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 down2021
Stripe Shut Us Down
We have been with stripe for over 2 years and on Sept 2, they shut us down without explanation. We tried to reach them and their help and call button have been disabled. We are a small online gym and since they shut us down, its been impossible to reach someone for help. Since then we have not been able to generate any revenue so we have lost thousands of dollars. We have employees that depend on us and not being to generate any income has been a tremendous burden. We decided to move to another payment partner and Stripe has still not sent us the file with our customer data so we can move on. What else do we have to do for the file migration? We have done and provided everything you requested and we have not heard from your technician and you are not responding to emails. Carol Price 8136108294
Why it failed: We have been with stripe for over 2 years and on Sept 2, they shut us down without explanation. We tried to reach them and their help and call button have been disabled. We are a small online gym and since they shut us down, its been impossible to reach someone for help. Since th
carol_ifyoucan
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: How to get compeitors to use our open source interop-prototcol?
We make open-source software for the cannabis industry, there are roughly 150 other software providers in this space, and we all need to share data (Lot details, Crop details, Product details, Lab Results, etc). Around 2018 or so we published a OpenAPI specification for data models ( https://github.com/openthc/api ) that we were hoping to get others to participate in. It's been rather difficult. The previous blocker was that in much of the USA, this data flows through a central system operated by the Government (as a contract to BioTrackTHC, Metrc or Akerna/MJ Freeway/LeafData). So, there hasn't been a critical need for interop. However, recent states to legislate cannabis (Oklahoma, Maine) don't fully have that and one (Washington) is moving away from theirs at the end of the year. The Washington state one is now, finally, getting some eyebal
Why it failed: We make open-source software for the cannabis industry, there are roughly 150 other software providers in this space, and we all need to share data (Lot details, Crop details, Product details, Lab Results, etc). Around 2018 or so we published a OpenAPI specification for data mode
openthc
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: Texts to share with my co-founder re time-management and teamwork?
tldr; Looking for articles or books about teamwork and time-management between founders in a startup environment to share with my co-founder who has never worked in a team or in any structured job in his life. The business is physical business with production facilities, that exists for 6-7 years. During this time it hasn't grown but has always supported its owner financially. I've always helped a little bit with communication and marketing but not too much because there was lack of execution on the other side. Last year we agreed that together we can make this thing grow and I joined as partner. His profile: for his whole life he was always a business owner, mostly in production and printing. Loves making things with his hands, hobbyist woodworker. Not very digital - has a smartphone but you can't get him on a team discord for example. Lacks any organisation skills which
Why it failed: tldr; Looking for articles or books about teamwork and time-management between founders in a startup environment to share with my co-founder who has never worked in a team or in any structured job in his life. The business is physical business with production facilities, that exi
tseoeo
- startupShut down2021
Ask HN: Buying house – any disruptors I can use?
