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 down2022
Cloudflare have made it impossible for me to unsubscribe from marketing emails
This morning, I received a marketing email from Cloudflare (through one of our mailing groups), being militant about these kinds of emails, I immediately go to unsubscribe. Dark pattern one: You must login to manage your marketing preferences. There's no security related emails here, so this is completely unnecessary. Dark pattern two: "...confirm your email address to save your communication preferences.". I've no idea how we have a several-year old account without a confirmed email, but it should not have to confirm an email to remove old marketing preferences - or if cloudflare is so careful about this, why did it end up opted-in ion the first place? Dark pattern two-point-five is that the email somehow became unverified - something it seems is only necessary to adjust marketing emails. Okay, so I hit the "Resend verification email" link and check my inbo
Why it failed: This morning, I received a marketing email from Cloudflare (through one of our mailing groups), being militant about these kinds of emails, I immediately go to unsubscribe. Dark pattern one: You must login to manage your marketing preferences. There's no security related ema
sdflhasjd
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Getting up after repeated failures?
This post probably won't be well accepted in the Hacker News community since it's come out as more of a rant, but I don't really care anymore. So Hacker News, I'm 30. Not super old, but I've got a good decade in the software world under my belt to a large variety of all the garbage there is to see. My first job was at a medium sized corp, and after about 3 years, I left to escape the typical pain points of corporate life (slow / no projects, lazy / unmotivated coworkers obviously there only for the paycheck, too much red tape and processes, etc., etc., etc....) I then joined a small company, where we built what in my mind was a next gen e-commerce shop (real time product stock checks, multiple currency support, etc.) only to have the project (a 1.5 year project, mind you) not be payed for and then in the end scraped for a shittier one (MUCH shittier, th
Why it failed: This post probably won't be well accepted in the Hacker News community since it's come out as more of a rant, but I don't really care anymore. So Hacker News, I'm 30. Not super old, but I've got a good decade in the software world under my belt to a large
fullstackchris
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Why are we accepting ageism in tech as something immutable?
This week alone I had 2 interviews with 2 different companies where in the first one of the interviewers asked me my age, directly followed by "why hire you over a younger graduate?" (which isn't the same as "why hire you over someone smarter than you?" because why even ask this). In the second one I was also asked for my age, followed by whether I plan to get married anytime soon. I'm under the impression that the industry needs to learn to treat amateurs as amateurs regardless of their age. It feels like I'm not allowed to be an amateur professional simply because I'm over 30 years old. Instead of seeing people as "a guy with 2 years of experience" or "a woman with 4 years of experience" we see "a 40 year old guy with 2 years of experience" or "a 34 year old woman with 4 years of experience". It feels like
Why it failed: This week alone I had 2 interviews with 2 different companies where in the first one of the interviewers asked me my age, directly followed by "why hire you over a younger graduate?" (which isn't the same as "why hire you over someone smarter than you?" b
Arisaka1
- startupShut down2022
What happens to the hardware (MacBooks, Monitors, Chairs) of failed startups?
Yesterday I saw a group of people in SF walking out of a building looking sad and carrying monitors. Now I am wondering what happens to the hardware? Bootstrapped founders (myself) or schools could make good use of it.
Why it failed: Yesterday I saw a group of people in SF walking out of a building looking sad and carrying monitors. Now I am wondering what happens to the hardware? Bootstrapped founders (myself) or schools could make good use of it.
ck_one
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?
