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

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161–170 of 223 posts

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

#161
Built https://gotmemo.net . Couldn’t find a way to identify where/how I can target potential customers. Got listed on asana as an integration but interest seems very low. My plan was to rely on paid ads (fb) but their costs ended up higher than expected.

In retrospect, launching a lander to see if I can even get some emails before building a product is a must.

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

#162

My two latest failed projects were a SaaS to help landlords manage their properties, including rent payment management, and an analytics tool that consolidated data from real estate property in a excel so people looking to buy or rent could analyse the options in a more effective way than going property by property in the listing site. Both projects failed because I could not attract users in a consistent way. I coul…

Hi, I am in your target for Turbovar, but it's not clear to me why I would chose it (and pay) instead of JHipster

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give tips about this ? I'm trying to build a Gmail add-on that works with Spreadsheet(contacts + headers to filter) and reverse chrono counting unread emails

Tips about what specifically?

About working with Spreadsheet as database ? About running it automatically etc..

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

#165

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…

I disagree. Marketing gets people in. Users guide product development and thus the product. If an ”unstable product” is one that users actually want to use, then I guess an unstable product is a good thing?

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

#166
post #8

https://www.thechillypony.com An email alert for horse owners/barn managers when the forecast will be colder than a configured threshold temperature. It's saved us a lot of mental energy this winter (having to check not just the forecast but also making sure to check the temp at 3 AM with windchill factored in, etc...). Got zero interest from various equestrian forums. shrug . I taught myself Spring Boot through so t…

forums are a tricky one. It needs multiple accounts to shill for you and praise you. I've got BHW and a few other forums wrapped around my little finger.

HN excepted of course!

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tips about what specifically?

About working with Spreadsheet as database ? About running it automatically etc..

I used Google Scripts for everything. Can programmatically read and edit a Google Sheet easily enough; true DB queries are trickier. Running is based on triggers you can set up for a script; or I think a script can programmatically set them up. Look up the Google Developer site; it's a good resource.

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

#168

Launched https://www.easydatatransform.com earlier this year. It has sold some licenses and I wouldn't call it a failure yet, but the visit to download ratio is low compared to my other 2 commercial products. Not sure why. I'm pretty sure the traffic is targeted, I am solving a real problem and the website explains what it does. Any feedback would be welcome!

In a recent job, I was a software engineer who worked with the data science people in an "analytics" group. A big PITA for us was the data we'd get from various sources (vendors/clients/whomever). Oh, there's a rando string in a "number" field in row 9,100,500, huh, that sucks. You can't always build the validation into your ETL pipeline for various reasons. Or it fails the whole file (b/c the data science folks buil…

I can tell you from experience that this is primarily a Business Transformation problem more than a technical one. A tool would of course be helpful but solves only 5% of the real problem.

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

#169

Mine failed before I could really launch it. Basically, I wanted to do a financial app to help people get out of debt, but the company I was going to use changed their fee structure just before I launched, causing transaction costs to eat all of my margin. I may try to relaunch if I can find a good partner, but it just seems the anything related to finance is going to be a huge pain. I'm currently looking at other op…

You could just raise your prices. Look at the value it provides and price it accordingly. Do not price it based on what you personally can tolerate. Different people are willing to pay different prices for a product that works. Start high and work downwards. Find the sweet spot.

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

#170
post #88

http://flowgrid.org Idea was that on mobile, programming would be simpler graphically, taking advantage of the touch screen. It wasn't really. Or I gave up too early... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think you should explicitly market it as an educational tool for kids.
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