2715K, the HP Z27q, and the Philips 275P4VYKEB, but they're discontinued. Other options like the Planar IX2790 and the iiyama XB2779QQS are impossible to find now. What's the solution here? There's a glut of 4K 27" monitors on the market but to get Retina, you'd have to run them downscaled by 4x to 1080p, which is less than ideal.
Why it failed: I'm looking for a 5K 27" computer monitor but it seems there is literally only one option on the market: the LG/Apple UltraFine 5K 27" display. I prefer this resolution at this size because it amounts to 220 PPI, which is 'Retina' (HiDPI) at macOS&#x
thoughtpeddler
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Is “No Code” the future of web/app dev?
It's been "the future" for 40-ish years now, with dozens (if not hundreds) of failed attempts. At some point, one has to wonder: are we there yet? If not, why aren't we? To me it seems logical that designers should one day be building frontends through visual interfaces that are almost as malleable as tools like Sketch. It seems to me that many features from design programs (like Framer) seek to make design closer to development, and we've even seen a Git for design workflows. So why hasn't it happened yet, and will it ever?
Why it failed: It's been "the future" for 40-ish years now, with dozens (if not hundreds) of failed attempts. At some point, one has to wonder: are we there yet? If not, why aren't we? To me it seems logical that designers should one day be building frontends through visual
zaksingh
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Where does an alcoholic with dementia and felonies find housing?
My friend is 30 years old. Her father has no family that will take him in. He's on social security disability and that $700/month isn't enough for him to live on his own, not to mention he can't even remember what he had for breakfast. And he's been denied for low-income/subsidized housing because of his past criminal record. Now she feels obligated to give up her ambitions and move somewhere where she can afford to have him live with her because otherwise, he'll end up living on the streets. Her mom passed away from an overdose when she was only 25, and her brother was only 18. Her brother didn't graduate high school. Despite this, she graduated from college, went on to obtain her master's degree. She is passionate about educating kids coming from poverty and has the technical abilities to scale her impact. Now I'm afraid she'll giv
Why it failed: My friend is 30 years old. Her father has no family that will take him in. He's on social security disability and that $700/month isn't enough for him to live on his own, not to mention he can't even remember what he had for breakfast. And he's been denie
ta21391
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Speedscale (YC S20) – Automatically create tests from actual traffic
We’re Ken, Nate and Matt, co-founders of Speedscale ( https://speedscale.com ), a tool that automatically generates continuous integration (CI) tests from past traffic. Carefully scaling rollouts to ever larger groups of customers is the safest deployment strategy, but can take weeks. Even for elite DevOps organizations up to 15% of changes to production can result in degraded service [1] [2]. We met as undergrads at Georgia Tech and come from a DevOps and operations background so we’ve seen this first hand. Each of us has over 15 years of experience building high-reliability systems, starting in the early days with satellite earth station monitoring. As interns we once wrote a bug that caused a 32 meter antenna to try to point down through the earth, almost flattening the building we were in. It was a great environment to learn about engineering reliability. We leveraged this
Why it failed: We’re Ken, Nate and Matt, co-founders of Speedscale ( https://speedscale.com ), a tool that automatically generates continuous integration (CI) tests from past traffic. Carefully scaling rollouts to ever larger groups of customers is the safest deployment strategy, but
Inchull
- startupShut down2020
Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
This just landed in my inbox. The discussion on hackernews ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 ) surely helped Triplebyte understand that it was a mistake to create public profiles of their users by default: Email by Triplebyte CEO, Ammon: --- Hi xxxxx, There’s no other way to put this--I screwed up badly. On Friday evening, I sent an email to you about a new feature called public Triplebyte profiles. We failed to think through the effects of this feature on our community, and made the profiles default public with an option to opt out. Many of you were rightfully angry. I am truly sorry. As CEO, this is my fault. I made this decision. Effective immediately, we are canceling this feature. You came to us with the goal of landing a great software engineering job. As part of that, you entrusted us with your personal, sensitive information, including both the fact t
Why it failed: This just landed in my inbox. The discussion on hackernews ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 ) surely helped Triplebyte understand that it was a mistake to create public profiles of their users by default: Email by Triplebyte CEO, Ammon: --- Hi xxxxx,
trianx
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: How do you deal with your mortality?
This is very long so it continues in comments below: I am looking for some advice from someone smarter than me because about a month ago I got hit with intense crippling fear of death. It usually hits me in the evenings and started with just my thoughts wandering thinking about the lives of different people in different parts of the world. Eventually, these thoughts came back to me and my mortality. I started picturing the transition into nothingness. The fear of knowing that I am drawing my last breath. The different ways I could die. This started resulting in panic attack like symptoms that persist late into the night until I tire myself out and fall into short uneasy sleep. It got better for a week but is now getting worse again. I had this same crippling fear of death when I was 4-7 years old. After a while my mind focused on other things and at some point I discovered the concept of
Why it failed: This is very long so it continues in comments below: I am looking for some advice from someone smarter than me because about a month ago I got hit with intense crippling fear of death. It usually hits me in the evenings and started with just my thoughts wandering thinking about t
anonymouse71
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: I am “trapped” in a senior engineering role, how can I escape?
