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Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#21

Post by ron22 »

james_impliu wrote: post #10
ron22 wrote: post #6

A crowdfunding site for product feature requests. Stripe closed my account before I was able to launch as it was "unable to accept payments for crowdfunding"..... Their marketing doesn't match their policies.

This is a really cool idea. You could add a tag to feature request issues that it'd read from, maybe as a github app or something. I run an OS repo and it'd be really cool to be able to get through them all faster with a bit of money to pay a freelancer, for example. I imagine the users-paying side would be very hard to find though. I'd also love to be able to attach a bounty to PRs with this money, although quality…

For open source issues there's already a few solutions, one to look at is https://issuehunt.io/ (they use Stripe)

Most use Stripe. I guess it's just a case by case thing. I really don't know why they rejected me when they advertise that exact use case [1]. But the policy I was directed to says the opposite [2].

[1] https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/connect-crowdfunding

[2] https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#22

Post by bckygldstn »

For my first real coding project I set up a book price comparison website.

It relied heavily on third-party APIs and scrapers for prices, search, book details, currency conversion, and the PaaS hosting service. Over 8 years many of those services slowly shut down until the site didn't work any more.

It was a fun project, both for learning to code, and for better understanding the tradeoffs around third-party dependencies. I wrote more about it here: https://www.ajnisbet.com/blog/maintaining-a-zero-maintenance...

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#23

Post by cdiamand »

NoOneNew wrote: post #16
cdiamand wrote: post #11

I launched, and have now shut down oppsdaily.com. https://oppslist.com is still up as a zombie. We asked people about problems or inefficiencies in their industry that could be solved by Saas products and then sent those ideas out as a daily newsletter. I learned a lot, but had difficulty making money with it. Also, I'm not totally sure my heart was in it. I think about it a lot. I've recently launched a new project…

Those are actual, real world requests in the oppslist?

They are responses to surveys. Not users who signed in to post the idea. But yeah, they are real people.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#24

Post by stakkur »

Last year, I built a local/regional tech job listing website, targeted at helping 'older' people (35ish and up, of any gender) looking to find work--experienced or not. $100 listings.

Plenty of traffic. Totally failed. Started MVP by pulling in listings from elsewhere, but couldn't get a single listing.

Why did it fail? I think because:

1. Companies had zero interest in targeting 'older' workers in tech, despite them being the second-largest discrimination group (after women) in technology. I got more than one 'why would we target them?' response.

2. I didn't solicit the right people (or in the right way) for listings

3. Inexperience: I'm not very skilled at marketing, and saw a real need but clumsily approached it

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#26

Post by bcherny »

Lease.ly, a common app for apartment rentals.

- In SF (a seller’s market), prospective tenants only wanted to use it if their prospective landlords asked for it, or if it gave them an advantage over other prospective tenants

- Landlords have their existing process that works, and didn’t want to change it. Things like comparison views for tenants, pulling in social media info, and automatic credit reports were helpful, but since for most SF landlords getting new tenants is low frequency (unlike, say, NY), the value was low

For each, the value prop was unclear.

If I were to try it again, I’d try to understand the market better and find the right subset of landlords and tenants, and the right geo, to focus on first.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#27

Post by supercall »

cdiamand wrote: post #11

I launched, and have now shut down oppsdaily.com. https://oppslist.com is still up as a zombie. We asked people about problems or inefficiencies in their industry that could be solved by Saas products and then sent those ideas out as a daily newsletter. I learned a lot, but had difficulty making money with it. Also, I'm not totally sure my heart was in it. I think about it a lot. I've recently launched a new project…

how did you survey people? if you dont mind me asking

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#28

Post by scribu »

RikNieu wrote: post #15

https://coddle.app/ Coddle is a service that checks if your sites are online, how fast they load, and lets you know if something is wrong. As a bonus, it takes screen shots of your sites with a selection of device options. It didn't pick up the traction I was expecting, guess this is not really something people need. I learned a lot making it though and will use it for my own sites, so not a complete loss.

> It didn't pick up the traction I was expecting, guess this is not really something people need.

Or maybe they just use https://pingdom.com

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#29

Post by bcherny »

cdiamand wrote: post #11

I launched, and have now shut down oppsdaily.com. https://oppslist.com is still up as a zombie. We asked people about problems or inefficiencies in their industry that could be solved by Saas products and then sent those ideas out as a daily newsletter. I learned a lot, but had difficulty making money with it. Also, I'm not totally sure my heart was in it. I think about it a lot. I've recently launched a new project…

I was a subscriber for a while. Fun idea!

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#30

Post by botwriter »

stakkur wrote: post #24

Last year, I built a local/regional tech job listing website, targeted at helping 'older' people (35ish and up, of any gender) looking to find work--experienced or not. $100 listings. Plenty of traffic. Totally failed. Started MVP by pulling in listings from elsewhere, but couldn't get a single listing. Why did it fail? I think because: 1. Companies had zero interest in targeting 'older' workers in tech, despite them…

you could say 'get woke go broke' applied.

Why would companies put themselves at a net disadvantage by actively targetting older SE's who are more likely to know their rights and not accept 18 hour days.

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