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Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

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Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#61

Post by dharmaturtle »

I tried to build StackOverflow for flashcards (i.e. spaced repetition with collaboration as a first class feature.) After working on it on nights/weekends for ~2 years, I realized my architecture was shit. I started out with Blazor + F# + PostGres, but eventually I realized that syncing offline client DBs to the cloud was a very nontrivial problem. So I moved to event sourcing. Turns out that's not much better - I started to write my own IndexedDB wrapper, then said "you're a moron" and switched to CouchDb/PouchDb/RxDB. I also wanted to support plugins. I thought I figured that out with Blazor, but eventually I realized that more powerful plugins would want to manipulate the DOM directly. Blazor's virtual DOM kills that possibility. So, I'm off the dotnet ecosystem (I am so, so sad to leave F#) and onto Typescript + SolidJS. I would've gone ReScript but that's tightly coupled to React which uses the VDom. Perhaps I should be using Svelte - I'm not 100% on any of this new architecture yet. So my project has not yet entirely failed... I just realized I spent ~2 years on the wrong architecture.

The carcass of my attempt in dotnet: https://github.com/dharmaturtle/cardoverflow

Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#62

Post by sdflhasjd »

et1337 wrote: post #57

I worked solo for three years on a 3D cyberpunk shooter all in a custom C++ engine. It was a hybrid single/multiplayer idea, where you would progress through the campaign and encounter other players at the same time. The twist was, in keeping with the cyberpunk theme, once you got to the end it would be revealed that all the players were actually bots the whole time. At first I was going to commit 100% to the decepti…

A game where bots turned out to be real players would have been fascinating though.

Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#63

Post by jimhi »

muzani wrote: post #40

Had several: last minute airline seat bidding app with an interested airline. Fishing competition app with paying users. Housing valuation app for a city council, with the actual city council interested and opening up their API to us. The city council also wanted a parking app and water billing app. A telco requested a reloading app that was basically CRUD but offered 6 digits for a few days of work. There was a diet…

I’ve been burned a few times but realized how I need to vet and communicate better before and while working with someone. I had a chance to see a venture fail for reasons other than an incompetent cofounder which was educational. And I had great success in my most recent venture.

You listed at least 4 ventures this was the cause of. I hope you have realized what you need to change as well.

Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#64

Post by et1337 »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #62
et1337 wrote: post #57

I worked solo for three years on a 3D cyberpunk shooter all in a custom C++ engine. It was a hybrid single/multiplayer idea, where you would progress through the campaign and encounter other players at the same time. The twist was, in keeping with the cyberpunk theme, once you got to the end it would be revealed that all the players were actually bots the whole time. At first I was going to commit 100% to the decepti…

A game where bots turned out to be real players would have been fascinating though.

And much easier! See, this is why a team of people is better than just one person with tunnel vision.

Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#65

Post by pskisf »

https://pski.net/2011/11/01/parkshark/

ParkShark was a parking space sharing iOS app. The technology was sound but the market timing was a little early. We were even talking to some larger delivery companies about a business-side component. The product failed because the two founders, myself and a friend, are engineers through-and-through. We just didn't have the passion for the business side of things to really make it happen.

Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#66

Post by maximp »

dharmaturtle wrote: post #61

I tried to build StackOverflow for flashcards (i.e. spaced repetition with collaboration as a first class feature.) After working on it on nights/weekends for ~2 years, I realized my architecture was shit. I started out with Blazor + F# + PostGres, but eventually I realized that syncing offline client DBs to the cloud was a very nontrivial problem. So I moved to event sourcing. Turns out that's not much better - I st…

Did you ever have any users? Or did the technical challenges stop you short of shipping the product?

Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#67

Post by dharmaturtle »

maximp wrote: post #66
dharmaturtle wrote: post #61

I tried to build StackOverflow for flashcards (i.e. spaced repetition with collaboration as a first class feature.) After working on it on nights/weekends for ~2 years, I realized my architecture was shit. I started out with Blazor + F# + PostGres, but eventually I realized that syncing offline client DBs to the cloud was a very nontrivial problem. So I moved to event sourcing. Turns out that's not much better - I st…

Did you ever have any users? Or did the technical challenges stop you short of shipping the product?

