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 down2017
Ask HN: What was it like to quit your job and focus on your successful startup?
For most people, dreaming about quitting a job to focus on a side project or a startup is a dream come true, especially if it ends up being successful. It can bring about so many emotions and fears all during that entire process... not knowing what is going to happen.. and what if it failed? Would it have been possible to return to your old job? So, for those who quit their jobs and were successful, how did it feel and what did you learn?
Why it failed: For most people, dreaming about quitting a job to focus on a side project or a startup is a dream come true, especially if it ends up being successful. It can bring about so many emotions and fears all during that entire process... not knowing what is going to happen.. and what i
mattbgates
- startupShut down2017
Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot
Feather ( https://rentfeather.com ) is a furniture rental company, setting out to provide stylish, affordable furniture to people and startups that move frequently. I've moved 5 times in 6 years living in New York, and each time I spent an overwhelming amount of time at IKEA buying, schlepping, and assembling furniture I didn't exactly want. And at the end of each lease, I found myself with furniture that didn't travel well to my new apartment, and often had to scrap it, only to return to IKEA again to furnish my new apartment. It was a cycle of buying things I didn't really want, that didn't really last - and I'm sure many of you have gone through the same trouble. That gave me the idea for Feather. Click a few buttons and your furniture is delivered, fully assembled, and placed in the room of your choice. And importantly, when you're ready t
Why it failed: Feather ( https://rentfeather.com ) is a furniture rental company, setting out to provide stylish, affordable furniture to people and startups that move frequently. I've moved 5 times in 6 years living in New York, and each time I spent an overwhelming amount of ti
jayreno
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Life as a developer gets boring real quick.remedy?
For the last 3 years I have been developing software of mainly the web kind. Did Clojure dev last year, some C projects before that and have a bunch of scala projects this year and hopefully a bunch of Haskell projects later this year. After failing culture fit tests at companies of interest after passing tehnical rounds, I've taken a step back to examine where things are going. The more I examine my life so far, though plastered with opportunities to work with functional Lang's that most people don't get, everything I've done so far seems meaningless. I excercise regularly, I don't like people that much though I do put up a front, I don't play video games not do I read literature or watch anime or any shows. I am relearning proof writing in math, but after a while it gets boring because there isn't any end goal in mind. Will take up some Bayesian based
Why it failed: For the last 3 years I have been developing software of mainly the web kind. Did Clojure dev last year, some C projects before that and have a bunch of scala projects this year and hopefully a bunch of Haskell projects later this year. After failing culture fit tests at companies
oggyhead
- startupShut down2017
Launch HN: Darmiyan (YC S17) – Early Detection of Alzheimer's Disease
Hi HN, I'm Padideh Kamali-Zare, co-founder and CEO at Darmiyan in the current YC batch ( https://www.darmiyan.com/ ). We work on early detection of Alzheimer's disease. I'm told that launching on HN should come with the backstory of how we came to work on this, so I need to tell you about my grandmother, the most precious gift in my life. She was a poet who raised me, and was always full of life and stories to keep me amazed and excited. As the first female bank executive in a conservative society in the middle east, she was also socially progressive and outstanding. A brilliant brain. A beautiful mind. A few months before she died, on a sunny day, she told me: “Do you know what I want the most from my life?” I stared at her in silence. She continued: “To die decently while I still remember myself, my memories and my loved ones. It feels like as I’m getting
Why it failed: Hi HN, I'm Padideh Kamali-Zare, co-founder and CEO at Darmiyan in the current YC batch ( https://www.darmiyan.com/ ). We work on early detection of Alzheimer's disease. I'm told that launching on HN should come with the backstory of how we came to wo
kvejdani
- startupShut down2017
Launch HN: Lyrebird (YC S17) – Create a digital copy of your voice
Hi HN! We are the co-founders of Lyrebird ( https://lyrebird.ai/ ) and PhD students in AI at University of Montreal. We are building speech synthesis technologies to improve the way we communicate with computers. Right now, our key innovation is that we can copy the voice of someone else and make it say anything. The tech is still at its early stage but we believe that it is eventually going to make possible a wide range of new applications such as: - reading loud text messages with the voice of the sender, - reading audiobooks with the voice of your choice, - giving a personalized digital voice to people who lost their voice due to a disease, - allowing video game makers to have more customized dialogs generated on the fly, or avatars of their players, - allowing movie makers to freeze the voice of their actors so that they can still use it if the actor ages or dies. Yest
