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.
2,200 solutions
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product
Long story short: We (Dataherald) just open-sourced our entire codebase, including the core engine, the clients that interact with it and the backend application layer for authentication and RBAC. You can now use the full solution to build text-to-SQL into your product. The Problem: modern LLMs write syntactically correct SQL, but they struggle with real-world relational data. This is because real world data and schema is messy, natural language can often be ambiguous and LLMs are not trained on your specific dataset. Solution: The core NL-to-SQL engine in Dataherald is an LLM based agent which uses Chain of Thought (CoT) reasoning and a number of different tools to generate high accuracy SQL from a given user prompt. The engine achieves this by: - Collecting context at configuration from the database and sources such as data dictionaries and unstructured documents which are stored in a
Why it failed: Long story short: We (Dataherald) just open-sourced our entire codebase, including the core engine, the clients that interact with it and the backend application layer for authentication and RBAC. You can now use the full solution to build text-to-SQL into your product. The Probl
aazo11
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: Why am I struggling to find a job?
I'm in the market for an engineering job over the past two months but I'm really struggling at finding one. Basically, my story is: - Full Stack with 12+ years of experience, good generalist/architect with a some strong points. - Working remotely in EU timezone. - Got a nice CV with big names and projects I significantly contributed on. - Last full time job was 1.5 years ago but I have done plenty of one-off client and personal projects in the meantime I can show off. I only apply to positions that are fully remote in my timezone and where the profile is at least an 80% match or more. I often tick multiple of the "nice to have" boxes. I put quite some effort in my applications, writing cover letters or filling all boxes in the form with relevant and personalized information, Despite that, most companies reject me right away. When I make it further, I usually pass
Why it failed: I'm in the market for an engineering job over the past two months but I'm really struggling at finding one. Basically, my story is: - Full Stack with 12+ years of experience, good generalist/architect with a some strong points. - Working remotely in EU timezone. -
throwaway7676
- startupShut down2024
Tell HN: Pivotal Tracker is being shut down
Just received the following email: To our Pivotal Tracker customers, The VMware Tanzu division is announcing the end-of-life (EOL) for the Pivotal Tracker offering, effective April 30, 2025. Customers with active Pivotal Tracker subscriptions may continue to use the offering through April 30, 2025, after which time the offering will sunset. You can export your data any time before April 30, 2025. It is recommended to migrate any needed data out of Pivotal Tracker on a timely basis. Please review the instructions to export data here. If you have any issue in migrating data, raise a support ticket . The VMware Tanzu division will not provide any support for migrating data beyond April 30, 2025. Thank you, VMware Tanzu Division
Why it failed: Just received the following email: To our Pivotal Tracker customers, The VMware Tanzu division is announcing the end-of-life (EOL) for the Pivotal Tracker offering, effective April 30, 2025. Customers with active Pivotal Tracker subscriptions may continue to use the offering thro
telekid
- startupShut down2024
Is 7 days a week the new norm (for YC)?
I've worked for 2 major YC companies and done some one-off/contract work in recent years at a few others here in SF. Really like the startups coming out of YC. I had to unfortunately voluntarily quit the last on-site contract due to it being 7 days a week (I tried to take off a Sunday, didn't work), on top of a requirement to be there until 8-9pm daily and occasionally pull all-nighters when there are sales demos (at the office until 7AM the next day - then stayed at work for the next day). I tried to stick it out, and even though I consider myself to have the best work ethic of anyone I know, being at an office nearly 24/7/365 to do basic React work with constantly changing directions/requirements felt pointless to say the least. It wasn't like we were building something with a clear goal in mind - and the founders did nothing . They would shoot hoops
Why it failed: I've worked for 2 major YC companies and done some one-off/contract work in recent years at a few others here in SF. Really like the startups coming out of YC. I had to unfortunately voluntarily quit the last on-site contract due to it being 7 days a week (I tried to ta
bschmidt1
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: Best Tools for Monorepo?
I've got a monorepo I'm working in that has a Golang backend with a couple services and a Next.js front-end. Everything lives in a monorepo together. My tooling is super weak, though! For instance, for process management in development I'm using Goreman, which is a Foreman alternative in Goalng. Wondering what's the state of the art for managing the processes in local dev in monorepos in 2024? Or other tools for managing a monorepo I might be missing in general!
Why it failed: I've got a monorepo I'm working in that has a Golang backend with a couple services and a Next.js front-end. Everything lives in a monorepo together. My tooling is super weak, though! For instance, for process management in development I'm using Goreman, which is a
bradhe
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?
