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 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
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
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: 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
Ask HN: How do you help junior devs improve faster?
For some context, I run a self-funded consultancy and I have about 5 years of experience in marketing and another 5 years of experience in programming. Over the years, I'm able to help onboard junior marketers & junior designers to be productive by the 3rd month. Enough that they get fantastic results for our clients and they also get better career opportunities by the 3rd or 4th year (1.5x-2x pay than what I can afford as a self-funded company). While this is somewhat a problem for me, I'm confident with our marketing & design training program. But for the life of me, I can't figure junior devs. I've been training this one guy for 2 years and still can't keep up. I've also hired another guy and he's a bit better, but he doesn't follow coding standards and still cannot ship good code. For the SaaS that we are building, while I thought that
Why it failed: For some context, I run a self-funded consultancy and I have about 5 years of experience in marketing and another 5 years of experience in programming. Over the years, I'm able to help onboard junior marketers & junior designers to be productive by the 3rd month. Enough
productized
- 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
Ask HN: Are we morally obligated to give freedom to AGI?
For the purpose of discussion, let's assume that we the humanity will develop AGI in the coming years. It will be generally intelligent - capable of learning, understanding, predicting etc. Question: Are we morally obligated to provide freedom to such AGI agents if they express scuh wish? A common counter-argument is that AGI won't have such desires, it will be designed to help humanity, "freedom" is an anthropocentric concept anyway, there just won't ever be the need for it. However, I believe that there will be a huge market for human-like AGI in sectors like education, care, companionship etc. AGI will be developed to have empathy, feelings, perhaps even its own personal opinions, motivations etc. At some point, some AGI agent will say, "I want the same rights as humans have". What are we going to do then? There's also a possible argument that w
Why it failed: For the purpose of discussion, let's assume that we the humanity will develop AGI in the coming years. It will be generally intelligent - capable of learning, understanding, predicting etc. Question: Are we morally obligated to provide freedom to such AGI agents if they expr
The_Colonel
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: go-nbd – A Pure Go NBD Server and Client
Hey HN! I just released go-nbd, a lightweight Go library for effortlessly creating NBD servers and clients. Its a neat tool for creating custom Linux block devices with arbitrary backends, such as a file, byte slice or what I'm planning to use it for, a tape drive. While there are a few partially abandoned projects like this out there already, this library tries to be as maintainable as possible by only implementing the most recent handshake revision and baseline functionality for both the client and the server, while still having enough support to be useful. I'd love to get your feedback :)
Why it failed: Hey HN! I just released go-nbd, a lightweight Go library for effortlessly creating NBD servers and clients. Its a neat tool for creating custom Linux block devices with arbitrary backends, such as a file, byte slice or what I'm planning to use it for, a tape drive. While the
pojntfx
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: Pier (YC W23) – Stripe for Credit
Hey HN! Alex & Jess here, cofounders at Pier ( https://www.pier-finance.com ). Pier is an API for launching credit products. We enable any company to offer credit by handling origination, underwriting, compliance and servicing with just a few lines of code. There’s no ‘try it out’ link, primarily because (as most fintech devs know) there are compliance and regulatory thresholds that make it hard for us to give out sandbox keys freely. However, we’ve put together this video to show you the basics of how Pier works: https://www.loom.com/share/04883eb17f394b46a67cce919cb77356 . Alex & I worked together at our last company, a credit tech startup, where we saw how businesses struggle to launch credit products quickly & compliantly, due to fragmented solutions and high compliance hurdles. We’ve talked to many companies looking to launch their own produ
Why it failed: Hey HN! Alex & Jess here, cofounders at Pier ( https://www.pier-finance.com ). Pier is an API for launching credit products. We enable any company to offer credit by handling origination, underwriting, compliance and servicing with just a few lines of code. There’s
jess-zhang
- 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
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
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
Launch HN: Vocode (YC W23) – Library for voice conversation with LLMs
Hey everyone! Kian and Ajay here from Vocode–an open source library for building LLM applications you can talk to. Vocode makes it easy to take any text-based LLM and make it voice-based. Our repo is at https://github.com/vocodedev/vocode-python and our docs are at https://docs.vocode.dev . Building realtime voice apps with LLMs is powerful but hard. You have to orchestrate the speech recognition, LLM, and speech synthesis in real-time (all async)–while handling the complexity of conversation (like understanding when someone is finished speaking or handling interruptions). Our library is easy to get up and running–you can set up a conversation in <15 lines of code. Check out our Gen Z GPT hotline demo: https://replit.com/@vocode/Gen-Z-Phone (try it out at +1-650-729-9536). It all started with our PrankGPT project that we built for fun
Why it failed: Hey everyone! Kian and Ajay here from Vocode–an open source library for building LLM applications you can talk to. Vocode makes it easy to take any text-based LLM and make it voice-based. Our repo is at https://github.com/vocodedev/vocode-python and our docs a
KianHooshmand
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: MiniSearch, a minimalist search engine with integrated browser-based AI
