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 down2022
Ask HN: How common is a 4-day work week in our industry?
So, for the last 8 or 9 years, I've offered prospective employers a 20% discount on salary if I can work 4 days a week instead of 5. I usually go with start-ups because they're under pressure to hire top-talent but skimp on costs (i.e. they want to offer below-market costs but have trouble justifying why), and they're usually flexible enough to not have a HR policy etched in stone against this kind of flexibility. It also usually takes some sort of warming-up to the idea and a whole pitching and easing process to get it (so I'll work 5 days for the first few months), but it usually works out in the end. I make everything sound like it's economics while discussing it, but I actually get 1000x more enjoyment out of my work and non-work lives under this time-split. There's some stigma around 'lazy' and 'work ethic' that I usually have to get
Why it failed: So, for the last 8 or 9 years, I've offered prospective employers a 20% discount on salary if I can work 4 days a week instead of 5. I usually go with start-ups because they're under pressure to hire top-talent but skimp on costs (i.e. they want to offer below-market co
i_dont_know_
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: I'm Afraid We're Shutting Down
So it’s with deep professional and personal sadness that I must announce my plans to shut down 70 Million Resources, Inc., the parent company of 70 Million Jobs (the 1st national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records) and Commissary Club (the first mobile social network for this population). When I launched 70MR in 2016, I was motivated to build a company that could short circuit the pernicious cycles of recidivism in this country--cycles that destroy lives, tear apart families and decimate communities. I sought to disrupt the sleepy reentry industry by applying technology, focusing on data, employing an aggressive, accountable team, and moving with some urgency. And for the first time, approaching the challenge as a national, for-profit venture. This approach, which I named “RaaS,” (Reentry as a Service), turned out to be wildly effective, and by the beginning
Why it failed: So it’s with deep professional and personal sadness that I must announce my plans to shut down 70 Million Resources, Inc., the parent company of 70 Million Jobs (the 1st national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records) and Commissary Club (the first mobi
RBBronson123
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Why doesn't archive.today get shut down?
So far as I can tell you can use archive.ph to bypass paywalls on most news sites. Scientific journal publishers have gotten crackdowns on sites like sci-hub, music companies got Napster shut down, there has been a continuous game of whac-a-mole against torrent sites like the Pirate Bay. archive.ph never seems to be the focus of a controversy, I never hear about anytbody trying to shut them down, they don't even seem to be struggling with technical countermeasures against their paywall bypass. Once in a while you see a crazy rant like https://www.vice.com/en/article/ypw5mj/dear-gamergate-please-stop-stealing-our-shit but there is no real movement against this site. How do they get away with it?
Why it failed: So far as I can tell you can use archive.ph to bypass paywalls on most news sites. Scientific journal publishers have gotten crackdowns on sites like sci-hub, music companies got Napster shut down, there has been a continuous game of whac-a-mole against torrent sites like the Pir
PaulHoule
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: iOS Signal eats your disk space
Signal on iOS will not free up any disk space when you delete chats or media. You cannot see or clear usage in the app or in iOS settings. There’s a potential security problem where your data is not actually being deleted when you delete chats. We are having no luck getting the Signal team to acknowledge the issue. The ticket was automatically closed despite activity. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/4916 1. Be aware that a large portion of your storage space might be stolen by Signal. 2. Be aware that this might be a significant security flaw. 3. If anyone can get Signal to pay attention rather than closing repeated tickets as stale, that would be great.
Why it failed: Signal on iOS will not free up any disk space when you delete chats or media. You cannot see or clear usage in the app or in iOS settings. There’s a potential security problem where your data is not actually being deleted when you delete chats. We are having no luck getting the S
Waterluvian
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
Saying the following feels like heresy and whenever I say it, fellow software engineers look at me as if I just asked them if there are GOTOs in Javascript. I used to love going to the office. Discussing our team's latest Python problems over a coffee. Looking over at their screen and then asking them why they look like they want to beat someone over the head with their keyboard repeatedly. Guessing people's emotions in a heated Retro from their body language. Grabbing dinner with a few colleagues after a long workshop meeting in the evening and then realizing that, aside from all the differences we might have about static typing in programming languages, we all like the same exotic progressive metal bands. Many of these things that made my job much more than slaving at a digital conveyor belt seem to be gone these days. And the worst thing for me is that I feel few people rela
Why it failed: Saying the following feels like heresy and whenever I say it, fellow software engineers look at me as if I just asked them if there are GOTOs in Javascript. I used to love going to the office. Discussing our team's latest Python problems over a coffee. Looking over at their
samuel_backend
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Is anyone else genuinely scared that this is the start of WW3?