No users - no launch. I have many conversations with potential users though... I'm 100% positive this is something that people want. E.g. right now the way they solve the problem of collaborating on flashcards is by using _google sheets_ to collect errata on shared decks. https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/comments/f0bj27/o... This workflow involves manually checking the sheets link, downloading it, converting it to the correct format, importing it into your collection, and hope it doesn't override/corrupt your own customizations to a particular card. It's absolutely fucking nuts.

I'm 100% sure it (or something like it) is desperately needed by the world. However, students aren't really well known for paying for software, so this remains a nights/weekends thing.

Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#68

Post by davidmurdoch »

jwfriese wrote: post #59
davidmurdoch wrote: post #6

Spent about $200000 on developing a real-time massive multiplayer online strategy game just to run out of money then fail our Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/breadboard/terra-mango-... We already had 4000+ people sign up to play once it hit beta, and even had local news cover us: https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/terra-mango-could-be-the-n... We vastly underestimated our ability to market the game a…

You say that your team should have had the willingness to ship a flawed product sooner, and that maybe that would have changed your fortunes. If you're ok with sharing, I'd be interested in learning more about why you believe that. Did you hear that from former beta customers later on down the line? Is it an intuition you have from your reflections on the period? Also, what brand of "perfectionism" are were talking a…

The way I worded it was weird... we never shipped to beta, despite having 4000+ people sign up to be beta testers. We only shipped a "closed beta" (you had to ask one of the devs personally to let you in) to people in our own city. It was a location-based game (like Pokemon go), so there has to be a bunch of people in the area if your actually wanted to do anything fun.

Regarding perfectionism: the game was very rough around the edges in regards to in-game assets. Performance was also a concern, both on the device and the back-end. The device could slow to 1-2 FPS if there were enough assets (100s of troops firing at once - which was easy to do with a few friends playing together at once) animating at once. The server would slow to 4s+ response times if there was enough activity in a single geographic area.

I was okay with shipping with these issues, but the other partners weren't.

Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#69

Post by stirfish »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #62
et1337 wrote: post #57

I worked solo for three years on a 3D cyberpunk shooter all in a custom C++ engine. It was a hybrid single/multiplayer idea, where you would progress through the campaign and encounter other players at the same time. The twist was, in keeping with the cyberpunk theme, once you got to the end it would be revealed that all the players were actually bots the whole time. At first I was going to commit 100% to the decepti…

A game where bots turned out to be real players would have been fascinating though.

I played a game like this before. The whole journey took about 6 hours to complete. Realizing who I was interacting with was one of the best moments I've had playing a video game.

Edited to add: I think I've played two games where the bots turned out to be people. The second game was much longer, and I never finished it - I only learned that the bots were people from a YouTube video later on.

This is a good idea, and it is under-explored!

Spoiler: VGhlIGdhbWVzIGFyZSBKb3VybmV5IGFuZCBOZWlyOiBBdXRvbWF0YS4gVGhlc2UgZXh0cmEgY2hhcmFjdGVycyBoZXJlIGFyZSBiZWNhdXNlIEkga25vdyB5J2FsbCBjYW4gcmVhZCBiYXNlIDY0IGluIHlvdXIgaGVhZHMu

Re: Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned

#70

Post by ultrasounder »

vilvadot wrote: post #30

I launched ByteVitae ( https://bytevitae.com/ ) a couple of years ago, got a decent launch here and in Product Hunt, a bunch of users the first days ~3500 and a steady influx of users over the following months. I didn't know how to convert most of those users to clients, didn't talk to them, lost all interest after the initial launch and moved on after an amazing -26€ in benefits :P I learned so many things and was s…

Right!. But did you inform your customers that You were shutting down, what did you do with all the Datum that you collected(User Auth). Did You give them the opportunity for them to properly delete their account data stored on some DO droplet VPC waiting to be harvested?
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