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Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

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Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#11

Post by lhnz »

rglover wrote: post #6

Multiple times. The perspective I've adopted is to look at what you learned in the process of each failure and how that improved your ability to do a better job on the next venture. The truth is that many don't have the stomach for "sticking with it," doing whatever is necessary to keep going in the down phases (I highly recommend the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling and see if it resonates). You only truly "fail" when y…

> You only truly "fail" when you quit. If you can make the necessary sacrifices to struggle through the dark days, your chances of succeeding increase greatly.

People give up when they realise that continuing a grind will require then to sacrifice more meaningful opportunities they have.

It's not always good to keep going. Sometimes you're throwing your life away.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#12

Post by okwubodu »

amozoss wrote: post #5

Mine is https://pushback.io/ . It wasn't for 5 years more like 3 and wasn't consistently 15+ hours/week but definitely got up there when the passion was burning bright. I've failed to implement a winning conversion plan (need to iterate my pricing, just never got around to it) and do marketing. I've since moved on to another side project, but my passion certainly calls me back to Pushback from time to time.

This is really cool! It would make a lot of my ideas easier to build.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#13

Post by elanning »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #2

I've spent the last decade doing this. Building up my savings, draining them on an idea. I put in 40+ per week for a couple years on my last startup in the real estate space. Poached some top level VP's from the biggest firm in our country, but we ran through our capital too quickly due to too many pivots and licensing costs, I could only do no salary for so long, tough when your rent is $2.5k/mo. Now I am back at my…

Sounds like you have both the experience and talent necessary. I'm guessing it's only a matter of time until your next success.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#14

Post by MarcelOlsz »

erjiang wrote: post #7
MarcelOlsz wrote: post #2

I've spent the last decade doing this. Building up my savings, draining them on an idea. I put in 40+ per week for a couple years on my last startup in the real estate space. Poached some top level VP's from the biggest firm in our country, but we ran through our capital too quickly due to too many pivots and licensing costs, I could only do no salary for so long, tough when your rent is $2.5k/mo. Now I am back at my…

It's only a "failure" if you look at your net worth, right? It sounds like you have the experience, knowledge, and even resume of someone much older than 28. If you had instead spent ages 22-28 on a PhD, you'd still have no net worth, but people wouldn't see that as a failure.

That's a great point you're right, I'm still young. I'm not about net worth at all, I just want free time. If I'm working on my product 10 hours a day with a tight knit team and sustaining myself, that is success to me. Everything from there on is gravy.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#15

Post by HackerNewAddict »

This is mine https://appointmenthelper.net.

My dream sauce (SaaS ;)) was this application which I consistently worked about 2 hours every day for one year and when everything was ready, the guy refused to use it. Though I still keep it hosted even though no one uses it :-)

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#16

Post by MarcelOlsz »

elanning wrote: post #13
MarcelOlsz wrote: post #2

I've spent the last decade doing this. Building up my savings, draining them on an idea. I put in 40+ per week for a couple years on my last startup in the real estate space. Poached some top level VP's from the biggest firm in our country, but we ran through our capital too quickly due to too many pivots and licensing costs, I could only do no salary for so long, tough when your rent is $2.5k/mo. Now I am back at my…

Sounds like you have both the experience and talent necessary. I'm guessing it's only a matter of time until your next success.

Thank you! I sure hope so. I'm focusing on things I actually know. I knew this one guy who worked at a GM plant for two decades and started his own company manufacturing a part nobody would ever know exists, and now he's doing super well. So I'm taking a similar approach of building things that are useful to me and that I've had experience with on the job as it's all I know.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#17

Post by rbanffy »

My most successful project, by far, is a font. As a software engineer, I find that slightly amusing. None of my software projects got anywhere near its traction.

Except, maybe, an Emacs plugin made as a joke that adds IBM Selectric typewriter sounds to your text editor.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#18

Post by [deleted] »

okwubodu wrote: post #12
amozoss wrote: post #5

Mine is https://pushback.io/ . It wasn't for 5 years more like 3 and wasn't consistently 15+ hours/week but definitely got up there when the passion was burning bright. I've failed to implement a winning conversion plan (need to iterate my pricing, just never got around to it) and do marketing. I've since moved on to another side project, but my passion certainly calls me back to Pushback from time to time.

This is really cool! It would make a lot of my ideas easier to build.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#19

Post by achillean »

I worked nearly full-time for about 2 years using my personal savings on a project management software for labs ("Labengine"). The big hook was that it let you run common bioinformatics apps on your data and it would automatically convert the input file to the expected format (there were lots of competing bioinformatics file formats at the time). I had a few of my old professors use it and "love" it but nobody ended up paying. It was a good lesson for me to not work on a project in isolation too long; release early release often is the motto now.

Edit: I stopped working on it after it bombed horrifically but kept burning through my savings and after a few other ideas ended up with a successful company (Shodan). I still learned a lot from failing with Labengine but I don't think working on it another few years would've made it successful.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#20

Post by giantg2 »

Not over five years, nor as much time.

I created an app. It functioned fine, but never made any money. It was a lack of marketing. I spent time looking into marketing. I think I spent $10 on Facebook ads and went to a local college campus to put up posters with QR codes (I had quite a few hits for my one design, so I'm proud of that). My problem was targeting the wrong demographic and/or making the interface too bland. I should have targeted event planners instead of college kids. Even after releasing it for free it never really took off.

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