We are starting to look at houses and are realizing how much we will be paying for services that IMO are quite mundane. 1) Mortgage broker - This lady will charge us 1% (10,000$) to find us a suitable loan. Basically, she will compare about 10 loans and choose the best one. Software systems can do this easily. 2) The buying agent - so far she has not come up with any houses on her own. She finds the same things we find on line. I dont need her to visit open houses. Legally, in SF I need an agent to be present during the inspections. I can use the selling agent for a fee. If I use her to place an offer, there is a bias problem. A buyer agent may be biased towards placing a "strong" offer. The "stronger" the offer, higher the probability that it will go through and higher her share. I have researched the areas enough and am comfortable coming up with a price. Are there
Why it failed: We are starting to look at houses and are realizing how much we will be paying for services that IMO are quite mundane. 1) Mortgage broker - This lady will charge us 1% (10,000$) to find us a suitable loan. Basically, she will compare about 10 loans and choose the best one. Softw
100-xyz
- startupShut down2021
Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools
We're Raphael, Florian and Marc, co-founders of weweb.io ( https://www.weweb.io/ ). We are building a Webflow/WordPress style product, but where users can drag & drop their own React/Vue components and use data fetched from any API. We started working together on a side project in 2016, it was a mobile app in rails that lets people choose music in their favourite bars. The app didn't bring much value to bar owners, but it was fun to build and we made good friends among our first customers. Aside from our jobs we loved spending time building and iterating on different web products, we even built a simple angular web-app that would let anyone create a website entirely from a mobile phone. Fast-forward to 2018, we stumbled upon the Jamstack ecosystem and loved it. But one thing surprised us so much that we decided to quit our jobs to solve it: while ma
Why it failed: We're Raphael, Florian and Marc, co-founders of weweb.io ( https://www.weweb.io/ ). We are building a Webflow/WordPress style product, but where users can drag & drop their own React/Vue components and use data fetched from any API. We started wo
raphael-gold
- startupShut down2020
Apple allows bullies to shut down my app
After having my app in the App Store for years, Apple took it down because of a couple of false complaints. Apple hasn't said that the app breaks any rules, just that all complaints must be resolved "to the satisfaction of the complainant." It's insane that Apple gives this kind of power to a few people. I don't think Apple has even really read the complaints or looked into the app at all. I have written an open letter to Tim Cook www.copymethat.com/open-letter-tim-cook/ that explains everything as well as a tweet twitter.com/copymethat/status/1295418273065046016/. I'd love the support of app developers who think this is not OK behavior from Apple. Please reply to the tweet.
Why it failed: After having my app in the App Store for years, Apple took it down because of a couple of false complaints. Apple hasn't said that the app breaks any rules, just that all complaints must be resolved "to the satisfaction of the complainant." It's insane that Ap
tinebak
- startupShut down2020
Homeless Developer in Los Angeles Needs Work, Can You Please Help?
Dear HN, Apologies in advance for posting something non-technical and personal, but I have no other place online to ask. I am having an emergency. I have been homeless in Los Angeles for the past 2 years. Prior to this, I was a developer for over 10 years. Mostly I worked at small startups. And let me just get the stereotypes out of the way: I don't do drugs, I don't drink, I'm not a criminal, and I'm not mentally ill. I'm just a spectacularly unlucky coder who worked for a series of not so great startups that failed, slowly ran out of money and savings between jobs, and fell through the cracks to become totally stranded living on the streets. I have no family to ask for help--only-child, parents deceased. The only reason I have survived this long was by working part-time on 2 remote contracting gigs, but I was paid sub-minimum wage. It's extremely difficult
Why it failed: Dear HN, Apologies in advance for posting something non-technical and personal, but I have no other place online to ask. I am having an emergency. I have been homeless in Los Angeles for the past 2 years. Prior to this, I was a developer for over 10 years. Mostly I worked at smal
unhomedcoder
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Could we restructure society so that people don't hate their jobs?
