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

Post by rapphil » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

jakequade wrote: post #131

erikrothoff wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Post by wolco » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

bko wrote: post #86

impostervt wrote: post #74

https://www.sprinterval.com/ It's like Couch-2-5k for sprint intervals. I think that not a lot of people are into sprint intervals, or understand why they should be. Got around 70 users of the app per day on ios&android combined, but just couldn't get it to get any more traction. Pretty much mothballed now, removed from app stores.

Fitness apps are brutal. I have my failed fitness side project [0]. I thought a killer feature would be to have the popular 7-minute workout free with nice images, and customizable intervals. I even paid for some adwords and facebook but the market it brutal. The funny thing is alternatives were at the time (IMO) not better. They were corny, had ads or crazy permissions. I also made a free calculator as I was frustra…

Post by drenginian » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

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…

Post by james_s_tayler » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

Geee wrote: post #104

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…

Looking at the oppslist - I think the larger issue is that lots of people are unaware of software that already exist. The top request for example has been solved multiple times since 60's already. It's basic inventory management.

Post by doingmyting » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 6:30 AM UTC

shireboy wrote: post #134

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 vers…