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.
2,500 solutions
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: BuildFlow (YC W23) – The FastAPI of data pipelines
Hey HN! We’re Caleb and Josh, the founders of BuildFlow ( https://www.buildflow.dev ). We provide an open source framework for building your entire data pipeline quickly using Python. You can think of us as an easy alternative to Apache Beam or Google Cloud Dataflow. The problem we're trying to solve is simple: building data pipelines can be a real pain. You often need to deal with complex frameworks, manage external cloud resources, and wire everything together into a single deployment (you’re probably drowning in Yaml by this point in the dev cycle). This can be a burden on both data scientists and engineering teams. Data pipelines is a broad term, but we generally mean any kind of processing that happens outside of the user facing path. This can be things like: processing file uploads, syncing data to a data warehouse, or ingesting data from IoT devices. BuildFlow, our
Why it failed: Hey HN! We’re Caleb and Josh, the founders of BuildFlow ( https://www.buildflow.dev ). We provide an open source framework for building your entire data pipeline quickly using Python. You can think of us as an easy alternative to Apache Beam or Google Cloud Dataflow. Th
calebtv
- 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
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
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
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: 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
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: 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: StorySeed – AI Facilitated, immersive, creative learning experience
Hello HN, Are you looking for a fun and engaging way to spark your creativity or your teen's creativity? Or maybe you're interested in exploring the world of storytelling? Introducing Story Seed - an AI-facilitated learning experience that will take you on an immersive and interactive journey through the art of storytelling with movies, books and tv shows you love. With bite-sized lessons, fun guessing games, and AI facilitation, you'll be inspired to tap into your imagination and bring your stories to life like never before. This learning experience is perfect for pre-teens and teens who are interested in writing, as well as anyone who wants to improve their storytelling skills. It's a great way to spend quality time with your kids, or to explore your own creativity. It is integrated with our new tool for creative writing, Papyr. We are excited about launching them t
Why it failed: Hello HN, Are you looking for a fun and engaging way to spark your creativity or your teen's creativity? Or maybe you're interested in exploring the world of storytelling? Introducing Story Seed - an AI-facilitated learning experience that will take you on an immersive
nvln
- 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: 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
- 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
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: 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: 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
- 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
Launch HN: Needl (YC S22) – Simple search across all your apps
Hi HN, we’re Max and James, co-founders of Needl ( https://www.needl.tech ). Needl is a single search bar for all your apps that lets you find any document, message, or file you need. Here’s a demo video: https://www.loom.com/share/652ae56c8ee34bc2a84b8aacf479a9f4 . We’ve all struggled to find information and couldn’t remember if it was shared over Gmail or Slack or Notion. Most of us have hundreds of thousands of emails, documents, messages, etc., and only a small fraction are actually useful. Internal search is even harder than web search in some ways: with web search, there are dozens of right answers and millions of previous searches to train ranking models, but internally (i.e. on your own data), there is only one right answer and limited training data. Needl’s value prop is twofold: it unifies all of your information together and provides better search
Why it failed: Hi HN, we’re Max and James, co-founders of Needl ( https://www.needl.tech ). Needl is a single search bar for all your apps that lets you find any document, message, or file you need. Here’s a demo video: https://www.loom.com/share/652ae56c8ee34bc2a8
MaxKeenan
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: OutSail (YC W23) – Wingsails to reduce cargo ship fuel consumption
Hi HN! I’m Joseph, and along with Arpan and Bailey we are the founders of OutSail Shipping ( https://outsailshipping.com/ ). We’re building a sail the size of a 747 that rolls up into a shipping container. When deployed, it will generate thrust from the wind to reduce the fuel consumption of a cargo ship. An array of these devices will reduce fuel consumption on ships by up to 20%. These sails are easily stowed and removed to cause no interference with cargo operations. Here’s a short video showing our prototype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUpVqzpym54 . Sails powered ships for millennia; but then the convenience of energy-dense fuels displaced sails. As ship speeds eventually exceeded wind speeds, the consensus became that sails had no place in shipping and were relegated to hobbyists and sport. Fast forward a century and a half, and maritime shipping,
Why it failed: Hi HN! I’m Joseph, and along with Arpan and Bailey we are the founders of OutSail Shipping ( https://outsailshipping.com/ ). We’re building a sail the size of a 747 that rolls up into a shipping container. When deployed, it will generate thrust from the wind to red
jmoorebeek
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Meltano Cloud (GitLab spinout) – Managed infra for open source ELT
Hi HN, this is Douwe, founder & CEO of Meltano ( https://meltano.com ), an open source EL tool that came out of GitLab (YC W15), so perhaps I should be saying "Meltano CEO here" :) Today is a big day for me and our team, as the SaaS edition of our product is now in Public Beta! Meltano Cloud has all the flexibility of Meltano, but none of the hassle of self-managed infra. (Sign up now to claim your 100 free credits!) It's been quite a journey: 5 years ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17667399 ), the GitLab data team realized that their UI-based workflows were years behind the software development workflows practiced by the rest of the org. So to boost their own efficiency and confidence (and follow other teams in dogfooding GitLab: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#dogfooding ), they started buildin
Why it failed: Hi HN, this is Douwe, founder & CEO of Meltano ( https://meltano.com ), an open source EL tool that came out of GitLab (YC W15), so perhaps I should be saying "Meltano CEO here" :) Today is a big day for me and our team, as the SaaS edition of our product
DouweM
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: Grai (YC S22) – Open-Source Data Observability Platform
Hi HN, my name is Ian. My co-founder Edward and I started Grai ( https://grai.io ), an open-source data observability platform. It helps prevent production data outages by evaluating changes to your data pipelines in CI, rather than at runtime. Ever experienced a production outage due to changes in upstream data sources? That's a problem we regularly encountered whether deploying machine learning or keeping a datawarehouse operational and it led us to create Grai. Systematically testing the impact of data changes on the rest of your stack turns out to be quite difficult when the same data is copied and used across many different services and applications. Simple changes like renaming a column in a database can result in broken BI dashboards, incorrect training data for ML models, and data pipeline failure. For example, business users regularly deal with questions like &quo
Why it failed: Hi HN, my name is Ian. My co-founder Edward and I started Grai ( https://grai.io ), an open-source data observability platform. It helps prevent production data outages by evaluating changes to your data pipelines in CI, rather than at runtime. Ever experienced a produc
ersatz_username
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Ollama – Run LLMs on your Mac
Hi HN A few folks and I have been working on this project for a couple weeks now. After previously working on the Docker project for a number of years (both on the container runtime and image registry side), the recent rise in open source language models made us think something similar needed to exist for large language models too. While not exactly the same as running linux containers, running LLMs shares quite a few of the same challenges. There are "base layers" (e.g. models like Llama 2), specific configuration to run correctly (parameters, temperature, context window sizes etc). There's also embeddings that a model can use at runtime to look up data – we don't support this yet but it's something we're looking at doing soon. It's an early project, and there's still lots to do!
Why it failed: Hi HN A few folks and I have been working on this project for a couple weeks now. After previously working on the Docker project for a number of years (both on the container runtime and image registry side), the recent rise in open source language models made us think something s
jmorgan