TL;DR: I'm a founder who had some success, but now I'm disabled, can't seem to hold down a job. I'm close to defaulting on my car. I am (unsurprisingly) depressed. I need help but don't know where to go. I spent the 2010s as a founder. My company was funded by YC and several others. We were moderately successful but didn't see a meaningful exit. After my startup failed, I started consulting to pay the bills. In 2018 I started having problems with chronic pain and gradually became less and less capable on the job. Consulting gigs were letting me go because I couldn't keep up. The last time I worked was over a year ago, and I finally exhausted my savings in early June 2022. I live as cheaply as I possibly can at this point. I live with family and only pay for absolute necessities. It comes out between $1200 and $1500 per month. I'm in the US and I ha
Why it failed: TL;DR: I'm a founder who had some success, but now I'm disabled, can't seem to hold down a job. I'm close to defaulting on my car. I am (unsurprisingly) depressed. I need help but don't know where to go. I spent the 2010s as a founder. My company was fund
thrwtllwy
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: Postcard – Easy way to make a personal website
Today I'm launching Postcard! I started Postcard when I deleted most social media, but still wanted a way to keep in touch with friends and my network. When I worked at Webflow, it became clear to me that most website builders are way too complex for individual users. So, I drew inspiration from social media - where all you need is a couple photos and text fields to get a great site online. So, I think I’ve about achieved a site builder that even my Mom could use. The product seems simple, but there are many under-the-hood optimizations. There's caching, CDNs, custom domain support, TLS certificate issuance + management, dynamically-generated open graph images, image optimizations, email sending, full-text RSS feed, email reputations, and more. It also uses a couple new products to make the domain connection process easy. Let me know if you have any feedback or questions! PS -
Why it failed: Today I'm launching Postcard! I started Postcard when I deleted most social media, but still wanted a way to keep in touch with friends and my network. When I worked at Webflow, it became clear to me that most website builders are way too complex for individual users. So, I
philip1209
- startupShut down2022
Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023
Your current IoT Core Services will remain available through August 15, 2023. Start your migration to alternative solutions. Hello [NAME], We’re writing to let you know that Google Cloud’s IoT Core Service will be discontinued on August 16, 2023 at which point your access to the IoT Core Device Manager APIs will no longer be available. As of that date, devices will be unable to connect to the Google Cloud IoT Core MQTT and HTTP bridges and existing connections will be shut down. Your current IoT Core Services will remain available through August 15, 2023, unless you terminate your usage of IoT Core at an earlier date. What do I need to do? We recommend that you take action early to migrate from IoT Core to an alternative service. As an initial step, connect with your Google Cloud account manager if you have questions about your migration plans. Your account manager can also help you lear
Why it failed: Your current IoT Core Services will remain available through August 15, 2023. Start your migration to alternative solutions. Hello [NAME], We’re writing to let you know that Google Cloud’s IoT Core Service will be discontinued on August 16, 2023 at which point your access to the
borner791
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: How do you handle being assigned Ops tasks knowing you joined to do Dev?
Title is pretty much it. I joined Oracle a few months ago after applying to a dev position. As soon I joined, I was assigned Operations work which to be honest is not what I was hoping for. I was wondering if anyone else in the HN community experienced something like this before? Is this common in bigger companies where it's more "Closing Jira Tickets" than actual coding work? Is this gonna paint me as an Ops person from now on? I started seriously thinking about quitting and looking elsewhere. Thanks in advance for any feedback.
Why it failed: Title is pretty much it. I joined Oracle a few months ago after applying to a dev position. As soon I joined, I was assigned Operations work which to be honest is not what I was hoping for. I was wondering if anyone else in the HN community experienced something like this before?
ahil95
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Favorite product that got shut down?
Trying to launch a search fund to acquire VC backed businesses that couldn't scale. Would love your recommendations and get on a mission to revive a favorite product of this community.
Why it failed: Trying to launch a search fund to acquire VC backed businesses that couldn't scale. Would love your recommendations and get on a mission to revive a favorite product of this community.
rajarshc
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: I shut down my company, now I need a job
Two weeks ago, I announced ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598978 ) that I was shutting down my companies, 70 Million Jobs and Commissary Club (companies that helped the formerly incarcerated get on with their lives). The overwhelming volume of support I received just through Bookface and Hacker News stunned me; my heart overflowed with pride and gratitude. Now I am facing another challenge: I need a job. I’ve spoken with many recruiters and HR professionals, along with people who are interested in either acquiring my company(s), funding them or just want to make themselves available for a chat. I’ve received offers for leadership positions at nonprofits, but I haven’t yet discovered the right fit. Maybe I love the startup life too much. Maybe my criminal record hurts my chances. (Maybe!?!) Maybe my age is a deterrent. Before I accept a position that doesn’t thril
Why it failed: Two weeks ago, I announced ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598978 ) that I was shutting down my companies, 70 Million Jobs and Commissary Club (companies that helped the formerly incarcerated get on with their lives). The overwhelming volume of support I r
RBBronson123
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Project maintainers in Ukraine – which projects are in danger?