Russia has invaded Ukraine, and four days on I feel powerless to both do anything (in a country that is neither of those two!) and to look away from the news and social media coverage of it. It's an abhorrent waste of human life. News and reports today of Russian ICBMs and other nuclear forces being placed on high alert (and moved further towards the west of the country) [1] frankly scares me. While some observers think that this is "overplaying" his hand [2] I know that all of this is deeply concerning. The world does _not_ need another cuban missile crisis; it also does _not_ need to vanish in a pile of radioactive smoke. I live in Europe. My father sent me a message to essentially ask if I'd had a thought about where my nearest "shelter" would be -- and I had. My partner's family have too. It feels awful, but I can't concentrate effectively -- I
Why it failed: Russia has invaded Ukraine, and four days on I feel powerless to both do anything (in a country that is neither of those two!) and to look away from the news and social media coverage of it. It's an abhorrent waste of human life. News and reports today of Russian ICBMs and o
azalemeth
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: Generate never-before-seen storyboards for Rick and Morty episodes
Rick and Mortify is a system we built for creating never-before-seen episodes of Rick and Morty by leveraging the state-of-the-art in generative AI. These days generative AI is so hot right now. It promises to revolutionize all aspects of creative work from copywriting and image creation, to video and audio synthesis. Given the rapid progress of AI, when will we see an AI system listed in the closing credits of your favorite feature-length film? Rick and Mortify is a tool we built to demonstrate that future is closer than you might think. Our tool uses the state-of-the-art in large vision and language models to create never-before-seen episodes of Rick and Morty with minimal human intervention. All the plot points, dialogue, and accompanying visuals are generated with machine learning. Why use Rick and Morty as a case-study? Because 1) given the show's complex narrative structure an
Why it failed: Rick and Mortify is a system we built for creating never-before-seen episodes of Rick and Morty by leveraging the state-of-the-art in generative AI. These days generative AI is so hot right now. It promises to revolutionize all aspects of creative work from copywriting and image
nutellalover
- startupShut down2022
Clara.io Shutting Down
Received this email today: Hi Clara User, This is a notice that we are retiring the Clara product and services on December 31, 2022. If you have files that you would like to continue using, please download that content before December 31, 2022 because it will not be available after. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for using Clara. Sincerely, Clara Admin Team
Why it failed: Received this email today: Hi Clara User, This is a notice that we are retiring the Clara product and services on December 31, 2022. If you have files that you would like to continue using, please download that content before December 31, 2022 because it will not be available aft
tarr11
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: What are some tools you wish you had while doing your day to day work?
(as a software developer or just someone using software, in whatever field you happen to be working in). An example: -> As a software developer, I've come across the need to work with CSV-"like" files several times in my career (at several different jobs), for different reasons. And it was most frustrating when they had like 100 columns or so. Having to change column 63 at line 58 is not something you do easily in Notepad++. Import to Excel was my way to go, but since the file was not a standard CSV file (e.g. also had sections like an .INI file) it was time consuming: first just select a subsection from the file, save to a different file, import to Excel, modify, paste back, etc. Maybe it was not the best approach, but that's not the point I'm making. Not having found an existing tool (maybe my problem was too specific) I eventually made a small desktop appli
Why it failed: (as a software developer or just someone using software, in whatever field you happen to be working in). An example: -> As a software developer, I've come across the need to work with CSV-"like" files several times in my career (at several different jobs), for d
deviance
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: What's your “that's it, I'm leaving” story?