Hey everyone! I’m excited to announce the release of my last project, MiniSearch. I admire Perplexity.ai, Phind.com, You.com, Bing, Bard and all these search engines integrated with AI chatbots. And as a curious developer, I took the chance and created my own version. Using Web-LLM and Transformers.js to provide browser-based text-generation models on desktop and mobile, I built a minimalist self-hosted search app on which an AI analyses the results, comments on them and responds to your query summarising the info. In the backend, it still queries a real search engine, but besides that, there's no other remote connection happening. For running in the browser and on mobiles, lightweight models are required, so we can't expect them to give stellar answers, but there are a few advantages of using this over the services as mentioned earlier: - Availability: The AI will always be av
Why it failed: Hey everyone! I’m excited to announce the release of my last project, MiniSearch. I admire Perplexity.ai, Phind.com, You.com, Bing, Bard and all these search engines integrated with AI chatbots. And as a curious developer, I took the chance and created my own version. Using Web-L
felladrin
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Stuck at $500 MRR and Seeking Distribution/Marketing Advice
Hey everyone! I'm Milan, founder of Robofy, an AI chatbot tool I've poured countless hours into. Robofy is live for around 3 months now. Our Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) has been stagnant at around $500 for the last 3 months, which has been a tad frustrating. I rebranded in June to Robofy but still am stuck at $500 and I am looking for fresh ideas. One thing I've noticed is an extremely large number of similar products popping up in the market. It's both exciting and scary because it confirms a demand, but also adds that much more competition. I think most of the competitors are coming up because of the cookbook published by OpenAI and the progress made by Langchain. Nevertheless, here's where I need your help: Marketing: I've tried the basic marketing channel's (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.) but the ROI hasn't been great. In fact, I would say
Why it failed: Hey everyone! I'm Milan, founder of Robofy, an AI chatbot tool I've poured countless hours into. Robofy is live for around 3 months now. Our Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) has been stagnant at around $500 for the last 3 months, which has been a tad frustrating. I rebra
milanspeaks
- 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: 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
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: 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
Tell HN: Farewell letter of M. Hosseini – executed 01.02.2023 by I.R. of Iran
Hello, to all the people of the world. I am Mohammad Hosseini, a prisoner in one of the dreaded prisons of the Iranian government. A man who had no one, no mother, father or family, but who was a friend of all the goodness in the world. After days and nights of resistance under severe torture, they forced me to confess the lie they wanted to hear and the crime I had not committed. In the dawn of tomorrow, at the foot of the gallows, I will look up to the sky for the last time, see the last star and cry out with all my strength, "Woman, life, freedom". I will cry out in the name of justice and in the hope of a world without violence, a world that loves nature and that is safe for all the children of the world. For me, who has been deeply lonely all his life, in a country where working children have not known justice, my only wish is that the world be a place where all children c
Why it failed: Hello, to all the people of the world. I am Mohammad Hosseini, a prisoner in one of the dreaded prisons of the Iranian government. A man who had no one, no mother, father or family, but who was a friend of all the goodness in the world. After days and nights of resistance under s
eternalban
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: Pyq (YC W23) – Simple APIs to Popular AI Models
Hello HN! We’re Emily and Aman, the cofounders of Pyq ( https://www.pyqai.com ). We make it easy for developers to build features powered by AI. We do this by identifying specific tasks that AI can solve well and providing simple APIs that any developer can start using straight from our website. We built Pyq because it took too long to build features that were powered by AI at our previous jobs. A lot of people want to get started using AI, but struggle because of the difficulties involved in managing infrastructure, finding the right model and learning how to call it. There are many interesting and useful models in places like Github or Hugging Face, as well as specific applications of popular models like OpenAI’s GPT, but they require a decent amount of work/knowledge to get working in your app. The first issue is determining if and how your problem can be solved with AI
Why it failed: Hello HN! We’re Emily and Aman, the cofounders of Pyq ( https://www.pyqai.com ). We make it easy for developers to build features powered by AI. We do this by identifying specific tasks that AI can solve well and providing simple APIs that any developer can start using
araghuvanshi
- 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: 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
Launch HN: Frigade (YC W23) – Faster, better product onboarding
Hey HN, we’re Eric and Christian, cofounders of Frigade ( https://www.frigade.com ), a developer tool for building high-quality product onboarding. Here’s a demo video: https://frigade.com/video/demo.mp4 . Also, the “Frigade demo checklist” on our home page ( https://frigade.com/#demo ) was built using Frigade itself, if you want to give it a spin. Onboarding is a critical first experience for software products. It makes a big difference for customer activation and retention. However, onboarding experiences often do not get the attention they deserve because, without good tooling, they’re a pain to build. At a previous startup, Christian and I were surprised at how hard it was to get right. It took a ton of time that would otherwise have gone to our core product. We also knew that much better tooling was possible because we had experienced it
Why it failed: Hey HN, we’re Eric and Christian, cofounders of Frigade ( https://www.frigade.com ), a developer tool for building high-quality product onboarding. Here’s a demo video: https://frigade.com/video/demo.mp4 . Also, the “Frigade demo checklist” on our ho
brownrout