As it is we seem to have a lot of people doing jobs that are preventing them from living up to their full potential. Is it really true that if you gave people a universal basic income that they would devolve into couch potatoes? When you think of it how much free time do you really have in the day? After getting ready in the morning, your commute, work plus a lunch hour, a trip to the store, some time to decompress, dinner, and spending time with your kids how much time is left for yourself? Even if you had the will power left over at the end of the day to give 100% you're so overburdened that it's no wonder you can't get anywhere. And we have the gual to suggest that these same people would do nothing but sit on the couch all day if they were let off their leash. That's cognitive dissonance right there. I have worked in a few industries that I had zero interest in at
Why it failed: As it is we seem to have a lot of people doing jobs that are preventing them from living up to their full potential. Is it really true that if you gave people a universal basic income that they would devolve into couch potatoes? When you think of it how much free time do you real
thepope
- startupShut down2020
Google to shut down non-profit platform One Today
As a technology professional in the social sector, I wanted to share an email that I received just a few minutes ago. It looks like Google will be shutting down the One Today platform, a social hub for non-profit organizations to share and promote fundraising initiatives. "Hello, We have an important update to share with you. We launched Google One Today seven years ago to help people donate to causes they care about. In the last few years, we have seen donors choose other products to fundraise for their favorite nonprofits. As a result, we will shut down One Today on February 6th, 2020. New nonprofits will no longer be able to sign up for One Today. The Google One Today app will be turned off, and any open projects will be deleted. We will ensure that 100% of funds donated on One Today prior to February 6th are disbursed to the relevant nonprofits. If you have any questions, please
Why it failed: As a technology professional in the social sector, I wanted to share an email that I received just a few minutes ago. It looks like Google will be shutting down the One Today platform, a social hub for non-profit organizations to share and promote fundraising initiatives. "H
n-exploit
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Reploy (YC S20) – Instant fullstack staging environments for web apps
Hello Hacker News! We're Jay and Himank from Reploy ( https://getreploy.com ). We're building a platform that allows teams to easily configure full-stack staging environments or "previews" of their web app which are created on every open PR. In the past, Himank and I spent time at several startups (~10->200 employees), where we were on customer-facing, product-oriented teams. We often found ourselves in positions where we wanted to share our environment with designer/PM/sales folks who didn't necessarily have a dev environment setup, and ngrok didn't cut it. Further, even when trying to share our environment with fellow engineers, there was always a slow down when requiring that they git stash, git pull, etc.. The solution to these pain points was either: 1) Waiting for a full staging or production deployment, which in most cases, wasn
Why it failed: Hello Hacker News! We're Jay and Himank from Reploy ( https://getreploy.com ). We're building a platform that allows teams to easily configure full-stack staging environments or "previews" of their web app which are created on every open PR. In the p
podoman
- startupShut down2020
Let's use more of Firefox, only YOU can stop Chrome from becoming the next IE
For those who don't know (or belong to a newer generation), Microsoft's IE (Internet Explorer) was one browser that had almost monopolized itself globally for many years mostly during the early nineties decade. They managed to do it but the backlash was such that the public pressure practically caused a storm that made Bill Gates sit in front of the jury and answer some hard questions. And today, I'm seeing history is repeating all over again, only Chrome has taken IE's place but there is no storm coming this time. Unlike our predecessors, we are giving in to convenience, we are acting like its not a botheration at all. PLEASE DON'T DO IT . Consider the sheer browser market share that Chrome enjoys and Google's data interests for a moment, and it might already be too late for us. If a web service insists only on Chrome for best performance then change that s
Why it failed: For those who don't know (or belong to a newer generation), Microsoft's IE (Internet Explorer) was one browser that had almost monopolized itself globally for many years mostly during the early nineties decade. They managed to do it but the backlash was such that the pu
smart_jackal
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: PostEra (YC W20) Medicinal Chemistry-as-a-Service and Covid Moonshot
Hey everyone! We’re Alpha, Matt and Aaron, co-founders of PostEra ( https://postera.ai/ ). The title above is quite a mouthful (we used all 80 characters) so we'll begin by breaking down what it means. What is medicinal chemistry? It’s part of discovering new drugs. A drug hunter decides what disease to focus on and then selects ‘targets’: usually proteins whose activity is key to the disease. Then they look for a molecule that can ‘hit’ that target and stimulate a response which will hopefully have beneficial effects. Developing such a molecule that is potent and safe is medicinal chemistry. Despite it being a crucial part of drug development, this field has relied on trial-and-error approaches—a very expensive way to muddle toward a drug. Where computational tools have been used, they have emphasized the 'best' designs without any awareness of what it woul
