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.
1,900 solutions
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: CodeComplete (YC W23) – Copilot for Enterprise
Hello HN! We’re Max and Lydia, co-founders at CodeComplete AI ( https://codecomplete.ai ), an AI-powered coding assistant for enterprise companies. Many large companies can’t use products like GitHub Copilot because of the security and privacy risks, so we’re building a self-hosted version that’s fine tuned to the company’s codebase. We love Copilot and believe that AI will change the way developers work. Max wanted to use Copilot when he was an ML engineer at Meta, but leadership blocked him because Copilot requires sending company code to GitHub and OpenAI. We built CodeComplete because lots of other companies are in the same boat, and we want to offer a secure way for these companies to leverage the latest AI-powered dev tools. To that end, our product is really meant for large engineering teams at enterprise companies who can’t use GitHub Copilot. This generally means teams
Why it failed: Hello HN! We’re Max and Lydia, co-founders at CodeComplete AI ( https://codecomplete.ai ), an AI-powered coding assistant for enterprise companies. Many large companies can’t use products like GitHub Copilot because of the security and privacy risks, so we’re building a
dingliqing53
- startupShut down2023
CircleCI Security Incident – “Rotate any secrets stored in CircleCI”
Full e-mail I received https://i.imgur.com/Nz1tEfu.png https://circleci.com/blog/january-4-2023-security-alert/ -- We wanted to make you aware that we are currently investigating a security incident, and that our investigation is ongoing. We will provide you updates about this incident, and our response, as they become available. At this point, we are confident that there are no unauthorized actors active in our systems; however, out of an abundance of caution, we want to ensure that all customers take certain preventative measures to protect your data as well. Action request: Out of an abundance of caution, we strongly recommend that all customers take the following actions: - Immediately rotate any and all secrets stored in CircleCI. These may be stored in project environment variables or in contexts. - We also recommend customers review internal
Why it failed: Full e-mail I received https://i.imgur.com/Nz1tEfu.png https://circleci.com/blog/january-4-2023-security-alert/ -- We wanted to make you aware that we are currently investigating a security incident, and that our investigation is ongoing. W
dotty-
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Our nonprofit got shut down by PayPal. Help?
Hack Club (https://hackclub.com) is a nonprofit network of thousands of teenage coders around the world. We’re currently running an electronics grant program (https://hackclub.com/winter/) to support teenagers in building hardware projects. Hundreds of grants are being distributed to teenage coders all across the world. It’s open source at https://github.com/hackclub/winter. PayPal just shut our account down with no explanation, and denied our appeal. They told us that any funds in PayPal will be held for up to 180 days. They also said they will no longer process donations to us, with no explanation. Many of the hardware grants we’re doing, including nearly all grants outside the US, require PayPal to process. If anyone here might be able to help in any way, we would be so appreciative. We are actively going through their customer support
Why it failed: Hack Club (https://hackclub.com) is a nonprofit network of thousands of teenage coders around the world. We’re currently running an electronics grant program (https://hackclub.com/winter/) to support teenagers in building hardware projects. Hundreds
zachlatta
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Hypertune – Visual, functional, statically-typed configuration language