I've worked on large products for large and small companies and written tens of thousands of lines of code across my career, solving complex, abstract, challenging technical problems in a variety of languages on a variety of platforms, sometimes under difficult conditions. I have often been a resource for my friends and co-workers when they have programming or technical questions. I only recently learned how to correctly raise and lower window blinds--I had been doing it wrong my entire life. It was maybe the dumbest I have ever felt, and was a humbling reminder of how much I don't know about how much I don't know. Have you had similar experiences?
Why it failed: I've worked on large products for large and small companies and written tens of thousands of lines of code across my career, solving complex, abstract, challenging technical problems in a variety of languages on a variety of platforms, sometimes under difficult conditions. I
spcebar
- startupShut down2024
Brutal Startup Failure
My first (vc backed) startep failed after three years. We started in 2021, working in crypto. Looking back to the time we got started, I made some serious foundational errors: - Selling 40% of the company at preseed for 1.2mln and signing a predatory shareholder agreement - Trusting a co-founder relationship which never really worked, hoping to fix it along time But 1.2mln$ in the bank made me forget about these issues. Started to work on the business heads down. After 18 months of iterating, things were finally moving. Our vision became clearer, and we got into a well-known accelerator. But that’s when everything started to unravel. My relationship with my co-founder began to deteriorate rapidly. I felt like I was doing everything—closing clients, managing product, handling content, brand, fundraising—you name it. My co-founder, on the other hand, wasn’t pulling his weight. His network
Why it failed: My first (vc backed) startep failed after three years. We started in 2021, working in crypto. Looking back to the time we got started, I made some serious foundational errors: - Selling 40% of the company at preseed for 1.2mln and signing a predatory shareholder agreement - Trust
theHolyTrynity
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: I am Software Engineer 30yo and I feel purposeless
Lately I am not feeling well, I don’t care about anything, I feel like I do nothing. Doing simple chores has become difficult. I've been trying to get a haircut for the last 2 weeks and I am unable to go to the barber shop. I don’t feel like cleaning anything, I don’t feel like doing groceries, I’ve even started to get dirty while eating, it’s embarrassing, but I think it is because I am not paying attention to anything, I am constantly drifting away somewhere, I feel disappointed about life. Even in my worst moments I honestly question myself if it is even worth it to live, don't get me wrong I don't want to stop living and I do love my wife and family, but is more like I feel like there will not be much difference between me existing or not, and I do not know why I feel like that, that same thing would probably apply for anybody in the planet, but I cannot stop that feel
Why it failed: Lately I am not feeling well, I don’t care about anything, I feel like I do nothing. Doing simple chores has become difficult. I've been trying to get a haircut for the last 2 weeks and I am unable to go to the barber shop. I don’t feel like cleaning anything, I don’t feel l
driftingaway
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: How Can I Make My Front End React to Database Changes in Real-Time?
I'm exploring ways to make my frontend applications reactive to database changes without overloading the backend. - Traditional methods like polling are resource-intensive and rerun entire queries, which isn't efficient. - I’m familiar with some libraries and companies are doing this by building materialized views close to the DB [1][2], but I want to update the frontend, not just the backend. - Some platforms like Supabase Realtime [3] and Firebase offer subscription models to database changes, but these solutions fall short when dealing with complex queries involving joins or group-bys. My vision is that the modern frontend to behave like a series of materialized views that dynamically update as the underlying data changes. Current state management libraries handle state trees well but don't seamlessly integrate with relational or graph-like database structures. The only
Why it failed: I'm exploring ways to make my frontend applications reactive to database changes without overloading the backend. - Traditional methods like polling are resource-intensive and rerun entire queries, which isn't efficient. - I’m familiar with some libraries and companies
bruchim
- startupShut down2024
Tell HN: Need help, locked out of Google account with 10 years of personal data
I've been locked out of my Google account which contains over a decade of my digital life, and I'm at my wit's end trying to recover it. The situation: - Woke up today completely locked out - Got "secure your account" message - Set new password + recovery info but kept getting redirected to login - Received "unusual activity" warning (around the time I was asleep) - System asks for old phone number (lost in 2022) - Have tried recovery dozens of times through g.co/recover - Still have access to old recovery email but system never asks for it it What I've tried: - Using same devices and network as always (google pixel) - Multiple recovery attempts with both old/new phone numbers - Both old/new passwords (then never say which one they accept) - Following all official Google recovery guides I have so much of my life there: - Primary emai
Why it failed: I've been locked out of my Google account which contains over a decade of my digital life, and I'm at my wit's end trying to recover it. The situation: - Woke up today completely locked out - Got "secure your account" message - Set new password + recovery
taosx
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: Getting old and boring – What can I do about it?
