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.
2,800 solutions
- startupShut down2023
Tell HN: Considering legal action against Stripe
Like many others, they just permanently damaged our platform by closing our account without notice. It's plain sad considering how much we've worked on it — for more than 2 years as a team of 2 college students. Despite seeing these kinds of posts on HN every week, we mistakingly thought taking extra care of our account and forming our company under Stripe Atlas would at least help us survive until we got big enough. Also, some part of us thought – "Clearly, these people must have done something wrong. Stripe wouldn't be this aggressive. They are terrific for entrepreneurs after all!" We were dead wrong. The truly insane part about it is that we had no issues with *anyone*: no complaints, no chargebacks, no anything. We went further by regularly checking purchases and manually refunding suspicious sales, which happened once when someone started card testing and w
Why it failed: Like many others, they just permanently damaged our platform by closing our account without notice. It's plain sad considering how much we've worked on it — for more than 2 years as a team of 2 college students. Despite seeing these kinds of posts on HN every week, we m
gurgunday
- startupShut down2023
How Can I Cope With Living In A Dying Nation?
My country (Nigeria) is in shambles. We have a poverty rate of over 80%, illiteracy rate of over 60%, high insecurity and violence. Yet, we just voted in a documented drug trafficker and extremely corrupt person as our incoming President [1]. Most of the votes for this candidate came from the Northern part of the country, the part with the highest poverty, illiteracy, and insecurity. Yet, the people from this region overlook their economic interests and are more interested in tribal and religious politics. Once upon a time, we were improving and seeing progress...until 2015 when we elected a former military dictator who is very clueless about the state of affairs [2]. Since then, we have backslidden on all levels...poverty has become higher, my hometown has become ravaged by separatist violence [3], the economy is very bleak and continues to worsen. I have lost hope. I never wanted to im
Why it failed: My country (Nigeria) is in shambles. We have a poverty rate of over 80%, illiteracy rate of over 60%, high insecurity and violence. Yet, we just voted in a documented drug trafficker and extremely corrupt person as our incoming President [1]. Most of the votes for this candidate
boeingUH60
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Do you have a digital end of life plan?
My dad died a few years back due to unexpected circumstances so wasn't able to talk to him beforehand which made digging through his digital stuff difficult until I stumbled upon a text file on his PC with all his U/Ns and PWs. Of course thats not the best way to do it but it sure was super helpful. Bunch of stuff I didn't even think about (airline miles, Dropbox's with pictures, interesting forum content, memberships, etc. 50+ accounts total). What's the better more secure way to store this info along with any wishes regarding your digital (after)life if I want to make it easier for my kids or whomever digs through it later? Any additional info thats helpful to include? Who to entrust it with?
Why it failed: My dad died a few years back due to unexpected circumstances so wasn't able to talk to him beforehand which made digging through his digital stuff difficult until I stumbled upon a text file on his PC with all his U/Ns and PWs. Of course thats not the best way to do it
gehwartzen
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: I open sourced the QR designer from my failed startup
My designer is somewhat special, if I do say so myself, as it allows you to put arbitrary designs in the middle area of the QR while still being totally scannable.
Why it failed: My designer is somewhat special, if I do say so myself, as it allows you to put arbitrary designs in the middle area of the QR while still being totally scannable.
koch
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: What made your startup fail?
Just wanted to pose this question to anyone who has the experience of starting up a startup/business from scratch or that worked in one for a longer time until it failed. In retrospect - what do you think was the most significant factor that made it fail? Bad market research? Wrong product design? Engineering failure at executing properly?