Why it failed: Hey everyone! We’re Alpha, Matt and Aaron, co-founders of PostEra ( https://postera.ai/ ). The title above is quite a mouthful (we used all 80 characters) so we'll begin by breaking down what it means. What is medicinal chemistry? It’s part of discovering new
morraa
- startupShut down2020
Tell HN: Amazon Cloud Drive is banning encrypted content and backup data
Got this from Amazon today. I wonder if they're going to refund my money. Also, anyone know of a good alternative? > Dear Customer, We’re writing to let you know about an upcoming change that may affect how you access your content on Amazon Drive, and to help you take steps to keep your content safe. We understand that you have used Synology Cloud Sync or Hyper Backup on Synology NAS to store information on Amazon Drive. Amazon will discontinue access to Amazon Drive by Synology Cloud Sync and Hyper Backup starting on November 1st, 2020. Neither application will have access to Amazon Drive after November 1st, 2020, and the only way you will be able to access your stored content will be via Amazon Drive or Amazon Photos web, desktop, and mobile apps. To ensure a smooth transition, we urge all Synology Cloud Sync and Hyper Backup users to follow these steps: For Photo and Video con
Why it failed: Got this from Amazon today. I wonder if they're going to refund my money. Also, anyone know of a good alternative? > Dear Customer, We’re writing to let you know about an upcoming change that may affect how you access your content on Amazon Drive, and to help you take ste
hedora
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Mindset Health (YC S19) – Hypnotherapy apps for chronic conditions
Hey HN! We're Alex & Chris, brothers from Melbourne, Australia, and the founders of Mindset Health ( https://www.mindsethealth.com ). We create mobile apps to help people manage chronic health conditions at home. Our programs use hypnosis-based techniques, developed by clinicians, to help people manage conditions like anxiety, depression & Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Mindset Health came out of a difficult period after Chris and I wound down our first startup. During this time, we experienced a lot of anxiety and stress. I ended up being prescribed anti-anxiety medication, but the side effects and the lack of control I felt caused me to look for non-pharmacological options, like CBT and biofeedback. Someone we trusted recommended hypnotherapy. Chris and I were skeptical about hypnosis (the 'being made to cluck like a chicken' reputation), but after com
Why it failed: Hey HN! We're Alex & Chris, brothers from Melbourne, Australia, and the founders of Mindset Health ( https://www.mindsethealth.com ). We create mobile apps to help people manage chronic health conditions at home. Our programs use hypnosis-based techniques, deve
alexnaoumidis
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Batch (YC S20) – Replays for event-driven systems
Hello HN! We are Ustin and Daniel, co-founders of Batch ( https://batch.sh ) - an event replay platform. You can think of us as version control for data passing through your messaging systems. With Batch, a company is able to go back in time, see what data looked like at a certain point and if it makes sense, replay that piece of data back into the company's systems. This idea was born out of getting annoyed by what an unwieldy blackbox Kafka is. While many folks use Kafka for streaming, there is an equal number of Kafka users that use it as a traditional messaging system. Historically, these systems have offered very poor visibility into what's going on inside them and offer (at best) a poor replay experience. This problem is prevalent pretty much across every messaging system. Especially if the messages on the bus are serialized, it is almost guaranteed that you wil
Why it failed: Hello HN! We are Ustin and Daniel, co-founders of Batch ( https://batch.sh ) - an event replay platform. You can think of us as version control for data passing through your messaging systems. With Batch, a company is able to go back in time, see what data looked like a
dsies
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Hubble (YC S20) – Monitor data quality inside data warehouses
Hey everyone! We’re Oliver and Hamzah from Hubble ( https://gethubble.io/hn ). Hubble runs tests on your data warehouse so you can identify issues with data quality. You can test for things like missing values, uniqueness of data or how frequently data is added/updated. We worked together for the last 4 years at a startup where we built and managed data products for insurers and banks. A common pattern we saw was teams taking data from their internal tools (CRM, HR system, etc.), application databases, and 3rd party data and storing it in a warehouse for analysis. However, when analysts/data scientists used the data for reports they would spot something suspicious and the engineering team would have to manually go through the data pipelines to find the source of the problem. More often than not it was simple things like a spike in missing values because an ETL jo
Why it failed: Hey everyone! We’re Oliver and Hamzah from Hubble ( https://gethubble.io/hn ). Hubble runs tests on your data warehouse so you can identify issues with data quality. You can test for things like missing values, uniqueness of data or how frequently data is added
oliver101
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: What is the best way to target restaurants and small businesses?