This is my first time speaking on this subject so I hope I am able to convey my position with reasonable coherence. I learned to build websites around 2011 when I was in my mid 20's. I had been working as a cleaner for some time and had come to realise I needed to escape that particular poverty trap. My father and grandfather were also cleaners for the majority of their working lives and often expressed regret before they passed. After some months self-learning I had amassed the courage to start applying for internships and junior jobs. No luck initially, though eventually I was able to begin a data entry job on a 12 month contract. I was finally able to sit at a desk and have a work assigned email address! Half-way into my contract I organised a dozen or so meetups at Google Campus. There I met people who gave me the inspiration to continue applying for jobs. I was a fish out of wa
Why it failed: This is my first time speaking on this subject so I hope I am able to convey my position with reasonable coherence. I learned to build websites around 2011 when I was in my mid 20's. I had been working as a cleaner for some time and had come to realise I needed to escape tha
throwaway16011
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Reflect (YC S20) – No-code test automation for web apps
We're Fitz and Todd, co-founders of Reflect ( https://reflect.run ) - we’re excited to share our no-code tool for automated web testing. We worked together for 5+ years at a tech start-up that deployed multiple times a week. After every deployment, a bunch of our developers would manually smoke test the application by running through all of the critical user experiences. This manual testing was expensive in terms of our time. To speed up the tests’ run time, we dedicated developer resources to writing and managing Selenium scripts. That was expensive at “compile time” due to authoring and maintenance. At a high-level, we believe that the problem with automated end-to-end testing comes down to two things: tests are too hard to create, and they take too much time to maintain. These are the two issues we are trying to solve with Reflect. Reflect lets you create end-to-end tes
Why it failed: We're Fitz and Todd, co-founders of Reflect ( https://reflect.run ) - we’re excited to share our no-code tool for automated web testing. We worked together for 5+ years at a tech start-up that deployed multiple times a week. After every deployment, a bunch of our d
tmcneal
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: 8 Days Left on SlateJS Android KickStarter. 50% Raised. How to Complete?
The Slate rich text editor for React is, IMO, the best designed rich text editor with the exception of one major failing, it doesn't support Android. My company spent CAD $50K developing Android support for the previous version of Slate with the hope that the community would take it up which I completed and which we contributed for free. This was after it was one of the most popular outstanding GitHub issues for 2 years. Unfortunately, several months later the creator of Slate did a major (and really great and probably necessary) rewrite but it removed Android support and it's non-trivial to put Android support back in and that's a big cost for my company (which didn't even get a chance to use that version of Slate yet) to burden alone. I proposed a paid plugin which many were in support of, but after receiving many requests for a sponsored model and a user committing
Why it failed: The Slate rich text editor for React is, IMO, the best designed rich text editor with the exception of one major failing, it doesn't support Android. My company spent CAD $50K developing Android support for the previous version of Slate with the hope that the community would
thesunny
- startupShut down2020
Bitbucket deleting Mercurial repos June 1
Saw Graham Dumpleton's twitter https://twitter.com/GrahamDumpleton/status/1251815399848439810 and I had no idea this was a thing: https://bitbucket.org/blog/sunsetting-mercurial-support-in-bitbucket >After much consideration, we've decided to remove Mercurial support from Bitbucket Cloud and its API. Mercurial features and repositories will be officially removed from Bitbucket and its API on June 1, 2020. Unlike with code.google.com's shutdown and transition to long term archive, there's no archiving happening on the part of Bitbucket. Once June 1 hits, all repos are gone unless the project maintainers have migrated somewhere else. Makes me wonder how many Python libs and projects will be affected? Passlib at https://pypi.org/project/passlib/ is one such lib. How many others are there?
Why it failed: Saw Graham Dumpleton's twitter https://twitter.com/GrahamDumpleton/status/1251815399848439810 and I had no idea this was a thing: https://bitbucket.org/blog/sunsetting-mercurial-support-in-bitbucket >After much consideration, w
dd82
- startupShut down2020
Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down
The discussion about renaming "master" branches to "main" or "default" in git for windows to address issues with "non-inclusive naming" has become very heated. The vast majority of developers argued against the change, some very vocal. This resulted in git for windows administrators to go full exclusive and shut down the discussion completely for non team members, block many users and delete or minimize a large number of tweets. https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/2674 The end of the thread looks like a massacre.
Why it failed: The discussion about renaming "master" branches to "main" or "default" in git for windows to address issues with "non-inclusive naming" has become very heated. The vast majority of developers argued against the change, some very vocal. This
jansan