Hey HN! I'm Miraan, the founder at Hypertune. Hypertune lets you make your code configurable to let teammates like PMs and marketers quickly change in-app copy, feature flags, pricing plans, etc, with logic for personalization, A/B testing and ML. It's like a CMS but instead of just letting you set static content, you can insert arbitrary logic from the UI, including A/B tests and ML. I previously built a landing page optimization tool that let marketers define variations of their headline, CTA, cover image, etc, then used a genetic algorithm to find the best combination of them. They used my Chrome extension to define changes on DOM elements based on their unique CSS selector. But this broke when the underlying page changed and didn't work with sites that used CSS modules. Developers hated it. I took a step back. The problem I was trying to solve was making the
Why it failed: Hey HN! I'm Miraan, the founder at Hypertune. Hypertune lets you make your code configurable to let teammates like PMs and marketers quickly change in-app copy, feature flags, pricing plans, etc, with logic for personalization, A/B testing and ML. It's like a CMS b
miraantabrez
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Interactive exercises for stress and anxiety that respond to breathing
Hey HN! I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pia ( https://www.piahealth.co ) which developed Lungy ( https://www.lungy.app ). Lungy is an app (iOS only for now) that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging and beneficial to do. It’s been one year since Lungy launched (here’s the original ShowHN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34534615 ) - I was absolutely delighted with the response. One year on, we have re-designed and rebuilt the whole app, and added a real-time, 3D soft body solver which gives some really cool interactions like blobs / objects that inflate as you breathe. My background is as a junior surgical trainee and I started building Lungy in 2020 during the first COVID lockdown in London. During COVID, there were huge numbers of patients coming off ventilators and patients are o
Why it failed: Hey HN! I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pia ( https://www.piahealth.co ) which developed Lungy ( https://www.lungy.app ). Lungy is an app (iOS only for now) that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging
lukko
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced
Hey all, author here! This is a demo of the rules engine we built to fight spam/abuse on the internet. It was built based on learnings from Facebook & Google, while trying to make a language that makes it simple for anti-spam analysts to quickly (and safely) deploy rules to production. Unfortunately it looks like the Twitter event feed is temporarily down (they're blocking it, possibly as part of shutting down the API on Thursday). I have a cache of events from a little earlier that I'm going to try play through the stream.
Why it failed: Hey all, author here! This is a demo of the rules engine we built to fight spam/abuse on the internet. It was built based on learnings from Facebook & Google, while trying to make a language that makes it simple for anti-spam analysts to quickly (and safely) deploy rules
qixxiq
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: How did you find yourself on HN?
Hello! I've been here for a few months now. When I got my new laptop, I installed brave instead of chrome and typing "news" in the top automatically re-directs here. I didn't expect to end up spending so much time here. I am nowhere near a programmer in my day-to-day life. I am currently embarking on a study of topology with the assistance of a friend who does research in mathematical physics, but aside from that my interests lay in literary fields and I'm quite shocked to see that very frequently the interests of other users here oftentimes matches up with my own. But I am also aware that many users here are actually in "silicon valley" (or at least work full time as developers); though, looking at the CS majors I went to school with, I have to imagine you guys are a special sort.
Why it failed: Hello! I've been here for a few months now. When I got my new laptop, I installed brave instead of chrome and typing "news" in the top automatically re-directs here. I didn't expect to end up spending so much time here. I am nowhere near a programmer in my day
DiscourseFan
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: How can I meaningfully object to WhatsApp processing of my information?