Hello, We are a chatbot startup, targeting restaurants and other small businesses, brick and mortar that might be affected by covid19. What is the best way to target these businesses, specially that many of them are closing down? We want to help them sell through our delivery system.
Why it failed: Hello, We are a chatbot startup, targeting restaurants and other small businesses, brick and mortar that might be affected by covid19. What is the best way to target these businesses, specially that many of them are closing down? We want to help them sell through our delivery sys
ahmedaly
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Advice for staying in the job market while homeless?
Hello HN, I've lived as a "hand to mouth" freelancer for a while and can no longer keep up with rent due to clients shutting down. I have over a dozen job applications under way, but obviously progress is slow and even if I do get an offer it won't pay off until I'm "on the streets". I do have good friends who will let me stay on their couches for some time. Given the circumstances I'm afraid that I'll be stuck in this situation until my food budget is used up, at which point I don't know what to do. Frankly I feel like throwing myself into the river right now, but obviously that is not helping anyone. I have a fairly niche skill set that no one wants. My specialty is building and running complex on-prem infrastructure (in the petabytes and teraflops range), though in the recent years I've been doing DevOps in the cloud like everyone
Why it failed: Hello HN, I've lived as a "hand to mouth" freelancer for a while and can no longer keep up with rent due to clients shutting down. I have over a dozen job applications under way, but obviously progress is slow and even if I do get an offer it won't pay off unt
HelpImHomeless
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Epihub (YC S20) – Shopify for teaching online
Hey HN! I’m Uday, and I co-founded Epihub [0] with Kwasi and Michael ( https://epihub.com ). Epihub is Shopify for teaching online. Our software lets you schedule, meet, and bill clients from your own website. A few years ago, we started building a product called Epigrammar, which was a collaborative document annotation tool that let teachers rapidly give feedback to their students by identifying trends in their feedback. Kwasi and I really wanted to see if we could scale the tutoring experience to an entire classroom, since my co-founder Mike was teaching Classics at a private school in Connecticut while running a non-profit tutoring program in Latin/Greek for public school students in New York. Mike would try out our products that we had built over the weekend during the week (sometimes to success), but oftentimes, things were not actually helping him teach. That’s when
Why it failed: Hey HN! I’m Uday, and I co-founded Epihub [0] with Kwasi and Michael ( https://epihub.com ). Epihub is Shopify for teaching online. Our software lets you schedule, meet, and bill clients from your own website. A few years ago, we started building a product called Epigra
urs
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: Is HN a ‘healthy online community’? I’m doing a case study for a class
Hello HN! My name is Sankalp. I’m taking a class called Fixing Social Media at MIT ( https://fixingsocialmedia.mit.edu ). We are examining problems with existing modes of social media and exploring affirmative visions for social media that are good for individuals and society. At this point, the class is working on case studies of successful and healthy online communities, where we are seeking insights from online communities we are part of, inspired by, or find interesting. The goal of the assignment is to figure out whether an online community exemplifies or doesn’t exemplify ‘healthy’ behaviors, from the points of view of their own members, on their own terms. I’m here to understand HN from your perspectives and I’m interested in hearing from all of you. What criteria do you use to determine 'health' in online communities? How do these differ from those criteria yo
Why it failed: Hello HN! My name is Sankalp. I’m taking a class called Fixing Social Media at MIT ( https://fixingsocialmedia.mit.edu ). We are examining problems with existing modes of social media and exploring affirmative visions for social media that are good for individuals and s
sankalpb
- startupShut down2020
Ask HN: How do you guys deal with laziness?