Why it failed: Just wanted to pose this question to anyone who has the experience of starting up a startup/business from scratch or that worked in one for a longer time until it failed. In retrospect - what do you think was the most significant factor that made it fail? Bad market research
margorczynski
- startupShut down2023
Tell HN: Coinbase discontinues services to accounts, blocks access
Today I received an email from Coinbase regarding them discontinuing all services to some accounts: Hello, This is regarding your account linked to xxxxx. We are reaching out to inform you that we will be discontinuing all services to your above-mentioned account, as we will be disabling access for the accounts that no longer meet our updated standards for these services. Please note that you will be able to access Coinbase.com or the Coinbase app until 25th September 2023 and should withdraw any funds held in your account by such date. Your funds remain secure with us, and you are able to send funds to other crypto wallets or services (subject to standard network and transaction fees), including Coinbase Wallet. Coinbase Wallet is our self-custody wallet, giving you complete control of your crypto. Coinbase Wallet supports hundreds of thousands of tokens and decentralized apps, so you c
Why it failed: Today I received an email from Coinbase regarding them discontinuing all services to some accounts: Hello, This is regarding your account linked to xxxxx. We are reaching out to inform you that we will be discontinuing all services to your above-mentioned account, as we will be d
estebarb
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Lantern – a PostgreSQL vector database for building AI applications
We are excited to share Lantern! Lantern is a PostgreSQL vector database extension for building AI applications. Install and use our extension here: https://github.com/lanterndata/lantern We have the most complete feature set of all the PostgreSQL vector database extensions. Our database is built on top of usearch — a state of the art implementation of HNSW, the most scalable and performant algorithm for handling vector search. There’s three key metrics we track. CREATE INDEX time, SELECT throughput, and SELECT latency. We match or outperform pgvector and pg_embedding (Neon) on all of these metrics. ** Here’s what we support today ** - Creating an AI application end to end without leaving your database (example: https://github.com/ezra-varady/lanterndb-semantic-image-sear... ) - Embedding generation for popular use cases (CLIP model, Hugging Face m
Why it failed: We are excited to share Lantern! Lantern is a PostgreSQL vector database extension for building AI applications. Install and use our extension here: https://github.com/lanterndata/lantern We have the most complete feature set of all the PostgreSQL vector datab
ngalstyan4
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: How do I make it out alive out of this?
This is happening in Germany. My friend, living in London, sold information about my crypto investment to some high profile gang. Since then, for the last 5 months, I had been followed, and observed 24/7, sometimes intimidated. All my electronic equipment got hacked, computers, mobile phones, I previously asked about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37506194 I believe their plan is to kidnap me silently without any witness and police involvement, extort me, and then kill me. Just disappear me. I also believe I avoided 2 attempts already. When I hired private security, they lasted for 3 days before they got bribed and changed sides. I don't care about the money anymore at this point, I would just happily give it all out away just to get my old life back, I just want to make it out alive at this point. But like Dr. Strange, I am calculating scenarios, a
Why it failed: This is happening in Germany. My friend, living in London, sold information about my crypto investment to some high profile gang. Since then, for the last 5 months, I had been followed, and observed 24/7, sometimes intimidated. All my electronic equipment got hacked, compute
HTMIOA
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Webstudio Beta Prelaunch – open-source alternative to Webflow
Webstudio is getting ready for the Beta Click "Notify me" here to get notified when launch goes live on Product Hunt https://producthunt.com/products/webstudio Deep dive into Webstudio: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SbE5dx1vV9U Try it yourself: https://webstudio.is Follow for updates: https://twitter.com/webstudiois It's still early, but we already got some nice things done: 1. Design Tokens instead of classes. Instead of classes you build with design tokens. No specificity issues, better composability. Local by default, no need to name anything if you don't need to reuse them. 2. Designed to be dynamic. Install or write components that run on the edge, server-side and client-side, which talk to remote 3rd party services or databases. This is the core of the architecture, but it's not yet available. 3. It&
Why it failed: Webstudio is getting ready for the Beta Click "Notify me" here to get notified when launch goes live on Product Hunt https://producthunt.com/products/webstudio Deep dive into Webstudio: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SbE5dx1vV9U Try it yo
oleg009
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: I'm trapped in a golden prison, any advice?