Ukraine has (had) a vibrant developer community. The war has made many folks switch from the IT side to the military. Do you know of any Open Source projects that are at risk of being abandoned because their lead dev / maintainer has left to fight (with a risk of never returning)?
Why it failed: Ukraine has (had) a vibrant developer community. The war has made many folks switch from the IT side to the military. Do you know of any Open Source projects that are at risk of being abandoned because their lead dev / maintainer has left to fight (with a risk of never retur
oger
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Does anyone actually Use GCP?
We are building a product to improve the DevEx of GCP and IaaS cloud. We are evening building and running this app on GCP! Gasps (we're not sure GCP even runs on GCP). For context, the search bar in the GCP web console can't even do proper substring searching on assets such as App Engine. In less than a month/16+ hour days, our two person team has already built superior search capabilities. My co-founder has been sold on the pain-points on GCP, but the question becomes: why does anyone even bother? We believe there is some scale and inflection point at which GCP makes sense, but GCP products are disconnected from hobbyists. This month, we've received 10k visits and paid $120 on CloudRun (app server) and CloudSQL (Postgres). We used the lowest cost configuration including 1 CPU each. Yes, $120 for 2 x 1 CPU, 10GB SSD, 5GB ram total. It's not even been a month, act
Why it failed: We are building a product to improve the DevEx of GCP and IaaS cloud. We are evening building and running this app on GCP! Gasps (we're not sure GCP even runs on GCP). For context, the search bar in the GCP web console can't even do proper substring searching on assets
diceduckmonk
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: SigNoz – open-source alternative to DataDog, NewRelic
We just released a major upgrade to SigNoz with support for Logs management based on ClickHouse. Would love to get any feedback from the community here on what you think and any questions you may have for us Many big companies like Uber and Cloudflare have been shifting to ClickHouse as their main workhorse for Logs management seeing much better performance. for e.g Cloudflare recently shifted from Elastic to ClickHouse and are seeing 8x improvement in memory/cpu resource requirement in ingestion. This is our first release with Logs support and we have added support for: - Filtering logs based on fields - Full text search in logs - Live mode to see logs coming in realtime - Detailed view of logs in table and json format with ability to add filters quickly - Ability to specify interesting fields which will be indexed by default
Why it failed: We just released a major upgrade to SigNoz with support for Logs management based on ClickHouse. Would love to get any feedback from the community here on what you think and any questions you may have for us Many big companies like Uber and Cloudflare have been shifting to ClickH
pranay01
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: Salesforce has globally revoked Slack's holiday shutdown benefit
The workplace policy has been in effect for many years, and was until recently an advertised perk of working for Slack. It allowed all employees access to free paid time off from 24th until the New Year (some employees like incident responders would take shifts, but even Customer Experience (their support team) ran skeleton shifts). Today they have announced this policy has ended as a result of the economy as well as making the workplace more equitable (as Salesforce employees could not access this benefit).
Why it failed: The workplace policy has been in effect for many years, and was until recently an advertised perk of working for Slack. It allowed all employees access to free paid time off from 24th until the New Year (some employees like incident responders would take shifts, but even Customer
SadSlackbot
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?
What's you life work? What is it that you're working on, be it an area, company, game, language, subject, cause etc. That you expect to work until the end of your life? Starting with me it's a little bit hard. I have so many interests that picking a single one out of all of them is hard. But I plan on working on companies, causes, philosophies, books, areas etc. Some of the areas I'm interested in are: Intelligence, IQ, Collective Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Writing, Sleep, Comics, AI, Game Design, Meta Cognition, Zettelkasten, Linguistics, Design, Coordination etc. My current project is: https://github.com/ilse-langnar/notebook. It's a mixture of Roam Research, Obsidian, Emacs, VSCode(in the future), Figma etc. I plan on making an online mode for people to share and collaborate with other people being as easy as sharing a link. I don&
Why it failed: What's you life work? What is it that you're working on, be it an area, company, game, language, subject, cause etc. That you expect to work until the end of your life? Starting with me it's a little bit hard. I have so many interests that picking a single one out
examplary_cable
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: A Demo Day without the investors
When Harry (my co-founder) and I started Trevor.io we obviously needed customers. We'd often bonded over Paul Graham's "Do Things That Don't Scale", so it was a no-brainer that every month, like clockwork, we'd get on that €50 Ryanair flight to London, to spend a week pitching potential customers / partners / anyone who would listen. We tried as best we could to rotate which lucky friend or family members' sofa we would be sleeping on each time, so as not to out-stay our welcome. One event that we ended up doing again and again was called TechHub Tuesday Demo Night. It was an epic monthly event (first Tuesday of every month) hosted by the most sought after startup co-working space on London's famous "Silicon Roundabout" (yes, us English can't quite fill a valley yet with our startup scene, but we sure can fill a roundabout!