Why it failed: Hi HN! We are the co-founders of Lyrebird ( https://lyrebird.ai/ ) and PhD students in AI at University of Montreal. We are building speech synthesis technologies to improve the way we communicate with computers. Right now, our key innovation is that we can copy th
adbrebs
- startupShut down2017
Launch HN: Thematic (YC S17) Customer Feedback Analysis via NLP
Hi! I’m the CEO of Thematic, http://www.getthematic.com . We analyse customer feedback to tell companies how to increase customer satisfaction and reduce churn. We are one of the handful of companies that got into YC through the Startup School, and (I have to say) the only company that signed YC itself as a customer! I have a PhD in NLP and ML and was consulting when two large media companies came to me with a problem: They collect tons of customer feedback in free text as part of their NPS surveys, but don’t have the time to sift through the responses. This turned out to be common. Most companies collect feedback but, especially in large companies, nobody reads this data, and definitely not people who are in charge of strategy. Customers are screaming what’s wrong and what they want, but nobody is listening. I tried a few open-source packages but found that none worked well. D
Why it failed: Hi! I’m the CEO of Thematic, http://www.getthematic.com . We analyse customer feedback to tell companies how to increase customer satisfaction and reduce churn. We are one of the handful of companies that got into YC through the Startup School, and (I have to say) the o
zelandiya
- startupShut down2017
Launch HN: Bitrise (YC W17) – Continuous Integration and Delivery for Mobile Apps
Hi, we’re the founders of Bitrise ( https://www.bitrise.io/ ) in the YC W17 batch — YC's first-ever Hungarian startup! Bitrise is a Continuous Integration and Delivery platform specifically for mobile apps. We started working on Bitrise when we were running our dev agency, building apps for clients. It was frustrating to go through all the manual tasks when somebody needed a fresh build, or when all the bugs piled up before releases. We wanted to automate all the manual aspects of app development so we could get back to coding, because that’s what we loved to do. We’ve started with iOS CI/CD, because that seemed to be the hardest and that’s what we had the most experience in. For starters we had to build up a scalable Mac infrastructure, since iOS apps can only be compiled on a Mac machine. That was tough. We also wanted to make setting up and maintaining CI way
Why it failed: Hi, we’re the founders of Bitrise ( https://www.bitrise.io/ ) in the YC W17 batch — YC's first-ever Hungarian startup! Bitrise is a Continuous Integration and Delivery platform specifically for mobile apps. We started working on Bitrise when we were running ou
thebloodrabbit
- startupShut down2017
Cameroon Government shutdown social networks. Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter cutoff
I woke up this morning and discovered Internet Services in Cameroon have somehow been limited. I am suspected the regime of Paul Biya have tampered with the internet service and Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, VPNs, Vcontact aren't working. I am sure many other social media have been cut off as well. I am sure you guys are aware of the ongoing crisis that have rocked the "English speaking regions" ( Former Southern Cameroons) of Cameroons since November 2016. There have been plans to celebrate the symbolic independence of this region " The Former British Southern Cameroons" on the 1st of October 2017. That is on Sunday and the region have been heavily militarized by the Biya regime, Homes of people invaded, beaten , some killed, many kidnapped and with this shutdown to major social media to which it is where most of these crimes are exposed, many have been fearing a
Why it failed: I woke up this morning and discovered Internet Services in Cameroon have somehow been limited. I am suspected the regime of Paul Biya have tampered with the internet service and Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, VPNs, Vcontact aren't working. I am sure many other social media hav
ndifor
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Good place to get help on / learn WebAssembly? (beginner level)
I started to get some interest in WebAssembly after seeing the possible applications and decided to take the leap this week-end. I managed to get past the hello world stage on my own with some help from stackoverflow but I'm now stuck while trying to re-implement my js game of life in wasm. The IRC #webassembly does not seem active. Any good place you know for some practical advice ? The webassembly, emscripten, mozilla docs are a bit overwhelming and not that much example oriented and the tutorials I found are probably out of date on many aspects considering the moving target that WebAssembly is...
Why it failed: I started to get some interest in WebAssembly after seeing the possible applications and decided to take the leap this week-end. I managed to get past the hello world stage on my own with some help from stackoverflow but I'm now stuck while trying to re-implement my js game
blaze33
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Ways to deal with ADHD?