I'm 33 and I am becoming terminally boring. I am primarily interested in my family (married, kids 7 and 3) and doing well at work, but that is about it? Outside of reading I have no hobbies, I am not part of any groups, I don't have any ambitions outside of home & work, and I don't drink or play video games or watch very much TV/movies. When I meet new people, I realize I don't have much to say because nobody cares about my work or my family or my books (nor should they, necessarily). I have a great remote job which pays well without being too demanding. It doesn't sound like much, but after working, family time, chores, and some reading it feels like my day is already full. In fact, I usually end each day wishing I had spent more time being a better husband/father/home-owner/reader -- adding any hobbies would make these feelings worse. I
Why it failed: I'm 33 and I am becoming terminally boring. I am primarily interested in my family (married, kids 7 and 3) and doing well at work, but that is about it? Outside of reading I have no hobbies, I am not part of any groups, I don't have any ambitions outside of home & w
hn_burner_2038
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?
In the process of recruiting right now and I'm happy to see more and more companies are moving towards non-leetcode style interviews. As a child of the leetcode generation, this got me thinking - what kind of technical questions were asked before leetcode? Were algorithmic "gotcha" questions still asked? Were the questions easier? Was the bar just higher? I'm also guessing there was no 'coderpad' or 'hackerrank' - was everything just done on a whiteboard and pseudo-coded?
Why it failed: In the process of recruiting right now and I'm happy to see more and more companies are moving towards non-leetcode style interviews. As a child of the leetcode generation, this got me thinking - what kind of technical questions were asked before leetcode? Were algorithmic &
zkirby
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: ReadToMe (iOS) turns paper books into audio
I'm launching something that started as a side project publicly today: ReadToMe, which is an iPhone app that turns paper books and other printed text into audio. Originally this was a Christmas present for my fiancée, who loves books but has an eye problem that makes it hard for her to read more than a few pages at a time. She mostly listens to audiobooks while following along with the paper book, but some books aren't available in audiobook or even e-book form, and all of the existing apps we tried were surprisingly bad at scanning paper books into audio — they make lots of mistakes, include footnotes and page numbers, etc., in a way that really degrades the experience. Being an AI-oriented engineer by training, I had a crack at solving the problem myself, and was pleasantly surprised at how well the proof of concept worked. I then had some time free while shutting down my pre
Why it failed: I'm launching something that started as a side project publicly today: ReadToMe, which is an iPhone app that turns paper books and other printed text into audio. Originally this was a Christmas present for my fiancée, who loves books but has an eye problem that makes it hard
kolchinski
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: I can't grok front end development
I've been a software engineer for over 10 years. Most of my life has been spent working on backend systems, RPC services, workflow based systems, the last 5 years have been building infrastructure for FAANG companies. I understand backend development, when I say I understand, I mean I understand the actual challenges and my brain interprets these challenges as fun. Every couple of months I have to make small changes in an already existing webapps and I'm able to copy the style of the code and I get by. Recently, I've been trying to learn more about Frontend and started exploring a React project at work. Between the framework, the state model, and how things are actually wondered, I was just bewildered. Many years ago, stuff was simple, HTML, with Javascript and CSS. You could serve JSON from the backend and your JS along with CSS could style the page, or you serve the whol
Why it failed: I've been a software engineer for over 10 years. Most of my life has been spent working on backend systems, RPC services, workflow based systems, the last 5 years have been building infrastructure for FAANG companies. I understand backend development, when I say I understand
websap
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Async tasks in 350 lines of C
Tasks are a primitive for asynchronous programming and an alternative to working with threads directly. Instead of creating a thread, performing work, then waiting on it using synchronization primitives, you only define a unit of work and let a scheduler decide when and where to execute it. The threads that the scheduler uses are created once and reused for many tasks throughout the program's lifetime. In most cases, creating and executing a task requires not even a single syscall and is a significantly faster operation than creating a thread, resulting in lower latency. Furthermore, tasks from different subsystems can be automatically interleaved by the scheduler, which is difficult to achieve manually with threads without communication between the subsystems. The library is written in standard C11 and only depends on the C POSIX library. It is designed to be easy to integrate into
Why it failed: Tasks are a primitive for asynchronous programming and an alternative to working with threads directly. Instead of creating a thread, performing work, then waiting on it using synchronization primitives, you only define a unit of work and let a scheduler decide when and where to
rkaehn
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: How did you replace Teleport?
