Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why? • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by ARCarr » Tue, Feb 25, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

rrivers wrote: post #118

Free election campaign platform for local candidates. (501c3 Non-profit w/ a revenue model) Purpose is to remove the financial barriers from running for community office (Mayor / Council / School Board). We incorporated a number of UX features to make the process as easy and convenient as possible for users to better understand which candidate options best aligned with their personal values. In 2018 we ran a beta tes…

I love this idea! I was recently trying to scrounge up information for the primary about who these local candidates were using Ballotpedia, but a lot of them had no website, or if they did it was it was _terrible_(both visually and information-wise).

It was honestly a lot of effort to determine who to vote for.

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

#212

Post by jimkri » Tue, Feb 25, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

james_impliu wrote: post #4

We launched a 1:1 tool for sales managers that used predictive analytics to suggest which deals needed to be discussed (ie Deal X looks like it's stuck). The reason being, when I was a sales manager, I found people would naturally talk about positive stuff rather than easily giving the whole picture. It failed because quite simply, when we tried to get other sales managers to use it for free (hoping it'd be popular),…

Thats an interesting idea. Have you tried talking with Directors/Executive/VPs?

My thinking is to target sales orgs that are going through restructuring or are focusing on major improvements/goals. Execs would push their managers to setup 1:1s for development in the company and career

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

#213

Post by ad31mar » Tue, Feb 25, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

bmm6o wrote: post #200

ad31mar wrote: post #64

https://binnedart.com A marketplace to connect artists looking to recoup the cost of supplies with art lovers who are looking for a bargain. Didn't pick up, even tho the initial feedback was great - guess the demand wasn't there after all, from both sides. It's still live, only losing money. https://damnshort.com Recently launched a service to serve nice (or so I thought) dotcoms at well below market value, however i…

I really like the idea of binnedart. I checked out the site. Are the prices USD? Measurements in cm seem incongruous. And maybe I'm not really the target market, but i didn't see anything i liked.

Good catch, thanks! I changed the currency from EUR to USD recently and forgot about the measurements. As for not liking anything, I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#214

Post by skreenr » Tue, Feb 25, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

Something I started as a "Scratching itch" thing:

- new way to personalize a smartphone with Wallpaper which plays animation aka Greets you! at Unlock: see example videos at wakeanimation.org

Seeking validation of the idea, I posted on Reddit at /r/androidapps which routinely gets 700-800 people hanging out at any time. Only 3 replied actually, which I interpreted as lackluster interest, although comments were strong positives.

Since then I built this little page explaining the concept, but had difficulty getting more definite hands up- or hands down- signal.

The app would take a bit more work and testing before it's ready for release. So I really would like to get better handle if this can get traction.

Looking at monetization figures on SensorTower, the Android Personalization category is not anywhere near the Games; only one/two apps really make decent sales.

Appreciate any pointers or thoughts, if anyone have experience and ideas to try.

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

#215

Post by bko » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 12:16 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #153

bko wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apps look great. Where it fails is the thumbnail. It has the correct feel but something about it prevents me from considering clicking it. What did you use to make the logos?

Affinity Designer

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

#216

Post by Can_Not » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

danfang wrote: post #35

https://get.thread-app.com It's an ad-free social network that is supposed to be a richer and more private alternative to Facebook. It's been adopted by my closest friends and family, but hasn't grown much beyond these initial users. The product itself tries to do a ton of stuff: messaging, photo sharing, event planning, location sharing, video sharing, etc. Perhaps that's part of the problem -- it doesn't do one thi…

Is registration disabled? If not, it seems like there's no way to sign up. Most likely why it's not growing.

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

#217

Post by h00dui » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

bcherny wrote: post #26

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…

did you pivot to VIN #s?? I'm interested in seeing what you had/have for lease.ly with regards to the common application.

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

#218

Post by SebastianKumor » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 11:39 AM UTC

I have tried to build a language learning app called Talking Ninja, heavily based on voice. I started with danish as thats where I live and its hard fro me to learn new language without being able to speak to someone/something. It was not the best choice of language to start and also the complexity of the voice tech behind it grew beyond my one man army skills at the time. Maybe one day I will try again.

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

#219

Post by axmangeorge » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

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…

(marketing guy here) - Topstonks is a wonderful idea. Like Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine and Janelle Shane's AI Weirdness blog had a baby.

I don't have a clue whether you can monetize it, though.

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

#220

Post by sethlivingston » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 3:28 PM UTC

I launched a little consulting side gig on Fiverr to build dashboards and reports on Google Data Studio.

The good: - I got plenty of customers (side gig volume) from all over the world. - Many of them were very happy with the results. - Collecting requirements for reports and dashboards is notoriously difficult and volatile, but I was able to keep this under control. I credit my age (48) and experience for that.

The bad: - I hitched my wagon to a tool that is not ready for prime time: Google Data Studio. I spent too much time wrestling with the tool. - The success of many projects depended not on my skills with Data Studio, but with the quality of the data sources and APIs that were feeding into Data Studio. Almost half the time, the quality was well below expectations, and I spent too much time wrestling with the integration.

In the end, I wasn't even close to making a reasonable hourly rate, and getting to the point where I could get past an hourly rate and make money at scale seemed impossible.

I happily shut it down after six months.