251–260 of 285 posts
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/
http://tiredb.com A power user tire search with affiliate links. I did make some money off it but got super discouraged when I realized people were using the site to find tires, then searching for coupons or discounts, and my commission was being harvested by shitty SEO sites.
Just curious how did these shitty SEO site harvested your affiliate links ?
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…
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,…
Sorry to say but this explanation got me thinking.
Maybe those people actually had real insight that these ventures were not good investments. So I would not be so demeaning because they stopped being interested when it turned out there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of money to be spent. That it was good business idea for you - as you mention your time seemed to be worth less - it was not a good idea for them.
From reading both comments it seemed that you could benefit greatly from those deals and for them putting focus/money elsewhere was more beneficial.
As you wrote that comment and seem to have grudge against them, they took easy way out by not confronting you directly on that.
I still might be wrong but maybe they were gracious enough to leave you alone and not shatter your dreams.
I have seen in developed countries if you are sales person with a shiny car like BMW they will not deal with you and better strategy is to get high end VW to have nice stuff inside but from outside to seem like a decent person not a flashy sales scammer.
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…
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…
I really missed a boat on torrent, too young :p $13m is huge.
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…
Have you considered that you’re a common denominator in your half dozen examples? How could they all fail the same way with different people to blame?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mochi is not online first, it is offline first.
Ah whoops - you're right. Also - hi, it's you! If you're willing to talk shop, you can reach me at my HN handle at gmail.com. Primarily, I'm curious why no one else is building what I am - Github for flashcards. I've met someone who's trying to build Wikipedia for flashcards... but for me personally I'm more interested in something more decentralized. Not like crypto-decentralized, but like "everyone can have their o…
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…
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…
How many projects have you launched without them?