I really value here the interesting and intelligent perspectives of the HN readers which taught me a lot, maybe even now for dealing with ADHD. About me: Had a huge crisis doing my bachelor degree was almost dropping out (same in high school), was also dealing with anxiety and feeling depressed and thus tried a lot of experimental things to "cure" me. In the end I just barely managed to pass my bachelor degree in CS (with an extension-semester) and doing now my masters. The experimental things that I did so far: -Doing 3 10-day meditation retreats to make me feel less stressed and overwhelmed. -Meditating at home(although it's often difficult to maintain this habit) -2-3 times a year LSD to have a mental reset if I feel stuck(cleaning my turmoil, refocus on the important). Recently also two times mircodosed LSD on days where I'm stressed or depressed to have more ener
Why it failed: I really value here the interesting and intelligent perspectives of the HN readers which taught me a lot, maybe even now for dealing with ADHD. About me: Had a huge crisis doing my bachelor degree was almost dropping out (same in high school), was also dealing with anxiety and fe
throwaway_adhd
- startupShut down2017
Considering leaving job because of SCRUM
I am a software developer and I love software development. I love coming up with clever solutions to problems, I love refactoring parts of a codebase - reduing the number of lines of code and making things more understandable, I even love the boring bits - fixing bugs etc. However I feel that the practice of SCRUM in my current job is preventing me from doing that. Anytime an interesting problem comes up to solve we reduce it into ridiculously small cards like "research how to connect to this API", "Evaluate if we can use this library", "Write a proposal on how to do X" etc. So a problem which would take 1-2 months for a couple developers working together to solve now takes 6 months. Because we break it into unrealistically small steps and as soon as you finish one step you have to wait for the end of the sprint (2 weeks) and present it, then groom/plan
Why it failed: I am a software developer and I love software development. I love coming up with clever solutions to problems, I love refactoring parts of a codebase - reduing the number of lines of code and making things more understandable, I even love the boring bits - fixing bugs etc. Howeve
chuck4932
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: How do you close your side projects?
I have worked on various side projects involving design, development, music, etc. over time and generally kept the remnants living on somewhere (DropBox folders, word docs, random repositories). I like to have reference for nostalgia or to reflect on the lessons learned before my next pursuit. Recently, I have been considering creating a blog or documenting the key parts like screenshots along with a write up recap in an Archive folder somewhere and then purging the content such as code, mockups, assets, etc. I would partially like to write a post-mortem about a side startup but the rest are not as valued. I was just curious if you have any personal examples or practices for closing out your cancelled or completed projects (Archive - Purge - Blog Post - Open Source - viking send-off)?
Why it failed: I have worked on various side projects involving design, development, music, etc. over time and generally kept the remnants living on somewhere (DropBox folders, word docs, random repositories). I like to have reference for nostalgia or to reflect on the lessons learned before my
andrewgrossi
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Best budget Linux laptop for a developer?
I am looking for a laptop to use for Linux development. There have been a number of "Ask HN" topics about this, but this one is a little different - I am not looking for a brand-new, top-end machine, but rather something to use alongside my MacBook Pro (which runs macOS and Windows via Boot Camp). My budget for this machine is only around $300. If I spend the money on another MacBook (Air or 13" Pro) I am probably looking at a machine of 2011/2012 vintage. Unfortunately I'm not sure the Air machines will be sufficiently powerful for my needs (low-voltage CPUs, only 4GB non-upgradable RAM). Also, all of the the pre-retina MacBooks seem to be let down by their screens: glossy, TN panels with (except for the 13" Air) at most 800 vertical pixels. Another option is a Lenovo ThinkPad, again probably from around 2012 (with the traditional 7-row ThinkPad keyboard).
Why it failed: I am looking for a laptop to use for Linux development. There have been a number of "Ask HN" topics about this, but this one is a little different - I am not looking for a brand-new, top-end machine, but rather something to use alongside my MacBook Pro (which runs macOS
gustuy
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Are you doing what you want to do or what you have to?
I have recently started watching the new National Geographic show 'Genius' about Albert Einstein. The way Einstein was obsessed with Physics took me to my childhood days when I used to ponder over why everything is the way it is. I always wanted to become a physicist. But being an Indian, I was repeatedly bombarded with the idea how essential it is to make a living. As such, I strayed from what I wanted to do and got into engineering (CS). It's now the end of my engineering and I am now occupied with the thoughts of what my life had been if I would have chosen the road not taken. It's not that I don't have a good job, but the thought of losing a chance to do something I love that keeps me awake these days. Personally, I think that the advancement in technology is also responsible for this. The internet, though providing us the means to access a vast amount of inf
Why it failed: I have recently started watching the new National Geographic show 'Genius' about Albert Einstein. The way Einstein was obsessed with Physics took me to my childhood days when I used to ponder over why everything is the way it is. I always wanted to become a physicist. B
rochak
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?
