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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?

#131

Post by jakequade »

erikrothoff wrote: post #99
umvi wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you build it first, and then market it? You can pretend it is still under development if that will convince more people to sign up, but I don't understand why marketing needs to be there from day 1. But also marketing seems like a money black hole to me. I could sink tons of money into marketing and have little to show for it.

As developers we often assume ”build it and they will come”. Or that marketing or sales is something that is bolted on afterwards. What we forget is that marketing is a full time job that requires a full set of skills, experience and intuitions to do well. If you build something for 6 months and THEN start the marketing, its like starting from scratch all over again. You have zero experience to work from or iterate o…

I think you're both giving marketing too much credit in the product's creation, and inverting the creation process in general.

> It’s like waiting to build the backend until the frontend is 100% complete

It's more like building a backend, then realising that the data structures could be improved when you're building the front. Marketing at best provides enhancements, not core changes (unless your product itself was incorrect to begin with).

Honestly, if your marketing affects your product as much as you're suggesting, you have a pretty unstable product.

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

#132

Post by nefitty »

brlewis wrote: post #112

First I'll explain what I mean by "failed". I'm not shutting down or ceasing development. But since I have a previous side project that never became profitable, I made an agreement with my wife that if I didn't get 10 paid users in February, I'd de-emphasize this project and focus on other things. So far I have 2 paid users, and they're both people I know. It's pretty obvious February won't see 10 paid users. Now the…

I really like this. I want to try it out. I am hesitant to sign up because the only options are via Twitter and Facebook. I use Twitter. Here are the permissions it asks from my Twitter account, although I'm not sure if this is just standard:

> This application will be able to:

>See Tweets from your timeline (including protected Tweets) as well as your Lists and collections.

>See your Twitter profile information and account settings.

>See accounts you follow, mute, and block.

I would be more comfortable with an email or Google sign in.

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

#133

Post by woutr_be »

Private emails; Forwarding emails to random addresses for privacy reasons. It supported multiple recipients, black listing of senders and domains, muting addresses.

I know it had been done before, but I wanted to see if I could improve existing solutions. I never ended up launching because I felt insecure about my solution (even though I tested it).

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

#134

Post by shireboy »

I published Trello Dojo https://leanpub.com/trellodojo a while back. I’m not sure it’s a complete failure: Joel tweeted it, it helped some people, and I made about 20k in royalties. But they have since added templates and other features and I haven’t updated the book in a while. I’ve been trying to find time to update it for a few years now, and just haven’t. I also have a company that wants a developer specific version and haven’t gotten to that either. I also have a Trello board of a hundred or so ideas, but have learned ideas are cheap- making time and energy to actually build and market is the hard thing.

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

#135

Post by edoceo »

BooneJS wrote: post #45
noir_lord wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the early planning stages of doing something somewhat similar for motorcycle riders (which I am one), you feed it your commute route, typical times and it then sends you a summary of the next days commute (or ride) including interpreting the forecast in the context of a motorcycle (i.e. gust delta against base wind speed, temps below 0 in the preceeding 12hrs, estimated windchill at 40mph, 50mph, 60mph and sug…

My wife and I took a road trip to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA for our honeymoon in 2002. We were passing through a storm along I90 in South Dakota when we later realized we drove between 2 tornados. Since then I've wished that Google Maps would add a road trip weather option given that it predicts roughly where you'll be and when for possibly the next 10 hours in a drive.

TornadoGuard: https://m.xkcd.com/937/

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

#136

Post by brlewis »

nefitty wrote: post #132
brlewis wrote: post #112

First I'll explain what I mean by "failed". I'm not shutting down or ceasing development. But since I have a previous side project that never became profitable, I made an agreement with my wife that if I didn't get 10 paid users in February, I'd de-emphasize this project and focus on other things. So far I have 2 paid users, and they're both people I know. It's pretty obvious February won't see 10 paid users. Now the…

I really like this. I want to try it out. I am hesitant to sign up because the only options are via Twitter and Facebook. I use Twitter. Here are the permissions it asks from my Twitter account, although I'm not sure if this is just standard: > This application will be able to: >See Tweets from your timeline (including protected Tweets) as well as your Lists and collections. >See your Twitter profile information and…

You can try it out without even signing in. It will use localStorage.

I'll look into reducing the permissions it asks for. Those are the passport-twitter defaults.

EDIT: Looks like I can't set it to ask for fewer permissions. My choices are "read only" (currently selected), "read-write", and "read-write, and direct messages".

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

#137

Post by nefitty »

brlewis wrote: post #136
nefitty wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like this. I want to try it out. I am hesitant to sign up because the only options are via Twitter and Facebook. I use Twitter. Here are the permissions it asks from my Twitter account, although I'm not sure if this is just standard: > This application will be able to: >See Tweets from your timeline (including protected Tweets) as well as your Lists and collections. >See your Twitter profile information and…

You can try it out without even signing in. It will use localStorage. I'll look into reducing the permissions it asks for. Those are the passport-twitter defaults. EDIT: Looks like I can't set it to ask for fewer permissions. My choices are "read only" (currently selected), "read-write", and "read-write, and direct messages".

Awesome, thanks for looking into it. I’ll try it out!

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

#138

Post by amoitnga »

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.

neat. expensive.

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

simon_weber wrote: post #20

https://repominder.com sends release reminders for your open source projects. It works by monitoring the diff between your development branch and how you release (eg tags or another branch). It works well for me and one other power user, but hasn't grown beyond that. My guess is it's just a failure of marketing -- I make lots of these projects that scratch an itch and then just hope people will find them. At least it…

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by exclusiv »

greentrust wrote: post #18
jacquesm wrote: post #5

If you start a side project with the goal to make money then you are making an error of definition. A side project should have the goal of teaching you something or being useful in some other way. If it doesn't then it has failed. If it makes money that's gravy but it should definitely not be the first factor in deciding whether or not it has failed.

The goal of a side project can be whatever a person wants it to be. Make money. Learn something. Improve people's lives. Creative outlet. Your definition limits people's ambitions.

Agreed. I started a side project SaaS with the goal of being the top product in it's niche and making enough money that I could live on it passively (if needed) and I accomplished that. I do think you should be highly interested in the subject, so not doing only for the money. And also don't underestimate the value of recruiting subject matter experts to help you.

But when I look at side projects for myself, I look at who's making money already in a subject I care about and if I can do it better.

In the things I failed at in the past, I was chasing new things that I wasn't particularly interested in or didn't get the subject matter expertise required to succeed - one had an ad supported business model which just ended up causing me to try creating 2 businesses effectively at once instead of 1. Many people underestimate those things and I did that early on and failed.

As I've gotten older I mostly look at things where I can compete and just outperform versus trying to do something novel. A lot of people come to me w ideas and get discouraged when they find out that competition already exists for their idea.

Very hard to do something entirely new and succeed financially.

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