Following some EU requirements (GDPR), WhatsApp updated their TOS. They say that we can now "object to [their] use of [our] information": https://faq.whatsapp.com/781249240131848/. When following the form, I receive an e-mail saying: > Hi, > Thanks for your message. > In order for us to review your objection, please reply to this email with > the following information: > - What information processing you are objecting to. Your right to object applies where we rely on legitimate interest to process your information. > - How WhatsApp’s processing of this information impacts you (example: what rights and freedoms you believe are impacted by the processing and why) > - Any additional information you believe will help us review your objection (optional) > We may ask you for more information if your request is incomplete. > Thanks, Whats
Why it failed: Following some EU requirements (GDPR), WhatsApp updated their TOS. They say that we can now "object to [their] use of [our] information": https://faq.whatsapp.com/781249240131848/. When following the form, I receive an e-mail saying: > Hi, > Th
_8ysf
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Throw – A space for asking and answering questions anonymously
Hello HN community, For the past two years we’ve been working on this disruptive new thing. It’s about people, community, communication and truth. Throw is the new space for asking and answering questions anonymously. We believe that in today’s world (both online and offline) content in communication exchanges is strongly influenced by the personas, profiles and façades people maintain/upkeep/safeguard socially, ideologically and on relationships. From the way people post on Instagram the life they want others to believe they have, or the way people behave on thanksgiving with family, or at work, or with friends; on every social setting and interaction to some degree acting and behaving according to that setting and the people they interact with. These dynamics influence the content itself, as people don’t just respond to a question like computers do. What ends up happening is
Why it failed: Hello HN community, For the past two years we’ve been working on this disruptive new thing. It’s about people, community, communication and truth. Throw is the new space for asking and answering questions anonymously. We believe that in today’s world (both online and offline) con
luisamodio
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Build an open-source computer vision model in seconds using text
Hello HN! I want to share something me and a few friends have been working on for a while now — Zeroshot, a web tool that builds image classifiers using text-image models and autolabeling. What does this mean in practice? You can put together an image classifier in about 30 seconds that’s faster and more accurate than CLIP, but that you can deploy yourself however you’d like. It’s open source, commercially licensed, and doesn’t require you to pay anyone per API call. Here's a 2 minute video that shows it off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4R1gtmM-Lo How/why does it work? We believe that with the rise of foundation vision models, computer vision will fundamentally change. These powerful models will let any devs “compile” a model ahead of time with a subset of the foundation model’s characteristics, using only text and a web-tool. The days of teams of MLEs build
Why it failed: Hello HN! I want to share something me and a few friends have been working on for a while now — Zeroshot, a web tool that builds image classifiers using text-image models and autolabeling. What does this mean in practice? You can put together an image classifier in about 30 secon
nharada
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Paychecks from a failed startup?
Hey - I was recently laid off from an early stage start up (Pre-Series A) and haven't received my last two paychecks. Do I have any legal avenues to recoup these missed payments? I've opened a case with the state DOL office but I'm worried the company will fold / file for bankruptcy. Does anyone have a similar experience? Any luck getting missed paychecks? Should I attempt to sue the founder?
Why it failed: Hey - I was recently laid off from an early stage start up (Pre-Series A) and haven't received my last two paychecks. Do I have any legal avenues to recoup these missed payments? I've opened a case with the state DOL office but I'm worried the company will fold &#x
skinsfan687
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Arroyo – Write SQL on streaming data
Hey HN, Arroyo is a modern, open-source stream processing engine, that lets anyone write complex queries on event streams just by writing SQL—windowing, aggregating, and joining events with sub-second latency. Today data processing typically happens in batch data warehouses like BigQuery and Snowflake despite the fact that most of the data is coming in as streams. Data teams have to build complex orchestration systems to handle late-arriving data and job failures while trying to minimize latency. Stream processing offers an alternative approach, where the query is compiled into a streaming program that constantly updates as new data comes in, providing low-latency results as soon as the data is available. I started the Arroyo project after spending the past five years building real-time platforms at Lyft and Splunk. I saw first hand how hard it is for users to build correct, reliable pip