Teleport is a good software if you can't configure your SSH servers with Kerberos, or can't figure out Kubernetes' millions of authentication and authorisations solutions. Unfortunately, the Teleport open-source version has been discontinued and the free version doesn't allow companies above 100 employees or with more than 10 million dollars of revenue per year. Fair enough, everyone should live well. But Teleport Enterprise is very expensive and I have been priced out. I don't know if I can share the price behind the "contact sales" but if you wonder about the price, you probably are too poor. In my case, it's quite a few orders of magnitude more than the time Teleport saves me. So, I have been looking for a replacement that is open-source and likely to stay open-source for a while. I can pay for it, but I don't have a "contact us"
Why it failed: Teleport is a good software if you can't configure your SSH servers with Kerberos, or can't figure out Kubernetes' millions of authentication and authorisations solutions. Unfortunately, the Teleport open-source version has been discontinued and the free version do
speedgoose
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Promi (YC S24) – AI-powered ecommerce discounts
We’re Peter and Jiaxin, and we’re building Promi ( https://www.usepromi.com ). Promi uses AI to optimize retail ecommerce discounts across products and customers (think new customer discounts, clearance sales, holiday sales, etc.). Here’s a quick video overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHTw9VH8bCw Discounts have traditionally been a bit of the ‘wild west’ of pricing. Optimization techniques at even the largest merchants are heavily manual. Product level discounting decisions are distributed among operations or category managers, and store-wide discounts are often set by marketers. Typically they rely on order history, look at competitor discounts, or find prior discount performance to inform their decision. But there’s not a lot of science behind choosing the discount, and teams don’t have the time or means to optimize it at a granular level - i.e. by pro
Why it failed: We’re Peter and Jiaxin, and we’re building Promi ( https://www.usepromi.com ). Promi uses AI to optimize retail ecommerce discounts across products and customers (think new customer discounts, clearance sales, holiday sales, etc.). Here’s a quick video overview: https:&
pmoot
- startupShut down2024
High-resolution postmortem human brain MRI at 7 tesla
This tool provides performs segmentation, parcellation and registration of ultra high-resolution (< 300 microns) postmortem human brain hemisphere at 7 tesla t2w MRI. This pipeline leverages advances in both deep learning and classical surface-based modeling techniques. The developed method allows us to perform vertex-wise analysis in the template space and thereby link morphometry measures with pathology measurements derived from histology.
Why it failed: This tool provides performs segmentation, parcellation and registration of ultra high-resolution (< 300 microns) postmortem human brain hemisphere at 7 tesla t2w MRI. This pipeline leverages advances in both deep learning and classical surface-based modeling techniques. The de
pulks
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Managed Redux Toolkit: Autogenerate Your RTK Definitions
Redux Toolkit (RTK) provides a lot of primitives to build performant frontend applications. Celestial generates RTK code for your backend (with additional features), exposing an intuitive hook-based API. So you can have all the benefits of RTK without having to familiarise yourself with the underlying framework. Essentially, we write the backend wiring code for your frontend. You get simple-to-use hooks, which implement advanced backend sync & state management patterns. You also get a fast, snappy application out-of-the box. You can also think about it like this: Celestial generates a unified state layer that contains your server state and any other state that you decide to store. It exposes hooks to interact with the state, while constantly keeping client state in sync with the backend. Your UI simply plugs into the state layer using a hook-based API to manage data flow for your web
Why it failed: Redux Toolkit (RTK) provides a lot of primitives to build performant frontend applications. Celestial generates RTK code for your backend (with additional features), exposing an intuitive hook-based API. So you can have all the benefits of RTK without having to familiarise yourse
KritiKay
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: I made TV Sort, a web-based game for ranking TV show episodes
Over this Christmas break, while discussing the best episodes of Frasier with my mother (as we tend to do when I get to see her), I thought about coming up with something that's less arbitrary than 1-10 ratings. The result is TV Sort. It just uses a sorting algorithm, but... it's human powered. When the algorithm needs to compare two items, it asks you to compare them, and with that you end up with a full, thoroughly sorted episode list. It uses TMDB, IMDB, and Wikipedia to extract episode information for any show, to help jog your memory when making episode comparisons. It was a fun little experiment. And finally, I know -exactly- what I think the best and worst episodes are.[0] Would love to hear your feedback, this is my first Show HN. ;) Edit: I wrote a whole blog post about what went into making it, if anyone wants to read more of the technical detail behind it.[1] [0]: ht
Why it failed: Over this Christmas break, while discussing the best episodes of Frasier with my mother (as we tend to do when I get to see her), I thought about coming up with something that's less arbitrary than 1-10 ratings. The result is TV Sort. It just uses a sorting algorithm, but...