A client was looking to implement an ERP for his business. He wanted everything but he didn't want to pay much money, a classic. In the end we agreed on a budget that was comfortable for both. At some point in the negotiation he blatantly mentioned "I don't trust you, I would like to split payment into monthly installments and be able to cancel anytime, no strings attached". Despite this massive red flag I decided to go through (won't do it again, ever) and we sign a contract with that clause, which turned out to be my lifesaver. The guy was a complete [REDACTED], we were delivering progress way ahead of time and he was always complaining about one thing or another, and kept adding requirements that were not there, threatening us to dump the whole thing because of the clause . Two months in we had enough, I called for a meeting with him and his team, then proceed
Why it failed: A client was looking to implement an ERP for his business. He wanted everything but he didn't want to pay much money, a classic. In the end we agreed on a budget that was comfortable for both. At some point in the negotiation he blatantly mentioned "I don't trust y
moralestapia
- startupShut down2021
The Old Freenode Network Has Shut Down
Andrew decided at about 1600 EST on June 15th that he'd close down the Old Freenode down prematurely, and forcibly move everyone to the new network: <kn\> when is freenode classic being turned off <rasengan> kn\ looks like soon <rasengan> i didnt realize it was such a swamp <rasengan> gotta drain it asap ... rasengan places a new sign in #freenode: THE SWAMP WILL BE DRAINED TODAY! <rasengan> Decision has been made. <rasengan> We have to drain this swamp. rasengan sets #freenode +m moderated rasengan unsets #freenode -z <rasengan> We are draining the swamp. <rasengan> Classic tried to go on for the sake of the community, but the community has made it loud and clear - they want freenode classic to end, today! <rasengan> #MFGA rasengan adds ! @* to the #freenode +q founder list <rasengan> Everyone thinks they can just say what
Why it failed: Andrew decided at about 1600 EST on June 15th that he'd close down the Old Freenode down prematurely, and forcibly move everyone to the new network: <kn\> when is freenode classic being turned off <rasengan> kn\ looks like soon <rasengan> i didnt realize it
wchar_t
- startupShut down2021
Launch HN: Okay (YC W20) – Analytics for engineering teams
Antoine and Tomas here - we are excited to share Okay ( https://www.okayhq.com ) with you! Okay is an engineering analytics platform focused on detecting bottlenecks and annoyances that prevent engineering teams from being fully productive. We connect with all the devtools in your company and give you a query and alerting engine to find and solve common bottlenecks like long review cycles, after-hours on-call pages, heavy interview load, etc. Think Datadog or Grafana, but for team analytics. For the past 12 years, we’ve been engineers and then managers of teams of 5 to 150 in several types of companies - startups and big tech. We’ve seen the dev experience being affected by the same problems everywhere: maybe it’s a slow build on your local machine, too many meetings and interviews, or inefficient code review practices that force you to open 10 PRs in parallel to make progress
Why it failed: Antoine and Tomas here - we are excited to share Okay ( https://www.okayhq.com ) with you! Okay is an engineering analytics platform focused on detecting bottlenecks and annoyances that prevent engineering teams from being fully productive. We connect with all the devto
tonioab
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: What if Stack Overflow suddenly decides to shut down?
As the title says, what would happen if Stack Overflow decides to interrupt the service? Realistically speaking how much damage could that do to everyday work?
Why it failed: As the title says, what would happen if Stack Overflow decides to interrupt the service? Realistically speaking how much damage could that do to everyday work?
syx
- startupShut down2021
Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living
Dear HN, I’m feeling a deep sense of gratitude this morning, and wanted to share it with you all. On this day in 2013, the Webflow co-founders were huddled around our usual desk that we claimed every early morning at the Hacker Dojo (a co-working space) in Mountain View, working like hell into the evenings to get something off the ground. We had quit our jobs about 6 months prior, and totally underestimated how long it would take to build even a beta. I had personally convinced my wife that we’d only have to be income-less for 3 months – the amount of savings we had in the bank – but that time had now doubled, and those savings were long gone. The Kickstarter campaign we had poured all of our savings into producing had fallen through, never even making it live because we hadn’t read the Terms of Service to learn that they didn’t allow SaaS subscriptions to be funded. We had high hopes ab
Why it failed: Dear HN, I’m feeling a deep sense of gratitude this morning, and wanted to share it with you all. On this day in 2013, the Webflow co-founders were huddled around our usual desk that we claimed every early morning at the Hacker Dojo (a co-working space) in Mountain View, working
callmevlad
- startupShut down2021
Launch HN: Eduflow (YC S17) – Async Social Learning