Why it failed: Hey HN, Arroyo is a modern, open-source stream processing engine, that lets anyone write complex queries on event streams just by writing SQL—windowing, aggregating, and joining events with sub-second latency. Today data processing typically happens in batch data warehouses like
necubi
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: Metal (YC W23) – Embeddings as a Service
Hey HN! We’re Taylor, James and Sergio – the founders of Metal ( https://www.getmetal.io/ ). You can think of Metal as embeddings as a service. We help developers use embeddings without needing to build out infrastructure, storage, or tooling. Here’s a 2-minute overview: https://www.loom.com/share/39fb6df7fd73469eaf20b37248ceed0f If you’re unfamiliar with embeddings, they are representations of real world data expressed as a vector, where the position of the vector can be compared to other vectors – thereby deriving meaning from the data. They can be used to create things like semantic search, recommender systems, clustering analysis, classification, and more. Working at companies like Datadog, Meta, and Spotify, we found it frustrating to build ML apps. Lack of tooling, infrastructure, and proper abstraction made working with ML tedious and slow. To ge
Why it failed: Hey HN! We’re Taylor, James and Sergio – the founders of Metal ( https://www.getmetal.io/ ). You can think of Metal as embeddings as a service. We help developers use embeddings without needing to build out infrastructure, storage, or tooling. Here’s a 2-minute ove
tlowe11
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Mirrorful – A developer-first way to implement designs faster
Hey HN! Mirrorful ( https://www.mirrorful.com/ ) is an open-source developer framework that helps front-end engineers manage their design systems. We’ve been building Mirrorful with the open-source community ( https://github.com/Mirrorful/mirrorful ) and wanted to share our beta with you. Check out our online demo to get the idea: https://app.mirrorful.com/ . Design systems can be thought of as the “building blocks of your app” which makes me think of Lego bricks. Mirrorful helps you manage your codebase’s Lego bricks and ensure that they are consistent across all of your apps and platforms. We saw as product engineers how hard it is to get code to match Figma mock ups. High-quality design is a competitive advantage, so getting your UI pixel perfect can matter a lot, but is time-consuming and tedious. When we worked for large public compa
Why it failed: Hey HN! Mirrorful ( https://www.mirrorful.com/ ) is an open-source developer framework that helps front-end engineers manage their design systems. We’ve been building Mirrorful with the open-source community ( https://github.com/Mirrorful/mirror
teddarific
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Year old CS student. Should I continue?
Hello. I'm 17, I've loved computers since I was 5. I'm a pretty decent programmer, I've done some big projects, worked with teams on extended projects, and have a pretty decent understanding of programming/linux/networking/security/etc. I generally write C, Rust, Python, and TS. I attend a STEM school that specialises in CS and engineering, and I'm in my first year of A Levels (UK) studying Maths, Further Maths, Physics, and Computer Science. I'm on track to get As and A*s. The plan 6 months ago was - get good grades, go to a good uni, get a CS degree while doing programming to pay for uni/do a degree apprenticeship, and go into a CS career. Without LLMs messing the world up, I think it's a pretty good plan. I'm a good programmer for my age and I'm academic. However, with recent developments, that seems borderline fool
Why it failed: Hello. I'm 17, I've loved computers since I was 5. I'm a pretty decent programmer, I've done some big projects, worked with teams on extended projects, and have a pretty decent understanding of programming/linux/networking/security/etc. I g
ShouldIPivot
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Hypertune – Visual, functional, statically-typed configuration language
Hey HN! I'm Miraan, the founder at Hypertune, and I'm excited to be posting this on HN. Hypertune lets you make your code configurable to let teammates like PMs and marketers quickly change feature flags, in-app copy, pricing plans, etc. It's like a CMS but instead of only letting you set static content, you can insert arbitrary logic from the UI, including A/B tests and ML "loops". I previously built a landing page optimization tool that let marketers define variants of their headline, CTA, cover image, etc, then used a genetic algorithm to find the best combination of them. They used my Chrome extension to define changes on DOM elements based on their unique CSS selector. But this broke when the underlying page changed and didn't work with sites that used CSS modules. Developers hated it. I took a step back. The problem I was trying to solve was makin
