Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by muzani » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

reactspa wrote: post #173

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…

I drive a 20 year old middle-class car. I drive it because it's been reliable and fuel-efficient, and I have no reason to replace it. GP would judge me as financially unsuccessful and not pay me any mind if I needed a problem solved. GP has been played by these "mercedes having" people and GP's own pre-conceived immature notions about status-signaling.

It's not the full data set. It's about 1/3 of all things past prototype stage, and half of failures. It's the failures between prototype and market. Some fail when they hit market. These didn't even hit market, so they're just pointless incomplete failures. No big wins yet, but enough to make a career of it.

If anything, the data makes me biased against people with nice cars. I expected most of the outrage to be from those who bought expensive cars.

Many of the relatively successful ones have been partners who owned no cars, though one guy has a very nice MPV.

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

#232

Post by lisper » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 3:45 AM UTC

nso95 wrote: post #221

lisper wrote: post #169

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 recomme…

You think the company failed because you didn't require black cars? Seems unlikely...

The company failed because I couldn't figure out how to get critical mass on the supply side. I was based in LA. I tried and failed to get meetings with cab companies. Uber didn't go that route. They got the black car limos instead for their launch. That never occurred to me, nor anyone on my team. If it had, I might have succeeded.

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

#233

Post by srcreigh » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 3:51 AM UTC

scyclow wrote: post #219

I tried to sell pictures of discarded ketchup packets as NFTs [1]. They didn't sell very well. I guess the market for ketchup packets isn't as hot as I thought it was. I learned that flashy websites can't quite sell everything. [1] https://steviep.xyz/natural-flavors/

Did you consider using thumbnails? The 6MB 4kx4k images powering your grid make your site look reallllly slow, even with fast internet.

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

#234

Post by jkhdigital » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #196

Automated an improved Threat Risk Assessment process in a collaboration tool SAaS, learned people outside security don’t care about modelling risk at the design stage for two reasons. The first is the 3rd party advice is what makes it valuable, and anything beyond basic compliance is economically wasted. Second was security governance people and consultants jobs depend on the flexibility to make their own representat…

> A cluttered spreadsheet is someone’s job, that is someone else’s headcount, in still someone else’s budget, as part of yet someone else’s opex projection, provided as part of a financing, that yields someone’s commission, carry, and management fee.

A very important lesson that I learned during three agonizing years as a management consultant with a large IT outsourcer.

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

#235

Post by DangitBobby » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

xavdid wrote: post #171

sdflhasjd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Riot Games did this one year for April Fools in League of Legends. Normally you can play a 5v5 match against other players, beginner bots, or intermediate bots. For April Fools, they rolled out "Advanced Bots", which were actually another group of 5 humans, but with their username replaced with " Bot". Word got out pretty fast, but it was super funny queuing up for a game you'd normally win easily and being surprised…

Okay, that's pretty funny.

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

#236

Post by kingcharles » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

xmaayy wrote: post #218

kingcharles wrote: post #47

Created a site in the early aughts and tried to charge $1 a piece for people to make their own avatars. Nobody paid. Had to make it free about a month later. Now Flash is dead, so site no good. http://www.dudefactory.com/ Spent about a year building the absolute best text-message short-code system that let you run groups, competitions, surveys, take payments. Kept adding features and yak-shaving and forgot to actuall…

#1 sounds like very early NFTs

It's funny. As soon as I wrote the comment and went back to look at the site I thought "Punks! Apes!" Yet again, I was too early.

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

#237

Post by appleaday1 » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 5:20 AM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #196

Automated an improved Threat Risk Assessment process in a collaboration tool SAaS, learned people outside security don’t care about modelling risk at the design stage for two reasons. The first is the 3rd party advice is what makes it valuable, and anything beyond basic compliance is economically wasted. Second was security governance people and consultants jobs depend on the flexibility to make their own representat…

Isn't this how log4j happened? No one cared enough about checking dependencies. Anyway interesting post aligns up with what I have been exposed as well, it sucks that people don't take cybersecurity more seriously earlier in the project phase.

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

#238

Post by skbohra123 » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 5:24 AM UTC

My first failed project was Iddhis.com, an anti-social network where you can connect with only your close friends. Some media coverage here - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/iddhis-ai...

My second failed project was RingAd.net - an android app which gave you coupons for listening to advertisement jingles as your mobile ringtone. Some media coverage - http://www.sunday-guardian.com/investigation/download-a-free...

My third failed project was a Board/Card game, it also failed to pick up after initial buzz. https://yourstory.com/2014/06/geekybuddha/amp

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

#239

Post by garbagecoder » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 5:40 AM UTC

mysterydip wrote: post #200

garbagecoder wrote: post #177

All of my failed projects have the same problem. For some reason, my interest just switched off. What was an intensely interesting learning experience that I would work on in every spare minute just stopped being interesting. Quite often, this happens before I have a working thing made. In fact, my successful projects all have these same discontinuities they just come after it’s working.

Your wording (hyperfocus, sudden loss of interest, lots of projects) makes me think of a common symptom of ADHD; have you had a diagnosis before?

Oh, for sure. And for day to day, treatment helps, but long-term I either am into it or not.

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

#240

Post by ChuckMcM » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 5:53 AM UTC

wbc wrote: post #227

ChuckMcM wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well to be fair it was Diet (so not the load on the spleen that a sugar load would be) but alas, I could easily consume several cans per hour. One engineer at NetApp joked they knew how long the meeting I was attending was going to be by the number of cans I brought with me. Not a regimen I recommend but as vices go it was relatively benign. A couple of years ago I stopped all consumption, and then when started dieti…

I thought it wasn't just the sugar but the carbonated water negatively impacts digestion. Do you ever get weird stomach aches?

No I did not, and my doctor felt I was rather healthy.

Funny story though, I was rather heavy and a regular blood donor. One of the things they do here when you donate (or used to) was test your cholesterol level and report it back to you in the mail. Mine was always in the "good" range. So I got a call one day from the hospital where I normally donate (it is a research hospital) asking if I would be interested in taking part in a study and I agreed. When I went in for the interview it turns out they were looking for fat people with low cholesterol. They paid me $50 to participate which consisted of a blood test and a notebook. They asked me to write down everything I ate for a week, then came back, got another blood test and another notebook. They looked at what I wrote in the first notebook, asked me to add a couple of things which were different vegetables as I recall. Then sent me on my way for another week. End of the week turn in my second notebook and collect my $50.

The first question from the grad student who collected my first notebook was, "Did you really drink this much soda this week?", answer yes. Second time I turned in my notebook he looked at me and said "You drink this much EVERY week?" and I said "Yup, pretty much."

He was surprised I could sleep at night with that much caffeine but it wasn't a problem for me.