David here, CEO and co-founder of Eduflow ( https://www.eduflow.com ). Eduflow is a learning management system that lets you build and run learning experiences where participants can interact, participate actively and can do so asynchronously. Learning needs to be active to be effective. For example, the best way to learn to code is to write a lot of code. Online learning still struggles with this. Mostly you get a playlist of videos to consume and a quiz at the end, or you’re required to participate in live video calls. Our product lets you build active and social learning experiences that work async. We went through YC in 2017 with Peergrade ( https://www.peergrade.io ), a tool for online peer reviews. We got to a decent size, but ran into challenges. When we landed a deal with a company or a university, we would be a small part of the experience. We’d only get used
Why it failed: David here, CEO and co-founder of Eduflow ( https://www.eduflow.com ). Eduflow is a learning management system that lets you build and run learning experiences where participants can interact, participate actively and can do so asynchronously. Learning needs to be activ
utdiscant
- startupShut down2021
Extremely burnt out at 25. Considering quitting job and taking an extended break
By all reasonable metrics my life is absolutely fantastic. I'm a dev (which I love, or, well, loved), have worked at a FAANG company, and another at the FAANG level, and now work at essentially my dream job at a growing and successful startup. I'm married and have a large amount of savings. I'm only 3 years out of college, but I have ~10 years of actual dev experience, and supposedly am one of the best performers in the places I've worked. I absolutely detest my life and find no joy in anything. Video games that would be enjoyable now are just the easiest way to distract myself from feeling terrible, but I don't actually _enjoy_ the time spent. For the most part, I don't do anything outside of work; I largely just sit around. I would occasionally go on bike rides or walks, but I've never been a very outdoorsy person. Life became a very dull cycle of wak
Why it failed: By all reasonable metrics my life is absolutely fantastic. I'm a dev (which I love, or, well, loved), have worked at a FAANG company, and another at the FAANG level, and now work at essentially my dream job at a growing and successful startup. I'm married and have a lar
adepressedthrow
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
Hey HN, I'm 35, working for an IT consultancy company and I feel my career is going at a dead end. I did well with my career (maybe too much?) and after 10 years I'm far away from coding activities, more involved in project management and I'm not sure that this is what I want. I like coding (that's why I started this job, I also consider myself good at coding) I like to learn and explore new things. The problem is that, at same time I feel that coding can't be a lifetime career: what will happen in 10 years from now? Maybe company will prefer younger coders to hire and I will not be able to find a job anymore? (I have family, I can't risk to lose my job) Shall I find now another role or company that may be can offer me a job where I can cover for both roles (Coding and project management)? I'd like to hear your point of view, maybe I'm missing some
Why it failed: Hey HN, I'm 35, working for an IT consultancy company and I feel my career is going at a dead end. I did well with my career (maybe too much?) and after 10 years I'm far away from coding activities, more involved in project management and I'm not sure that this is
iamcirou
- startupShut down2021
Launch HN: Venu (YC W21) – True-to-Life 3D Virtual Trade Shows
Hey HN, I'm Jeremy, CEO of Venu ( https://venu3d.com ), and my team and I have created a virtual 3D trade show platform that feels like you're there in real life. We would like to invite you to experience Venu for yourself by walking around a virtual trade show, check out the exhibit booths, come on stage -- all from your computer! VENU will be open for tours today from 12-2pm PST. Come hang out in our lounge while you eat your lunch. Please follow the download & installation instructions and pop on in! Download Venu at https://www.venu3d.com/downloads.html - please enter "HN" for event name. We enable event professionals to host virtual exhibits, fairs, & conferences in a 3D venue, beyond 2D faces on a screen. Venu allows participants to walk through an expo hall as 3D avatars in first person view, have spontaneous conversations and n
Why it failed: Hey HN, I'm Jeremy, CEO of Venu ( https://venu3d.com ), and my team and I have created a virtual 3D trade show platform that feels like you're there in real life. We would like to invite you to experience Venu for yourself by walking around a virtual trade sho
Nanetteljackson
- startupShut down2021
Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar
Hey HN, I’m Jordan from Superpowered ( http://superpowered.me/ ), here with my co-founders Nikhil, Nick, and Ibrahim. We’re building a calendar app for the Mac menu bar. A few months ago, we were students from the University of Waterloo. We started YC as a video lecture platform for professors but realized it was a horrible idea. We needed a new problem. We settled on one we all faced during our remote internships. Our calendars became more important, yet meetings took ten clicks to join and were easy to miss. So, we built a Mac app to bring the platform we check the most, Google Calendar, into the menu bar. We’ve made common actions, like joining Zoom meetings and checking what’s coming up, a click away. We’ve only solved a small part of a bigger problem. The SaaS platforms we use for work don't work well together. It shouldn’t take cycling through ten different apps
Why it failed: Hey HN, I’m Jordan from Superpowered ( http://superpowered.me/ ), here with my co-founders Nikhil, Nick, and Ibrahim. We’re building a calendar app for the Mac menu bar. A few months ago, we were students from the University of Waterloo. We started YC as a video le
jordandearsley
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: Should I sell my house to fund my startup? Anyone with the same story?
