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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

#161

Post by davidmurdoch »

hutzlibu wrote: post #159
davidmurdoch wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 roug…

"I was okay with shipping with these issues, but the other partners weren't." Maybe on a different timeline, you would have regretted shipping too early - because first impression matters, too and many people who walk away, after the first try will not come back for second try. The trick is, to find the right time.

Sure, hindsight is 20/20. Really though, we probably would have failed either way, mostly because we didn't know the right people.

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

#162

Post by hutzlibu »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #161
hutzlibu wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I was okay with shipping with these issues, but the other partners weren't." Maybe on a different timeline, you would have regretted shipping too early - because first impression matters, too and many people who walk away, after the first try will not come back for second try. The trick is, to find the right time.

Sure, hindsight is 20/20. Really though, we probably would have failed either way, mostly because we didn't know the right people.

"Really though, we probably would have failed either way, mostly because we didn't know the right people."

Maybe, but from the little I read, it seems like it might have been more the technical challenges (performance) too hard to overcome with the given ressources/target hardware.

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

#163

Post by nonplus »

bckr wrote: post #124
nonplus wrote: post #56

Sometime after 2009 I started working on a data mining app that allowed a user to enter medications and cross reference drug interactions. At the time opendata was one of the main information sources, now I think those datasets are managed by openfda. I brought one person in to work on that with me, they proceeded to buy a domain for the top product name we were considering (canitake.com) within the first day. It was…

> they proceeded to buy a domain for the top product name we were considering (canitake.com) within the first day I understand this may be a meme, but did you actually take this as a serious red flag, and is this why you stopped working with them, or were there other factors?

Personally buying ip for a project you just started working on as someone expected to be a contributor? Yeah I'm serious (That I take that as a flag now). There were accounts and avenues to buy a domain when ready for that.

It showed they couldn't communicate well, couldn't work in stealth mode, couldn't focus on building/proving out the mvp.

Other factors are just hindsight/observing them the decade after. Two of those factors might be. 1. Repeatedly quitting contracts (if it's not a good fit fine, if it's never a good fit maybe you're missing skills to complete a project).

2. Comments/behaviors that illustrated they would have been a poor manager if we scaled/inability to be wrong.

For me, other developers and contributors have been one of the most important factors for success/completing projects/keeping clients (in the contracting space). So I consider this an important lesson I was fortunate to learn early. I don't know who I would be working with now if I had failed to keep great talent around me (or for that matter, what skills I would not have developed).

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

#164

Post by rafale »

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…

That's an amazing trailer!

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

#166

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

I wrote an app where users could create their own "nano" apps by writing a few lines of JS-like code. Many things like clock, reminders, weather, stock quotes don't really need a separate 50MB app, they could be written in 2 lines of JS. In 5 lines, one could create an app to notify about arbitrage opportunities on various crypto exchanges.

Included mobile IDE, run-as-you-type debugger, and an app store.

Google blocked it, for the reason I never got to investigate, because by that time I got rich from other projects.

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

#167

Post by anyfactor »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #104
anyfactor wrote: post #89

Robintwits Based on the Robinhood API, I attempted to merge Stocktwits API to create hype stock trend analysis platform. I wanted to combine both the buy side and hype side of these stocks into a very basic analytics platform. After Robinhood shut down their unofficial API my project was dead. Also Stocktwits are quite restrictive with their API use now, I believe. Lesson learned: Platform risk is an obvious threat t…

Oh man, that sucks. That sounds like a reasonable, maybe even pretty good idea compared to most on here. But you got really unlucky I think.

haha thanks, friend. Appreciate it. I didn't get hit as hard as Robintrack though. They essentially bought Robinhood's unofficial API to public interest which essentially led Robinhood to close that down.

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

#168

Post by jmchuster »

muzani wrote: post #92
eganist wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They own a Mercedes, BMW, or Mazda RX-8. I'm not trying to be glib, but what quality of a person or partner were you looking to assess with this measurement? Asking because I've never thought to consider the car a person drives as part of evaluating a potential partnership. I guess what I'm trying to land on is how you encountered and partnered with people who did as you described multiple times, and I'm leaning to…

This probably means a lot less if you live in a developed country. Malaysia probably has some of the most expensive cars in the world. They're like student loans in the US. People here get very emotional about them because they're "necessary". You can live without a car, but it limits your opportunities by a lot. A car often takes 9 years to pay off, the prices are artificially high thanks to bad government policies,…

Yes, i think that cultural divide is what confused people. In the US, those are cars that yuppies buy after their first paycheck.

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

#169

Post by lisper »

I've launched six failed startups.

FlowNet (early 90s), a high-speed (500 Mb/s) local area network designed to compete with FDDI, Fast Ethernet, and mainly ATM which was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. Offered QoS guarantees back when that was a big deal. Died because gigabit ethernet happened instead.

IndieBuyer (2003-2006) - a marketplace for independent movies on DVD. The angle was that we would provide recommendations, and anything you bought from the recommended list would come with a money-back guarantee. Recommendations would be provided by an algorithm that matched people with similar tastes in films as measured by the ones they returned. Died because streaming.

Evryx (2006-2008) - reverse image search. We held the patent. Died because the tech founder went non-linear and vetoed a funding round in 2008 right before the crash.

iCab (2008) - a competitor to Uber, launched at the same time as Uber and for much the same reason. But Uber thought of using black cars and I didn't so they won and I lost.

Virgin Charter (2008-2009) - Originally called Smart Charter, it was on-line marketplace for charter jets, acquired pre-launch by Richard Branson. Failed because Virgin didn't understand how the business model was supposed to work and tried to remake the company in its own image as a popular consumer-facing brand. Interesting aside: our bizdev guy was Jody Sherman [1].

Founders Forge (2009-2013) - Like Angel List but with financial services that were intended to be a wedge to launch a digital currency. (This was before BitCoin was a thing.) Failed because I couldn't find a bank that would work with me.

Spark Innovations (2014) - Launched with a product that slurped up large Excel spreadsheets and let people manipulate them like databases using an intuitive web interface. Failed when all three of our launch customers rejected the MVP without telling us why. Tried pivoting with a crypto product (a small cheap HSM), but turns out that's a very hard market to penetrate.

Bonus failure:

In 2007 I decided to diversify my risk by investing in real estate. Got into a New Zealand condo development in Queenstown and learned the hard way that you can lose all your money in real estate if you are leveraged and a historic market crash happens right as you are ready to break ground.

Despite all this, I have a great life. I've met some great people, learned a lot, built some cool shit, and generally had a good time despite learning the hard way that I'm not a particularly good entrepreneur. Main lesson learned: don't let failure get you down. You never know when the odds are going to tilt your way. The only ting that guarantees failure is not trying.

---

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jody-sherman-ecomom-2013-...

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

#170

Post by munib_ca »

Doches wrote: post #8

I'm sure you'll get a fair number of interesting stories here, but you'll find a _ton_ at IndieHackers ( https://indiehackers.com ) which is a sort of spin-off community from HN that's focuses more on bootstrappers and solo founders. For me, I launched a five projects in 2021 that were a mix of total flops and sorta-flops, and they all flopped for the same reason: * Saascast.io (https://saascast.io/) -- revenue forec…

Very cool insight, I also came to a similar conclusion after my short stints.

Can you update the link for rent robin? A quick google search points to a property management company from Kansas.

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