I founded an vertical-focused enterprise startup. We signed a few huge customers in the space on a build-and-beta basis, and that led to industry awards and a full pipeline of leads and signed contracts for installation (SaaS pricing with small implementation fee). We've done it with a ridiculously small team, however. And it's become impossible to handle the dev and deployment, support and training, security reviews, feature requests, etc. So we are looking at options. We've been approached by a few large companies in the industry regarding acquisition. It looks like we could sell for $12-14M. Kind of exciting, but also well under the value that's possible (which would probably be something north of $400M in our industry alone, with the possibility to move laterally). The alternative is to raise money. We've put together a solid deck and model (I think), but the
Why it failed: I founded an vertical-focused enterprise startup. We signed a few huge customers in the space on a build-and-beta basis, and that led to industry awards and a full pipeline of leads and signed contracts for installation (SaaS pricing with small implementation fee). We've don
thisanonguy
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: How to get a job when you suck at coding?
I have a strong feeling I suck at coding. I have a B.S. degree in CS from an average school in the USA. 1) I have a bunch of projects, but they're terribly boring and have ugly looking code. For example, I spent a year working on an ecommerce site. It does what it needs to do, but there were no smart decisions behind the back end. I never had to use design patterns nor data structures. I just pieced it together. 2) I have a lot of trouble with "HackerRank" style problems. I just finished one, an hour ago, called Codility. Even though I passed all the shown test cases, the final results showed that I got the following scores 13%/95%/0%. The 0% was a debugging problem that required a max of 2 line changes. I have absolutely no clue how I got a 0% there. I've been trying to get a job anywhere, doing some programming, but all the rejections have destroyed me. As
Why it failed: I have a strong feeling I suck at coding. I have a B.S. degree in CS from an average school in the USA. 1) I have a bunch of projects, but they're terribly boring and have ugly looking code. For example, I spent a year working on an ecommerce site. It does what it needs to d
anon23422
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: How to answer properly “Why we should hire you” question?
I've ask somewhere on the internet about this question. But, never receive good response and also the answer is not related on my field. This question, has make me failed on interview process on one of antivirus company, despite, it was long a ago, sometimes I cannot move on and still wondering what is the best answer for this typical question. Since, this site a lot of IT guys, it might be related and I hope I will received very good advice and answers. Thanks.
Why it failed: I've ask somewhere on the internet about this question. But, never receive good response and also the answer is not related on my field. This question, has make me failed on interview process on one of antivirus company, despite, it was long a ago, sometimes I cannot move on
neurobot
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Stories of startup persistence
I've recently closed the doors on my 6th bootstrapped startup in 15 years. This is in addition to many, many side projects that i wouldn't consider calling a startup. I've never been able to find product/market fit. I'm getting better, and thanks to ideas from lean startup, each attempt is taking less time and resources, but i cant help but wonder if I'm cut out for this. Are there any examples of founders who tried and failed multiple times before getting their big success?
Why it failed: I've recently closed the doors on my 6th bootstrapped startup in 15 years. This is in addition to many, many side projects that i wouldn't consider calling a startup. I've never been able to find product/market fit. I'm getting better, and thanks to idea
exampledotcom
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Is there a way we can prevent down-voting for disagreements?
My biggest gripe with HN is that it appears to me that comments are often down-voted over differing opinions rather than an issue with the comment as per the HN guidelines[0]. As someone who has unpopular opinions, this often leaves me fearful of participating in discussions. Maybe this fear effect is the very thing keeping our community more cordial though? :) I like HN a lot and it really is the only site where I regularly read comments. Keeping that in mind, I wonder if anyone has any ideas as to how we might improve this aspect of the community without also ruining it in the process? It is quite possible that any solution will wind up with worse adverse affects than benefits. One small idea I had was to add a section on "When Voting" to the HN guidelines[0]. I may have missed it but I do not believe there is anything pertaining to what one should be considering when voting.
Why it failed: My biggest gripe with HN is that it appears to me that comments are often down-voted over differing opinions rather than an issue with the comment as per the HN guidelines[0]. As someone who has unpopular opinions, this often leaves me fearful of participating in discussions. May
wuliwong
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: How do I program with more discipline and less emotion?