Everyone says the market is frothy and startups raise unreal sums of money they don't even need at high valuations, yet I'm failling to. I never attended Stanford, didn't work at FAANG and I'm not even from the US, so I don't have relationships with founders/investors. I'm technical, yet need engineers to launch. I built an mvp, pivoted, did customer development etc. I'm full time for over a year, and I'm 25. The market is fairly new and many don't understand it, but I've been working in this space for 8 years, been working with biggest companies. I have multiple ideas I'm confident about if this one will fail. If you had a similar story - please tell it, especially if you failed. So should I sell my house to fund my startup to some milestone? I don't need cars nor houses, I only care about building stuff and learning, only
Why it failed: Everyone says the market is frothy and startups raise unreal sums of money they don't even need at high valuations, yet I'm failling to. I never attended Stanford, didn't work at FAANG and I'm not even from the US, so I don't have relationships with found
Throwey12
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: Where to find contract work as a developer?
Either here or on reddit I've seen plenty of people mention the option of working as a contractor as a viable option. I have been working as a developer for 12 years. For the first six years of my career I wrote C++ / Python for a finance-adjacent firm. The second half of my career has been the typical full-stack developer stuff. Django / Pyramid / SQLAlchemy backend and several different front-end frameworks like Vue and React. It's enough to say that I'm a generalist and a decent enough programmer. I'd love the ability to work a contract for 6 months to a year and then take a few months off between gigs. But when I search for contract opportunities they seem somewhat rare. Additionally, the contract gigs I find seem to be seeking people who would prefer full-time employment but would settle for the contract as a sort of 'probationary' measur
Why it failed: Either here or on reddit I've seen plenty of people mention the option of working as a contractor as a viable option. I have been working as a developer for 12 years. For the first six years of my career I wrote C++ / Python for a finance-adjacent firm. The second half
wayne_skylar
- startupShut down2021
Aaron Swartz Rememberance Day This Monday
For the general public he was seen as just another hacktivist along with various hacktivist groups that were active around the time like lulzsec and anonymous. But for the wider internet community, he represents something much much more, especially post 2020 where we are all questioning many aspect of governance that we take for granted as the normal state of the world. In November the eight of 1986 Aaron Swartz was born. While his early childhood was like any other kid, he showed early spark of someone who would be very consequential to internet culture. One of his first website to be recognized by the public is "The Info Network" a user generated encyclopedia, created at the age of 12 years old which won the ArsDigita Prize. But later on he was accepted into Y Combinator's founder program on a startup called infogami. While infogami failed to get further funding, his con
Why it failed: For the general public he was seen as just another hacktivist along with various hacktivist groups that were active around the time like lulzsec and anonymous. But for the wider internet community, he represents something much much more, especially post 2020 where we are all ques
mofosyne
- startupShut down2021
Launch HN: Chatwoot (YC W21) – Open-Source Alternative to Intercom, Zendesk
Hello everyone, We are a 3 founder team. Myself Pranav. Sojan and Nithin are my co-founders. We are building Chatwoot ( https://www.chatwoot.com , https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot ). With Chatwoot, businesses can connect channels like website live chat, email, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc and talk to the customers from one place. Chatwoot is an open-source alternative to Intercom, Zendesk etc. We help companies in regulated industries to manage customer data without sharing it with third-party providers. Since the software is open-source, it is easier to build custom workflows that suit your business on top of Chatwoot. We started building Chatwoot as proprietary software in 2017, but the startup failed. Seeing the data privacy regulations and people taking interest in self-hosted alternatives, we open-sourced the product in 2019, we got a lot of love
Why it failed: Hello everyone, We are a 3 founder team. Myself Pranav. Sojan and Nithin are my co-founders. We are building Chatwoot ( https://www.chatwoot.com , https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot ). With Chatwoot, businesses can connect channels like website liv
pranav_rajs
- startupShut down2021
Tell HN: Coming soon – “Meet the Batch” threads for parallel Launch HNs
Each YC startup gets one chance to do a Launch HN thread that gets placed on HN's front page [1]. This is one of the three things that HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it [2]. We started doing these in 2017 and they've worked out pretty well over the years [3], I think mostly because they're more interesting than job ads. However, they have to be written in a special way for that to work (more on this below). Problem: HN's front page can only accommodate a fixed number of startups while YC keeps funding more (700+ a year and growing). We do two Launch HNs a day during the stampede before each Demo Day, but I think we overdid that in W21, and even 2 per day all year, which is out of the question, still wouldn't be enough. Other problem: I work with the startups to edit their launch texts into a form that HN is more likely to find interesting. Mostly thi
Why it failed: Each YC startup gets one chance to do a Launch HN thread that gets placed on HN's front page [1]. This is one of the three things that HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it [2]. We started doing these in 2017 and they've worked out pretty well over the years [3
dang