pocketarc
- startupShut down2024
What do I want? (SWE Burnout)
Very sorry for the long post. I'm in a sad mood. I'm really tired of SWE jobs for the typical reasons. Office politics, too much bureaucracy to do my job. I talked to a recruiter today who called me about a 6 month contract, and instead of allowing me to talk about my experience he wanted to ask why I've done so many contracts. It's so hypocritical. People who quit every 1-2 years aren't called job hoppers, but contractors are the ones that have to answer to the industries retention problem. But the reason contracts are so common is because there are so many job hoppers. And because there are so many job hoppers, there's more contract than full time. I put no blame on the engineers btw, we're in this heap together. I have a second career. I have a class A CDL, but there are more physical reasons I don't do these jobs anymore. I've been driving
Why it failed: Very sorry for the long post. I'm in a sad mood. I'm really tired of SWE jobs for the typical reasons. Office politics, too much bureaucracy to do my job. I talked to a recruiter today who called me about a 6 month contract, and instead of allowing me to talk about my e
chillinOverHere
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Open Sourcing Our No-Code WebXR Editor After 5 Years of Development
Transfer Thought is a No-Code platform that makes it so anyone can build VR apps directly in their browser. We started this company part-time, building it during commutes to and from work on the train. Over the last 5 years, we've experienced many ups and downs: - Gained early customers - Quit our day jobs - Secured angel funding - Survived with a short runway - Accepted into Techstars Chicago - Survived with a short runway (again) - Landed our biggest client ever, a Fortune 100 company - Despite our highest revenue, our burn rate caught up to us We looked at different ways to wind down the company and ultimately felt open sourcing the platform was the best way to do right by our customers. Now, anyone who is interested in starting a VR company or just building an app can pick up where we left off. I'm excited about this space, if you need help with a VR app, or want to talk te
Why it failed: Transfer Thought is a No-Code platform that makes it so anyone can build VR apps directly in their browser. We started this company part-time, building it during commutes to and from work on the train. Over the last 5 years, we've experienced many ups and downs: - Gained ear
keenanTT
- startupShut down2024
Tell HN: Google OAuth consent screen issue could be costing you signups
TL;DR: The "Sign in with Google" form doesn't debounce clicks on the "Continue" button, so it can trigger multiple redirect callbacks, in our case causing 15% of signups to fail. We've since reproduced the issue with several other companies' signup flows. What's the issue? A few months ago we (Flat.app) noticed that a meaningful fraction of signups-via-Google to our SaaS product were failing. I recently found out why, so I'm sharing this PSA for anyone facing a similar problem. If your app supports "Sign in with Google", it's likely that new signups will fail if, on Google's OAuth consent screen, a user clicks "Continue" more than once. The error will probably be inscrutable to the user, depending on your setup, so they may just give up instead of trying again. In our case, we were losing around 15% of signups! I
Why it failed: TL;DR: The "Sign in with Google" form doesn't debounce clicks on the "Continue" button, so it can trigger multiple redirect callbacks, in our case causing 15% of signups to fail. We've since reproduced the issue with several other companies' sig
Aalk4308
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: I made a puzzle game that gently introduces my favorite math mysteries
This is the first iteration of a short game I’m making that tries to interactively explain some of my favorite math questions / ideas. My goal is mostly to get the player curious and not necessarily to explain absolutely everything. There were a lot of fun technical parts to building this: - For implementation reasons, it’s much easier if the lines all have integer intersection points with each other. To do this, when a new line is added I “cheat” by rounding intersections to integers and then splitting the old lines at the intersection into new linds (with potentially different slopes) going through the rounded point - I had to draw semi accurate maps of actual places (UK, South America, US west coast) in the HTML canvas using just line segments. I tried a few different solutions, including using SVG data. I ended up using the topojson library to give nice line approximations to Ge
Why it failed: This is the first iteration of a short game I’m making that tries to interactively explain some of my favorite math questions / ideas. My goal is mostly to get the player curious and not necessarily to explain absolutely everything. There were a lot of fun technical parts to
MCSP