This is going to sound very braggy, I hope I won't get shut down for this. I feel like I'm trapped in a golden prison, unhappy but comfortable. I'm a self taught programmer, 32 yo, with an engineering background and masters. Co-founded 2 companies, failed, worked in california and singapore, now based in Europe. I think I'm an ok dev, quite good with people. I've mostly been working as a freelancer all my life, started billing 33€/day in 2012 for a few days at a time, now around 924€/day, 220 days/year. Always worked at fast paced / high stakes startups except for my current job. Worked 60 to 70 hours a week, ~50 weeks per year for many years until 2020. In 2021 I was completely burned out after 7.5 years of grinding. Took a cozy freelance job as a fullstack senior engineer in a ~100ppl company, coming into the office 2days/week. I'm
Why it failed: This is going to sound very braggy, I hope I won't get shut down for this. I feel like I'm trapped in a golden prison, unhappy but comfortable. I'm a self taught programmer, 32 yo, with an engineering background and masters. Co-founded 2 companies, failed, worked i
stuckdevthrowaw
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: PlaceKit – Geocoding API and address autocomplete
We’re thrilled to announce PlaceKit, a worldwide geocoding API and toolkit! It’s the successor of Algolia Places, a discontinued product. Nico (my co-founder) and I worked at Algolia for 3 and 6 years respectively before launching PlaceKit. Unlike big competitors Google Places and Mapbox, it’s a single REST API, with a unique and transparent per-request pricing. PlaceKit combines OpenStreetMap, local datasets and the Algolia engine into a unique sub 50ms worldwide address search. We’ve made our JS libraries from scratch to make them lightweight, customizable, and compatible with any stack. We provide integration examples, and an annotated OpenAPI reference for other languages/use-cases. Give it a go at https://placekit.io ! We offer a free plan with 10k requests per month, including all features. Any feedback on your PlaceKit journey would be very valuable. Which use-cases
Why it failed: We’re thrilled to announce PlaceKit, a worldwide geocoding API and toolkit! It’s the successor of Algolia Places, a discontinued product. Nico (my co-founder) and I worked at Algolia for 3 and 6 years respectively before launching PlaceKit. Unlike big competitors Google Places an
raphi
- startupShut down2023
Google Shutting Down TensorBoard.dev
TensorBoard.dev is shutting down. To retain your data, export your TensorBoard.dev experiments by Dec 31st, 2023. Dear TensorBoard.dev User, You are receiving this email because you have uploaded at least one experiment to TensorBoard.dev, our free hosted service for sharing TensorBoard experiments. You can view a list of your TensorBoard.dev experiments at tensorboard.dev/experiments/. What do I need to know? TensorBoard.dev will be shutting down. The website will become inaccessible starting on Dec 1st, 2023, and all uploaded data will be permanently removed after Dec 31st, 2023. You can continue to use TensorBoard via our open source project, which is unaffected by this shutdown, with the exception of the removal of the tensorboard dev subcommand in our command line tool. What do I need to do? Action Required: Export your TensorBoard.dev experiment data, if you need to retai
Why it failed: TensorBoard.dev is shutting down. To retain your data, export your TensorBoard.dev experiments by Dec 31st, 2023. Dear TensorBoard.dev User, You are receiving this email because you have uploaded at least one experiment to TensorBoard.dev, our free hosted service for sharing Tens
reaperman
- startupShut down2023
Tell HN: 3G sunsetting is remotely killing every Subaru Outback battery
Subaru partnered with a service called STARLINK which shares your location in the event of collisions, among other things. STARLINK intermittently tries to phone home by hitting 3G towers. Now that 3G is shutting down, the digital communications module (DCM) gets stuck in an infinite loop of 1. Phone home, expending battery charge 2. Fail, because 3G doesn't work anymore 3. Go back to step 1 This effectively remotely drains the battery of every Subaru Outback built between 2015 and 2020. Even if you drive your car every day, its battery will die and you won't be able to start it. Other models are probably affected, too. There was a class action lawsuit. But this is a pretty egregious engineering oversight, given they were still producing defective cars in 2020, hardly two years before 3G flipped off. Will a brand ever produce a reliable, mechanical car? Why should 3G towers hav
Why it failed: Subaru partnered with a service called STARLINK which shares your location in the event of collisions, among other things. STARLINK intermittently tries to phone home by hitting 3G towers. Now that 3G is shutting down, the digital communications module (DCM) gets stuck in an infi
siftrics
- startupShut down2023
Tell HN: From bartending to managing cloud infrastructure
Someone on HN once recommended I share this story, and I've been seeing a lot of "how do I get into tech in my 30s" and "can I switch careers" posts, so I figured I'd post. ---- I'm 37. I spent my twenties bouncing all over the place; did a stint in the Army Reserves while shooting for liutenant bars that didn't work out (failed out of college and I was in ROTC). Did construction, real estate, grew weed in Denver for a year (legally), ended up bartending for roughly a decade. It was great in my early 20s. Not so hot to watch my age group get raises and salary increases. I have my GED and never finished college - left with a record-setting 1.2 GPA (I have severe ADD and I wasn't properly medicated, there were other problems too). Seemed like there was this universe of 'good jobs' that were simply not in the cards. So there I am, in my
Why it failed: Someone on HN once recommended I share this story, and I've been seeing a lot of "how do I get into tech in my 30s" and "can I switch careers" posts, so I figured I'd post. ---- I'm 37. I spent my twenties bouncing all over the place; did a stin
pksebben
- startupShut down2023
Tell Cloudflare: You're Breaking Tor/VPN/Shared IPs Again