Why it failed: When Harry (my co-founder) and I started Trevor.io we obviously needed customers. We'd often bonded over Paul Graham's "Do Things That Don't Scale", so it was a no-brainer that every month, like clockwork, we'd get on that €50 Ryanair flight to Londo
tagspace
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Shut down a startup despite strong traction?
We are showing strong traction (100k monthly users) but we're struggling to find investors for our pre-seed round. We're first time founders without a big network and the current market downturn makes it even harder for B2C startups to raise money. Did you ever have to shut down your early-stage startup despite strong traction?
Why it failed: We are showing strong traction (100k monthly users) but we're struggling to find investors for our pre-seed round. We're first time founders without a big network and the current market downturn makes it even harder for B2C startups to raise money. Did you ever have to
Freddie111
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: I got into MIT. Should I go?
This is a really big decision that has been weighing a lot on my mind recently, and I would appreciate any candid advice that you may have. Here’s the skinny: I applied to two schools: MIT, and a bigger-but-less-prestigious school we'll call Z. Growing up, I always wanted to go to Z: my parents met there, my extended family lives in the area, and I have friends and cousins there. But MIT has also always been a dream (and I have friends there too). My original plan was to go to Z for my undergrad, then go to another school like MIT for grad school. I applied to MIT for the sake of completeness, and honestly didn't expect to get in. For that reason, it’s pretty easy to see how getting into MIT has thrown a big wrench in my plans. To make matters worse, MIT hasn’t offered me any financial aid. My parents have saved enough money to help me pay for some of the tuition costs of Z (wh
Why it failed: This is a really big decision that has been weighing a lot on my mind recently, and I would appreciate any candid advice that you may have. Here’s the skinny: I applied to two schools: MIT, and a bigger-but-less-prestigious school we'll call Z. Growing up, I always wanted to
throwaway7819
- startupShut down2022
Just witnessed a missile strike on Kyiv city
There’s just been two more explosions. The first was unheralded, but for the second, first there was gunfire - I grabbed the camera and went to the window, opened it, and I could hear a loud droning noise, an engine - and then I saw a bright white missile in the sky, completely uncamouflaged, flying at a moderate altitude, perhaps 500m? it flew slowly, right-to-left in my field of view, and then began to dive towards its target, the sound of the engine becoming increasingly louder and stronger, and then it plunged below the line of buildings (I’m on the 15th floor) and I could see it no more, then the inevitable crack-bang - different to the explosions from a few days, not so large, but where I had the window open I felt the blast wave come to my face and body, and then of course with sick certainty the unfurling column of dark grey smoke shooting up from the impact site. I’m hoping not
Why it failed: There’s just been two more explosions. The first was unheralded, but for the second, first there was gunfire - I grabbed the camera and went to the window, opened it, and I could hear a loud droning noise, an engine - and then I saw a bright white missile in the sky, completely u
Max-Ganz-II
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: Stop Accepting Shitty Interviews
There was a long discussion on HN the other day regarding why companies are having trouble hiring engineers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892437 One of the recurring themes is the "leet code" interviews. I will go further and say that any interview that doesn't mimic the job is a guaranteed way for me to turn the company down. Stop accepting shitty interviews When I was talking to trading firms about coming back to the finance industry, about half of them admitted they already use my open-source software. And yet, only one firm bothered to ask me about how some of my stuff was implemented. That's the firm I'm working at now. Instead, I got plenty of firms that still insisted on asking me questions that are not remotely related to the job. Tons of Hacker Rank and Codility, even though I've never had a time limit when building somethin
Why it failed: There was a long discussion on HN the other day regarding why companies are having trouble hiring engineers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892437 One of the recurring themes is the "leet code" interviews. I will go further and say that any interv
chrisaycock
- 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
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
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 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