I'm used to being a hacker. I like doing 48 hour programming "binges". These were incredibly effective and I could often build more in those 48 hours than most people would build in a month. It worked great when panicked, but as I get more senior and used to the heavy pressure, it doesn't work any more. I have a more comfortable life now and failing projects is not as bad as they used to be. So it's hard to dig up the emotion I used to hack long hours. Now I just end up staring at the code for 2 hours at 2 AM. Besides, exhaustion kicks in and makes me less effective in the long run. And it doesn't scale as well with a team. I find disciplined techniques like Scrum and XP appealing. I know I should start adopting them. But a part of me worries that my hacker spirit would die out. So how would I go from being a code berserker to being a more organized, discipl
Why it failed: I'm used to being a hacker. I like doing 48 hour programming "binges". These were incredibly effective and I could often build more in those 48 hours than most people would build in a month. It worked great when panicked, but as I get more senior and used to the he
muzani
- startupShut down2017
Show HN: LiveCoder
LiveCoder is a fun tool I built almost a year ago to simulate live coding Frontend technologies for my presentations. You actually don't have to live-code, but just prepare beforehand the program, snippets of HTML, CSS and Javascript and you feed the tool with it, so you can just focus on explaining what's being coded. Simple :-) I never really shared this tool, but I used it in a few presentations quite succesfully, so I think it could be an interesting tool to use. You have full control of the speed. You can pause and resume... An entire app can be live-coded with this. It's quite fun to watch ;-) There is a Demo in the repo, a bit slow at the beginning but wait until the end, gets better. Hope you enjoy it and please, feedback would be very much appreciated. Repo: https://github.com/jscriptcoder/live-coder Fran
Why it failed: LiveCoder is a fun tool I built almost a year ago to simulate live coding Frontend technologies for my presentations. You actually don't have to live-code, but just prepare beforehand the program, snippets of HTML, CSS and Javascript and you feed the tool with it, so you can
jscriptcoder
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
I'm not talking about your Dad or Grandma's union of yesteryear but a new type of union focused on collective bargaining for issues that matter and taking decisive action. Our new style of union would: - Encourage corporations to take security and privacy seriously - Advocate for those affected by automation - Aide in the creation of standards - Support free and open source software communities - Strengthen the efforts of organizations like EFF, Archive.org, Tor, etc - Advocate for a free and open internet - Counterbalance corporate interests Once upon a time, unions did a lot of good for working and middle class people and they failed ultimately in the end. It seems we as developers have the power to create a new type of union. A new model that disrupts old ideas for collective bargaining and actually does some good in the world. What will our legacy be? Some things in life ar
Why it failed: I'm not talking about your Dad or Grandma's union of yesteryear but a new type of union focused on collective bargaining for issues that matter and taking decisive action. Our new style of union would: - Encourage corporations to take security and privacy seriously - Ad
quinequine
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: How can we stop the plan to end net neutrality?
In the following week the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to roll out their plan to end net neutrality. It appears that the public at large and even some internet stalwarts have become apathetic to the coming changes, which threaten to alter the internet as we know it going forward. If this happens without massive public outrage it may indicate to other democratic nations that treating all traffic equally is no longer the norm, and they are free to enact their own "play-to-play" schemes in addition to those imposed by the U.S. What can be done to reverse this course of action?
Why it failed: In the following week the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to roll out their plan to end net neutrality. It appears that the public at large and even some internet stalwarts have become apathetic to the coming changes, which threaten to alter the internet
Dangeranger
- startupShut down2017
Ask HN: Which laptop for development?
Moved across the country for a startup and had to put my desktop in the office (the only machine I own) since they don't give you a computer. I feel like I'm missing out since the other devs take their shiny MacBook pros and sit around a table and work (and chat) while I'm tucked away in an obscure corner. Also, driving to the office everytime time something breaks on a holiday could be a major inconvenience. Still gonna keep my desktop in the office so looking for a cheap laptop. I work on python Django so as long as it can run PyCharm and slack and a few chrome tabs, I should be fine (no need to run VMs or anything fancy). I live in India so my options are somewhat limited since many models are either unavailable or simply more expensive than in the US. These are the models I narrowed down on to: 1. Refurbished Lenovo T420. 2nd gen i5, 16 gigs of RAM. Really cheap for 25
Why it failed: Moved across the country for a startup and had to put my desktop in the office (the only machine I own) since they don't give you a computer. I feel like I'm missing out since the other devs take their shiny MacBook pros and sit around a table and work (and chat) while
lonesword