Right now if anyone tries to load a Cloudflared website over Tor or any "bad" IP, they get a captcha which breaks something like 90% of the time. It seems to only be "under attack mode" websites, by the fact that only a fraction of Cloudflared websites are doing this. We click the checkbox and it just shows a spinning wheel forever. If this is meant to be a block then show an actual block page instead of dodging the issue and wasting everyone's time (I'm sure you already know about the problem). It also breaks when our IP changes now, which is a regression from the other 8 years you blocked Tor for (so please fix that too, don't just fix one thing and leave a new bug). I searched "list of sites behind cloudflare" and got hunter.io which exhibits this behavior. The catpcha page now contains a mix of embarrassingly wrong statements and nonsense
Why it failed: Right now if anyone tries to load a Cloudflared website over Tor or any "bad" IP, they get a captcha which breaks something like 90% of the time. It seems to only be "under attack mode" websites, by the fact that only a fraction of Cloudflared websites are doi
uconnectlol
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Rivet – open-source AI Agent dev env with real-world applications
We just launched Rivet, the open-source visual AI programming environment! We built Rivet, because we were building complex AI Agent applications at Ironclad. It unlocked our abilities here, and we're excited to make available to the entire community. Backstory: A few months ago, inspired by things like LangChain and LlamaIndex, we started building an AI agent that could work with legal contracts. Unfortunately, we couldn't just use retrieval augmented generation (RAG), because a lot of contracts are basically identical (many chunks with near-identical embeddings), except for a few key details. So, we turned to things like ReAct and AutoGPT for inspiration. At first, things went great. We were adding agent capabilities, doing chain-of-thought prompting. But then we hit a wall. The agent became too complex. We had debugger breakpoints on almost every line of code, but we still h
Why it failed: We just launched Rivet, the open-source visual AI programming environment! We built Rivet, because we were building complex AI Agent applications at Ironclad. It unlocked our abilities here, and we're excited to make available to the entire community. Backstory: A few months
gogwilt
- startupShut down2023
Google just shut down our $1M business
We have just received an email from Google that we still violate their Google policies and they will not reinstate our account. This is not a post to get sympathy but rather a story why it was closed and how HN played a role in this. I’ve been browsing HN for a decade now and somewhere I read on HN that people lose their online account and everything associated with their account. This has stuck with me and at one point I thought to create a second Google ads account to make sure our main Google ads account was able to keep running if the other account somehow received a violation. Just a pure spread-your-risks decision. After we decided to move into Germany with our eco-friendly brand, I used the second Google ads account to create German ads on a new Shopify hosted .de domain. The ads would target by geo location, consumers in Germany, so that there would be no overlap with our main ma
Why it failed: We have just received an email from Google that we still violate their Google policies and they will not reinstate our account. This is not a post to get sympathy but rather a story why it was closed and how HN played a role in this. I’ve been browsing HN for a decade now and som
jasonwen
- startupShut down2023
Stripe Shutdown Our Nonprofit's Account, Holding $12k in Donations Hostage
Our founder woke up to a gut-wrenching email from Stripe today, reading "We're writing to you because, after conducting a routine review of your Stripe account for Integrate for Good (account ID: [**]), we've found that it presents a high level of risk for customer disputes." We're a very small, hyper local nonprofit and have been using Stripe without any significant issues for over four years. Radar has flagged only one charge in the past year, and we've had just a single dispute since opening our account. We requested further review of our account and supplied Stripe with further information in the dashboard. Just 45 minutes later, we received a second email confirming their decision to close our account. I find it hard to believe that Stripe was able to "conduct another review of [our] account" in such a short span of time. While trying to figur
Why it failed: Our founder woke up to a gut-wrenching email from Stripe today, reading "We're writing to you because, after conducting a routine review of your Stripe account for Integrate for Good (account ID: [**]), we've found that it presents a high level of risk for customer
nickwelsh
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: June (YC W21) – Product Analytics for B2B SaaS Companies
Two and a half years ago my co-founder and I left our jobs on the product team at Intercom to try and build a startup. We went through YC and launched an analytics tool on top of Segment that allowed you to generate some pre-made reports for common product metrics ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26155327 ). We raised a seed round, then spent a year building templates of reports for startups. After a year of building our product we tried to monetise and failed. Our free users weren’t willing to pay us money for individual reports. Among the users we had, there were a handful of later stage B2B companies with few customers but a lot of revenue (one had 50 customers and $1m in annual revenue). These companies looked at their analytics in a different way. They cared a lot more about specific individual users than consumer apps do, and they spent a lot of time using our
Why it failed: Two and a half years ago my co-founder and I left our jobs on the product team at Intercom to try and build a startup. We went through YC and launched an analytics tool on top of Segment that allowed you to generate some pre-made reports for common product metrics ( https:/&
0xferruccio
- startupShut down2023
Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds
Received via email: Hello, Since 2020, new purchases of magazines have not been available in Google News and very few users now regularly access their magazine subscriptions. We wanted to inform you that support for magazine content in Google News is being discontinued beginning on December 18, 2023, which means access from Google News apps or news.google.com to the library of magazines you previously purchased or subscribed to will be removed. To continue to access previously purchased magazine content, you must export and save each purchased issue before December 18, 2023.