Why it failed: Hey HN! I'm Miraan, the founder at Hypertune, and I'm excited to be posting this on HN. Hypertune lets you make your code configurable to let teammates like PMs and marketers quickly change feature flags, in-app copy, pricing plans, etc. It's like a CMS but instead
miraantabrez
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Datapane – A new way to build reports, dashboards, and apps in Python
Hello HN! We’re Leo and Mandeep, founders of Datapane ( https://datapane.com ). We're building a way to create reports, dashboards, and web apps from your existing data using Python. Think of it as a combination of React and htmx, specifically designed for the Python data stack. Our GitHub is https://github.com/datapane/datapane and you can try building a report or app in ~2 minutes on Codespaces: https://try.datapane.com We started building Datapane at our previous start-up, where we struggled to deliver ML model results to clients. Much to our surprise, the data science took less time than repeatedly creating reports by copying and pasting plots into PowerPoint decks. It seemed absurd that we had to switch to PowerPoint or legacy BI tools like Tableau to share, and our initial goal was to programmatically generate reports using the datasets
Why it failed: Hello HN! We’re Leo and Mandeep, founders of Datapane ( https://datapane.com ). We're building a way to create reports, dashboards, and web apps from your existing data using Python. Think of it as a combination of React and htmx, specifically designed for the Pyth
pea
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: Bloop (YC S21) – Code Search with GPT-4
Hey HN, we’re the cofounders of bloop ( https://bloop.ai/ ), a code search engine which combines semantic search with GPT-4 to answer questions. We let you search your private codebases either the traditional way (regex or literal) or via semantic search, ask questions in natural language thanks to GPT-4, and jump between refs/defs with precise code navigation. Here’s a quick demo: https://www.loom.com/share/8e9d59b88dd2409482ec02cdda5b9185 Traditional code search tools match the terms in your query against the codebase, but often you don’t know the right terms to start with, e.g. ‘Which library do we use for model inference?’ (These types of questions are particularly common when you’re learning a new codebase.) bloop uses a combination of neural semantic code search (comparing the meaning - encoded in vector representations - of queries and code
Why it failed: Hey HN, we’re the cofounders of bloop ( https://bloop.ai/ ), a code search engine which combines semantic search with GPT-4 to answer questions. We let you search your private codebases either the traditional way (regex or literal) or via semantic search, ask quest
louiskw
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: WarpBuild – x86-64 and arm GitHub Action runners for 30% faster builds
Hey HN, I’m Surya and I’m excited to show you WarpBuild! WarpBuild provides fast, secure `x86-64` and `arm64` Github actions runners. This speeds up your workloads by 30%, at half the cost, and takes ~2mins to get started. We’ve been seeing pretty good results since we opened up signups a week ago and I’ve shared some numbers publicly here [1]. Currently, we support linux runners for Github organizations (not personal accounts) and MacOS support is coming soon (~Jan). The way the runners work is deceptively simple: Runners are assigned to hardware that is ideal for build workloads with fast NVMe disks and high single-core performance. The runners are allocated on VMs, not containers. This provides faster performance and enables use cases requiring (1) nested virtualization for running firecracker and other hypervisors, (2) k8s without relying on kind, and (3) Android emulators on `arm64`
Why it failed: Hey HN, I’m Surya and I’m excited to show you WarpBuild! WarpBuild provides fast, secure `x86-64` and `arm64` Github actions runners. This speeds up your workloads by 30%, at half the cost, and takes ~2mins to get started. We’ve been seeing pretty good results since we opened up
suryao
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: Clearspace (YC W23) – Cut back on screen time
Hey HN, we're Royce and Oliver, the founders of Clearspace ( https://www.getclearspace.com ). We make an iPhone app that helps you reduce compulsive phone use. It regulates your social media experiences and app usage, saving you from impulse opens and mindless scrolls. Here’s a demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zXLYvtG1zZ6ZRq01eGc8jlsn70v... During the pandemic, we found ourselves spending more and more of our lives on digital content. Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, even HN were always right there, and the impulse to open and consume became stronger than ever. We realized how much of our technology use was compulsive rather than intentional. Willpower alone was not enough to solve the problem. Most of these products have been designed to activate dopamine feedback loops and, to be blunt, keep users hooked [1]. Not wanting to be addicted, we star
