The graveyard of good ideas
Solutions that were tried, and what stopped them.
Patents that were rejected or abandoned, products that shut down, projects that went quiet. Borrow the idea, avoid the dead end.
796 solutions
- startupShut down2022
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: 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: Should I move to California or Germany as a SWE with 2 small kids?
I'm at a crossroads in my life. My wife and I are trying to figure out if we should move back to California or move to Germany to be closer to her parents. A bit of background: We're in our mid-30s. Both in tech. I'm a software engineer. She's a product manager. I'm American and she's German. We met in SF in 2014 and left together in 2017. We traveled for a while, then moved to Amsterdam where we live now. We have a 1 year old daughter with another on the way in October. We don't plan on having more kids after that. We'd like to leave the Netherlands soon, but haven't decided yet if we should move back to California or move close to her parents in Germany. There's tons of variables to consider, but the 2 main ones I'm focused on right now is the tradeoff between family support vs career prospects. In short: if we move to Bavaria, my
Why it failed: I'm at a crossroads in my life. My wife and I are trying to figure out if we should move back to California or move to Germany to be closer to her parents. A bit of background: We're in our mid-30s. Both in tech. I'm a software engineer. She's a product manage
de_or_ca
- 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: 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
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
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
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: 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: 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
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
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
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: 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
- startupShut down2022
Cloudflare have made it impossible for me to unsubscribe from marketing emails
This morning, I received a marketing email from Cloudflare (through one of our mailing groups), being militant about these kinds of emails, I immediately go to unsubscribe. Dark pattern one: You must login to manage your marketing preferences. There's no security related emails here, so this is completely unnecessary. Dark pattern two: "...confirm your email address to save your communication preferences.". I've no idea how we have a several-year old account without a confirmed email, but it should not have to confirm an email to remove old marketing preferences - or if cloudflare is so careful about this, why did it end up opted-in ion the first place? Dark pattern two-point-five is that the email somehow became unverified - something it seems is only necessary to adjust marketing emails. Okay, so I hit the "Resend verification email" link and check my inbo
Why it failed: This morning, I received a marketing email from Cloudflare (through one of our mailing groups), being militant about these kinds of emails, I immediately go to unsubscribe. Dark pattern one: You must login to manage your marketing preferences. There's no security related ema
sdflhasjd
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Getting up after repeated failures?
This post probably won't be well accepted in the Hacker News community since it's come out as more of a rant, but I don't really care anymore. So Hacker News, I'm 30. Not super old, but I've got a good decade in the software world under my belt to a large variety of all the garbage there is to see. My first job was at a medium sized corp, and after about 3 years, I left to escape the typical pain points of corporate life (slow / no projects, lazy / unmotivated coworkers obviously there only for the paycheck, too much red tape and processes, etc., etc., etc....) I then joined a small company, where we built what in my mind was a next gen e-commerce shop (real time product stock checks, multiple currency support, etc.) only to have the project (a 1.5 year project, mind you) not be payed for and then in the end scraped for a shittier one (MUCH shittier, th
Why it failed: This post probably won't be well accepted in the Hacker News community since it's come out as more of a rant, but I don't really care anymore. So Hacker News, I'm 30. Not super old, but I've got a good decade in the software world under my belt to a large
fullstackchris
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Why are we accepting ageism in tech as something immutable?