Why it failed: Received via email: Hello, Since 2020, new purchases of magazines have not been available in Google News and very few users now regularly access their magazine subscriptions. We wanted to inform you that support for magazine content in Google News is being discontinued beginning
anymouse123456
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Alternative to Firebase FCM
This is the message I received from Firebase on FCM deprecation: "We’re writing to let you know that starting June 20, 2024 the legacy Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) APIs will be discontinued. What do you need to know? On June 20, 2024, we’re reducing the number of Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) legacy register APIs and legacy send APIs that provide similar functionality. This step will allow us to provide you with a more consistent experience and align with Google security standards to improve security, reliability and performance. Because of these API decommissions, some already-deprecated SDKs and features will stop working after June 20, 2024. Please consult the tables below to find which Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) APIs and corresponding services/SDKs/features will be discontinued and replaced with new alternatives. This one is more relevant to me in the email Disc
Why it failed: This is the message I received from Firebase on FCM deprecation: "We’re writing to let you know that starting June 20, 2024 the legacy Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) APIs will be discontinued. What do you need to know? On June 20, 2024, we’re reducing the number of Firebase
diazc
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Manhattan Project for Climate?
We are close enough to reaching consensus that humanity faces severe risks from climate change, such that we need to do something about it. It also seems pretty clear that the only desirable solution is to use technology to reduce the current level of carbon in the atmosphere while at the same time increasing consumption of energy from current levels, vs. shrinking the population or asking individual people to change their behavior. Five mass scale solutions include: - Incorporating nuclear fission into the power grid at mass scale - Inventing and incorporating nuclear fusion into the power grid at mass scale - Inventing direct carbon capture technologies and using them to replace hydrocarbon extraction at mass scale - Continually improving battery technologies to improve efficiency and reduce materials - Continuing the roll out of renewables like solar and wind, where it makes sense The
Why it failed: We are close enough to reaching consensus that humanity faces severe risks from climate change, such that we need to do something about it. It also seems pretty clear that the only desirable solution is to use technology to reduce the current level of carbon in the atmosphere whi
bhag2066
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: I built a domain name marketplace for folks (like me) who hoard domains
Problem: I (accidentally) hoard domains :') 1. I get excited about a new project 2. I buy a domain 3. I get busy, and the domain collects a thick layer of dust I know I'm not alone in this, either So, I had the idea of creating a simple and casual marketplace for folks like me to list their domains at a fair price with a nice community feel to free up these caged domains It felt like a great project for me to pick up some new skills, so I got to it All up, it took me about a month, and I built the whole thing live on Twitch I've always sat on the design, marketing and front-end side of the fence, so this was my first attempt at making a 'full' web app Here's the stack I used: - SvelteKit ( https://kit.svelte.dev/ ) - Supabase ( https://supabase.com/ ) - Resend ( https://resend.com/ ) - ShadCN Svelte ( https:/
Why it failed: Problem: I (accidentally) hoard domains :') 1. I get excited about a new project 2. I buy a domain 3. I get busy, and the domain collects a thick layer of dust I know I'm not alone in this, either So, I had the idea of creating a simple and casual marketplace for folks
thecoppinger
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: What are we even chasing?
Our entire lives get spent pursuing outcomes. We keep grinding, hoping we'll achieve X and then we'll be content forever, only to find merely emptiness on the other side. The new shiny badge of honor barely takes days to get normalized and the void kicks in again. What exactly are we going after? Is there even an end to this?
Why it failed: Our entire lives get spent pursuing outcomes. We keep grinding, hoping we'll achieve X and then we'll be content forever, only to find merely emptiness on the other side. The new shiny badge of honor barely takes days to get normalized and the void kicks in again. What
undopamine