Why it failed: Hey HN, we're Royce and Oliver, the founders of Clearspace ( https://www.getclearspace.com ). We make an iPhone app that helps you reduce compulsive phone use. It regulates your social media experiences and app usage, saving you from impulse opens and mindless scro
anteloper
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: A murder mystery game built on an open-source gen-AI agent framework
Hey HN, Michael and Scott here. We’re open-sourcing an interactive murder mystery featuring LLM-driven character agents. Solve the mystery by finding clues, taking notes, and interrogating agents. They all have distinct motives, personality, and can impact the game in different ways (attacking you, running away, etc). Try it out, it’s pretty fun! We’re also open-sourcing the framework that we used to make and refine the agents. The goal is to create an intuitive interface for storytellers to create, debug, and test game agents. We then take those game agents and expose an API beyond just chat - such as actions, player guardrails, emotional queries, etc. We’re not done yet - there are a lot more features coming on the way: scenario-based agent evals, agent-storyline consistency management, automatic agent generation, etc. We would love to hear your feedback. Thanks! [0] https://
Why it failed: Hey HN, Michael and Scott here. We’re open-sourcing an interactive murder mystery featuring LLM-driven character agents. Solve the mystery by finding clues, taking notes, and interrogating agents. They all have distinct motives, personality, and can impact the game in different w
broken_clock
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
Hey HN, we are Mahmoud and Hammad, co-founders of Play.ht, a text-to-speech synthesis platform. We're building Large Language Speech Models across all languages with a focus on voice expressiveness and control. Today, we are excited to share beta access to our latest model, Parrot, that is capable of cloning any voice with a few seconds of audio and generating expressive speech from text. You can try it out here: https://playground.play.ht . And there are demo videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL_hmxTLHiM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdEEoODd6Kk . The model also captures accents well and is able to speak in all English accents. Even more interesting, it can make non-English speakers speak English while preserving their original accent. Just upload a non-English speaker clip and try it yourself. Existing text to speech models eit
Why it failed: Hey HN, we are Mahmoud and Hammad, co-founders of Play.ht, a text-to-speech synthesis platform. We're building Large Language Speech Models across all languages with a focus on voice expressiveness and control. Today, we are excited to share beta access to our latest model,
hammadh
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
Hey HN, we are Remen, Ben, and Nick, the founders of Propify ( https://getpropify.com ), an API aggregator for residential property management. We abstract over archaic APIs and merge them into a single modern API for the real estate industry, giving companies access to multiple property management systems (PMSs) via a REST API. Think merge.dev or Plaid for real estate. Property managers nowadays use software to operate residential rental properties. Our customers are not these property managers directly, but companies who provide services to both property managers and renters. Our customers are solving problems around resident screening, security, parking, maintenance, etc., which property managers typically outsource. Compared to most other industries in 2023, property management still runs on old tech with bad/wrong/absent API documentation. Creating and maintainin
Why it failed: Hey HN, we are Remen, Ben, and Nick, the founders of Propify ( https://getpropify.com ), an API aggregator for residential property management. We abstract over archaic APIs and merge them into a single modern API for the real estate industry, giving companies access to
kole78
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Sorbay – Open-source alternative to Loom
Hey HN, we're excited to introduce Sorbay - an open source alternative to Loom for creating and sharing screen recordings. With Sorbay, you can easily record your screen, camera, and microphone all at once. It is a complete solution that comes with its own backend service, allowing you to instantly share a link of your recording as soon as it is finished. The video is streamed directly to the backend service as the recording happens to make this possible. With both founders based in different countries, we needed a tool to quickly share screen recordings to keep us up to date or to ask for feedback. Meetings are cool if you need to discuss something deeply, but for almost everything else a quick recording works better. We had to settle for one of the proprietary solutions because none of the open source tools allowed us to quickly share something with each other. Doing the recording
Why it failed: Hey HN, we're excited to introduce Sorbay - an open source alternative to Loom for creating and sharing screen recordings. With Sorbay, you can easily record your screen, camera, and microphone all at once. It is a complete solution that comes with its own backend service, a
jayfk