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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

#261

Post by nscalf »

skrtskrt wrote: post #158
nscalf wrote: post #5

I don’t have a site to point to anymore, but me and some cofounders built out a physical therapy vertical saas (patient management + mobile patient portal). The issue: many PTs are VERY analog—sheets of papers with exercise, very few touch points, no data collection, etc. The solution: modern patient management system for doctors, a mobile app that will remind you to do your prescribed exercises, track your response,…

Did you know much about the PT field beforehand? It seems to me that really successful entrepreneurship requires enough time in that field to really understand the rough edges of the domain, but not so much time in the field that you actually start to accept the existing solutions as “good enough” in a sort of stockholm syndrome. You need to be an expert with a beginner’s mind, which is extremely difficult.

I didn't work in the field, but I had a good friend who was doing weekly product planning calls and getting us in front of PT's on a regular basis to show our product and discuss what they felt was important. I agree with you, it would have been better to have some personal experience, but I'm not sure if this was sufficient or not.

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

#262

Post by nscalf »

jbmsf wrote: post #151
nscalf wrote: post #5

I don’t have a site to point to anymore, but me and some cofounders built out a physical therapy vertical saas (patient management + mobile patient portal). The issue: many PTs are VERY analog—sheets of papers with exercise, very few touch points, no data collection, etc. The solution: modern patient management system for doctors, a mobile app that will remind you to do your prescribed exercises, track your response,…

My spouse is a PT and hates her software. I get the sense that she also has an above average appreciation for the needs of the admin staff. They quote literally make the difference between a good day and a bad one by the choices they make around scheduling. The problem is that she works for a large chain and the people with purchasing power are not clinicians.

Good point, and this was another problem we hit. Procurement for larger practices was done outside of the individual offices, making the sales less direct and more complicated to find the right person to talk to. Ultimately, we decided to target smaller practices hoping for a more straight forward sales process due to this.

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

#263

Post by nscalf »

kmarc wrote: post #189
nscalf wrote: post #5

I don’t have a site to point to anymore, but me and some cofounders built out a physical therapy vertical saas (patient management + mobile patient portal). The issue: many PTs are VERY analog—sheets of papers with exercise, very few touch points, no data collection, etc. The solution: modern patient management system for doctors, a mobile app that will remind you to do your prescribed exercises, track your response,…

Sorry to hear that it became a failure. My PT uses a software exactly like this, and that made it possible that my progress was tracked during my months long vacation too, all online. The app: https://medbase.physiapp.com/ (in German) PS. it worked, my back problems are gone.

Ahh yes, I know a few people who work in healthcare tech in Germany and it seems like you're way ahead of us. I'm glad you're able to leverage tech a bit more effectively over there. My impression is that the tools the US uses are far behind due to over regulation, which I hope is changing as a result of covid.

And don't be sorry! Most people who have a successful startup have many failed startups behind them, there's only one way to learn most of these lessons.

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

#264

Post by kingcharles »

NithurM wrote: post #256
NithurM wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really missed a boat on torrent, too young :p $13m is huge.

Curious to know how revenue comes in torrent? ads?

On a private torrent tracker you have to keep "ratio", which means you have to upload as much data as you download. This is impossible for most people so trackers often allow you to donate to the running costs of the site in exchange for bypassing the economy and having your upload increased based on the amount of your donation.

Of course, the donations vastly outweighed the actual hosting costs and the excess goes into the pockets of the site owners.

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

#265

Post by scary-size »

ezekg wrote: post #49

I’ve had a couple failed projects I can share: - https://web.archive.org/web/20190528152755/https://www.theme... desktop app for local WordPress development, built on top of a CLI I made. Had a few hundred MRR within a couple weeks. It used Vagrant under the hood (right when Docker was blowing up), app was built on React (in Coffeescript - https://web.archive.org/web/20180809151636/https://alpacaget... web app to dis…

I’m building something similar, though much simpler. A desktop app for creating static websites. You build your site offline and preview locally. Then deploy it to hosting, currently integrated with Vercel. But it also outputs the static files. Have a few thoughts about monetization, though that would be more of a “nice to have”.

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

#266

Post by dazc »

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 met similar people who'll spend forever talking the talk but as soon as it gets to laying down some cash or doing some physical/mental work they lose interest very quickly.

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

#267

Post by dazc »

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.

Accepting GP didn't intend to imply this but, generally speaking, many people would judge you as unsecessful but that is their problem and not yours.

I drive a 12 year old car that has been reliable as any new car I've owned and drives pretty much as well too. The fact that I am not impressing anyone as a consequence is something I've grown to be comfortable with as I have gotten older.

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

#268

Post by ges »

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…

funny thing: you would be raising millions in seconds if you launched the same project and stuck the label "play-to-earn" to it today

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

#269

Post by davidmurdoch »

ges wrote: post #268
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…

funny thing: you would be raising millions in seconds if you launched the same project and stuck the label "play-to-earn" to it today

Monetization was tricky because we didn't want any pay-to-win type of gimmicks. Instead, we were planning on game customization and in-game promos for fast food places and theme parks (e.g., show up at a McDonald's and you could win something you can't get anywhere else in the game).

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

#270

Post by posix86 »

nscalf wrote: post #5

I don’t have a site to point to anymore, but me and some cofounders built out a physical therapy vertical saas (patient management + mobile patient portal). The issue: many PTs are VERY analog—sheets of papers with exercise, very few touch points, no data collection, etc. The solution: modern patient management system for doctors, a mobile app that will remind you to do your prescribed exercises, track your response,…

How many doctors did you ask? I've considered a similar startup idea with some colleagues. I think what's important in this field is that you find _a_ doctor / therapist willing to work with you on this, others will follow suit once they realize that it works. Further, finding this doctor will be hard. So you have to ask and pitch to many, many doctors, until you find one that is willing to work against the "tried and tested" method, risking going bankrupt, but also having a chance of being at the front if the next disrupting change.
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