Hello everyone! I usually think of myself as a curious, open-minded person. When I think about things they are all sounds interesting to me, especially if they are connected to technology. Unfortunatelly, the last week shows that I just cannot win with my laziness. I spend all the time lurking on the internet or watching youtube vides. I've tried ti blocked time-wasting pages (like 9gag/reddit/etc.) but it clearly didn't help at all. I have a lot of books and articles to read, topics to explore, projects to finish but every time when I'm trying to dig into it I end up feeling tired and resigned. It really makes me worry about myself, because I'm wasting so much time! What can I do to improve my attitude toward useful areas of my life and convince myself to stop wasting time?
Why it failed: Hello everyone! I usually think of myself as a curious, open-minded person. When I think about things they are all sounds interesting to me, especially if they are connected to technology. Unfortunatelly, the last week shows that I just cannot win with my laziness. I spend all th
kkthxbb
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Mighty Health (YC S19) – Health coaching for people over 50
Hey HN! We’re James, Felipe, and Bernard, founders of Mighty Health ( https://mightyhealth.com/gift ), a personal coach that helps people over 50 become healthier through exercise, nutrition, and wellness. With Father’s Day coming up, we thought some of you might be in the same position as we are, worrying about our parents and loved ones, wanting to do more to help out in these uncertain times. A few years ago, my dad was rushed to the hospital for emergency heart surgery. Though he luckily survived, this was quite the wakeup call—he had to change his lifestyle habits immediately, or else he’d have to deal with painful, worsening chronic issues for the rest of his life. These changes—exercise, nutrition, sleep, and reducing stress—are hard as is, but even more so for folks over 50. Most wellness apps are designed for motivated millennials, making them feel less relatable
Why it failed: Hey HN! We’re James, Felipe, and Bernard, founders of Mighty Health ( https://mightyhealth.com/gift ), a personal coach that helps people over 50 become healthier through exercise, nutrition, and wellness. With Father’s Day coming up, we thought some of you might b
minibronco88
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: ElectroNeek (YC W20) – Automatically find and automate routine work
Hey Hacker News! We are Sergey Yudovsky, Dmitry Karpov and Mike Rozhin, founders of ElectroNeek ( https://electroneek.com ), an automation platform for repetitive business tasks. The product we build let users design software ‘robots’ that imitate human actions in apps and websites, and deploy them to eliminate routine work. Our software also spots patterns of repetitive processes that users do in business app and suggests what to automate in the first place. Some of you may have heard of a technology niche called Robotic Process Automation, or RPA. Basically, it’s about automating user actions on Graphic User Interface level, so no API is needed to automate any type of repetitive work on the computer. It has been known for 20+ years in the software testing space but emerged as a business process automation tool over the last decade, getting big momentum in Enterprise (95% of F
Why it failed: Hey Hacker News! We are Sergey Yudovsky, Dmitry Karpov and Mike Rozhin, founders of ElectroNeek ( https://electroneek.com ), an automation platform for repetitive business tasks. The product we build let users design software ‘robots’ that imitate human actions in apps
Digitaltzar
- startupShut down2020
Launch HN: Taiv (YC W20) – Replace TV commercials with content people care about
Hey HN! We’re Noah, Avi, and Jordan from Taiv ( https://www.taiv.tv ). We make a box that lets sports bars and other businesses replace live TV commercials with content their customers actually care about. A year and a half ago, I was sitting in a local bar and saw a commercial showing that the same beer I was drinking was cheaper across the street. The place I was in had other drinks on specials for way cheaper and great happy hour food, but they didn’t have an effective way to tell me about it. I ended up walking away feeling ripped off when I could have left a happy customer if they had been able to more effectively make me aware of their specials. It got me investigating how businesses communicate with their customers. I found out that half of all restaurants close within a year and that one of the most common reasons they fail is because they’re unable to educate their cus
Why it failed: Hey HN! We’re Noah, Avi, and Jordan from Taiv ( https://www.taiv.tv ). We make a box that lets sports bars and other businesses replace live TV commercials with content their customers actually care about. A year and a half ago, I was sitting in a local bar and saw a co
npalansky