This week alone I had 2 interviews with 2 different companies where in the first one of the interviewers asked me my age, directly followed by "why hire you over a younger graduate?" (which isn't the same as "why hire you over someone smarter than you?" because why even ask this). In the second one I was also asked for my age, followed by whether I plan to get married anytime soon. I'm under the impression that the industry needs to learn to treat amateurs as amateurs regardless of their age. It feels like I'm not allowed to be an amateur professional simply because I'm over 30 years old. Instead of seeing people as "a guy with 2 years of experience" or "a woman with 4 years of experience" we see "a 40 year old guy with 2 years of experience" or "a 34 year old woman with 4 years of experience". It feels like
Why it failed: This week alone I had 2 interviews with 2 different companies where in the first one of the interviewers asked me my age, directly followed by "why hire you over a younger graduate?" (which isn't the same as "why hire you over someone smarter than you?" b
Arisaka1
- startupShut down2022
Clara.io Shutting Down
Received this email today: Hi Clara User, This is a notice that we are retiring the Clara product and services on December 31, 2022. If you have files that you would like to continue using, please download that content before December 31, 2022 because it will not be available after. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for using Clara. Sincerely, Clara Admin Team
Why it failed: Received this email today: Hi Clara User, This is a notice that we are retiring the Clara product and services on December 31, 2022. If you have files that you would like to continue using, please download that content before December 31, 2022 because it will not be available aft
tarr11
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: Generate never-before-seen storyboards for Rick and Morty episodes
Rick and Mortify is a system we built for creating never-before-seen episodes of Rick and Morty by leveraging the state-of-the-art in generative AI. These days generative AI is so hot right now. It promises to revolutionize all aspects of creative work from copywriting and image creation, to video and audio synthesis. Given the rapid progress of AI, when will we see an AI system listed in the closing credits of your favorite feature-length film? Rick and Mortify is a tool we built to demonstrate that future is closer than you might think. Our tool uses the state-of-the-art in large vision and language models to create never-before-seen episodes of Rick and Morty with minimal human intervention. All the plot points, dialogue, and accompanying visuals are generated with machine learning. Why use Rick and Morty as a case-study? Because 1) given the show's complex narrative structure an
Why it failed: Rick and Mortify is a system we built for creating never-before-seen episodes of Rick and Morty by leveraging the state-of-the-art in generative AI. These days generative AI is so hot right now. It promises to revolutionize all aspects of creative work from copywriting and image
nutellalover
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Is anyone else genuinely scared that this is the start of WW3?
Russia has invaded Ukraine, and four days on I feel powerless to both do anything (in a country that is neither of those two!) and to look away from the news and social media coverage of it. It's an abhorrent waste of human life. News and reports today of Russian ICBMs and other nuclear forces being placed on high alert (and moved further towards the west of the country) [1] frankly scares me. While some observers think that this is "overplaying" his hand [2] I know that all of this is deeply concerning. The world does _not_ need another cuban missile crisis; it also does _not_ need to vanish in a pile of radioactive smoke. I live in Europe. My father sent me a message to essentially ask if I'd had a thought about where my nearest "shelter" would be -- and I had. My partner's family have too. It feels awful, but I can't concentrate effectively -- I
Why it failed: Russia has invaded Ukraine, and four days on I feel powerless to both do anything (in a country that is neither of those two!) and to look away from the news and social media coverage of it. It's an abhorrent waste of human life. News and reports today of Russian ICBMs and o
azalemeth
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
Saying the following feels like heresy and whenever I say it, fellow software engineers look at me as if I just asked them if there are GOTOs in Javascript. I used to love going to the office. Discussing our team's latest Python problems over a coffee. Looking over at their screen and then asking them why they look like they want to beat someone over the head with their keyboard repeatedly. Guessing people's emotions in a heated Retro from their body language. Grabbing dinner with a few colleagues after a long workshop meeting in the evening and then realizing that, aside from all the differences we might have about static typing in programming languages, we all like the same exotic progressive metal bands. Many of these things that made my job much more than slaving at a digital conveyor belt seem to be gone these days. And the worst thing for me is that I feel few people rela
Why it failed: Saying the following feels like heresy and whenever I say it, fellow software engineers look at me as if I just asked them if there are GOTOs in Javascript. I used to love going to the office. Discussing our team's latest Python problems over a coffee. Looking over at their
samuel_backend
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: iOS Signal eats your disk space
Signal on iOS will not free up any disk space when you delete chats or media. You cannot see or clear usage in the app or in iOS settings. There’s a potential security problem where your data is not actually being deleted when you delete chats. We are having no luck getting the Signal team to acknowledge the issue. The ticket was automatically closed despite activity. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/4916 1. Be aware that a large portion of your storage space might be stolen by Signal. 2. Be aware that this might be a significant security flaw. 3. If anyone can get Signal to pay attention rather than closing repeated tickets as stale, that would be great.
Why it failed: Signal on iOS will not free up any disk space when you delete chats or media. You cannot see or clear usage in the app or in iOS settings. There’s a potential security problem where your data is not actually being deleted when you delete chats. We are having no luck getting the S
Waterluvian
- startupShut down2022
What happens to the hardware (MacBooks, Monitors, Chairs) of failed startups?
Yesterday I saw a group of people in SF walking out of a building looking sad and carrying monitors. Now I am wondering what happens to the hardware? Bootstrapped founders (myself) or schools could make good use of it.
Why it failed: Yesterday I saw a group of people in SF walking out of a building looking sad and carrying monitors. Now I am wondering what happens to the hardware? Bootstrapped founders (myself) or schools could make good use of it.
ck_one