The saddest “just ship it” story (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#141

Post by konschubert » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #109

konschubert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, how do you know whether it's your product or your marketing that sucks? For example, I tried twitter ads for my product [1] and I got zero sales after spending $50. What are good marketing strategies for niche hardware products? [1] https://www.invisible-computers.com/

If your business wraps up does this turn into a pretty brick? My instant wonder and would be a deal breaker until I found out if the device pulls from the calendar directly or via a proxy you run if it helps any Going by the language in the privacy policy it’s the proxy method. I’d have to pass, personally. Looks great but I got no use for it if you shut down Also it’s “sold out” so I assume it doesn’t and won’t exis…

It’s pretty cheap to keep the API running and I promised myself I’d be doing that for many years even if I make 0 money with it.

But I want to be upfront about the fact that there are things beyond my control that might force me to shut down some or all functionality. For example, if google shuts down access to the calendar API, the calendar feature will be in trouble.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#142

Post by ambicapter » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #68

I've only ever "shipped" two independent projects, and they are the the best things I have ever done for myself in terms of development, both from a personal career growth perspective but even financially. I work at a nonprofit and I had done some ABSURDLY SIMPLE data analysis on a relatively annoying public data set to consume. I'd done it for our institution, but it was sort of straightforward to generalize it to a…

> The money award helped pay for my entire grad school tuition.

Is that what the award was...intended for? You maybe don't want to brag about that on the internet.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#143

Post by ackbar03 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

gamerDude wrote: post #93

onion2k wrote: post #25

"Maybe this is actually obvious, but it's still a common mistake in startups so I'll say it - you don't have to believe your product is good to start selling; you just have to be better than not having the product. You don't even have to believe it's the best, or believe it's complete, or even like it. People will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain point slightly less painful." Me, 3 hours ago.…

In fact, you don't even have to have a product to start selling. All my successful products and companies started by selling first and building something only once I already had someone who wanted it. Those turned into companies generating $100k/mon. The ones where I just went and built something and started selling the MVP are making a couple $100/mon.

Mind me asking what they are?

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#144

Post by openplatypus » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

I got stuck on weird integration with the payment processor. This, plus a few other minor issues set me back two months.

No biggy, right? Wrong. I have shipped B2B product in late November. Came in December downtime. Close to 4-5 months wasted because I delayed shipping.

Till day I slap myself in the face for that.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#145

Post by openplatypus » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

hoodwink wrote: post #65

what app is he talking about?

We will never know. He didn't ship it ;)

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#146

Post by hbn » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

johnhenry wrote: post #43

masto wrote: post #34

Mine was when the iPhone SDK was released. I’d made a small Mac thing and gone to a few WWDCs, and really wanted to be an app developer. I brainstormed some dumb ideas, but one day I was meeting up with some friends in the city and while waiting for them to show up, I thought “there should be an app for this”. It felt like I got a lot of blank stares when explaining the idea to people, but I went ahead and built a pr…

Don't feel bad. Even if you had continued with the idea, it may not have worked. In 2013 there was a company called "Twist" that invited users to share their location temporarily so that co-workers could know if they would be on time to meetings. At some point they shuttered most of their employees and decided to pivot into bitcoin as "BitGo". (Note that https://twist.com/ is an entirely different company now). I joi…

Now young people are just sharing their location all the time on Snapchat and they use that to track each other's locations.

I've heard of people in relationships where their SO expects them to always have their Snapchat location on to keep track of them, which is insane to me.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#147

Post by klysm » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

ambicapter wrote: post #142

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #68

I've only ever "shipped" two independent projects, and they are the the best things I have ever done for myself in terms of development, both from a personal career growth perspective but even financially. I work at a nonprofit and I had done some ABSURDLY SIMPLE data analysis on a relatively annoying public data set to consume. I'd done it for our institution, but it was sort of straightforward to generalize it to a…

> The money award helped pay for my entire grad school tuition. Is that what the award was...intended for? You maybe don't want to brag about that on the internet.

That’s what I was gonna say lol, pretty sure that’s not legal at all.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#148

Post by zild3d » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

scottndecker wrote: post #53

Not the saddest; just the most recurring "just ship it" story ever.

yeah this is the "just ship it" story with 1000 faces, not the saddest by any means

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#149

Post by sillycube » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

It doesn't matter at all. When you see the landing page of the product and some existing customers, it means that the market is valdiated.

You can still release your product and catch up. With a competitor working in the market, it's just like a north star. You can execute as fast as possible to get some customers.

I think the op is intrigued by his ego. The existing product is a good inspiration to valdiate his assumption

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#150

Post by pphysch » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

ambicapter wrote: post #142

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #68

I've only ever "shipped" two independent projects, and they are the the best things I have ever done for myself in terms of development, both from a personal career growth perspective but even financially. I work at a nonprofit and I had done some ABSURDLY SIMPLE data analysis on a relatively annoying public data set to consume. I'd done it for our institution, but it was sort of straightforward to generalize it to a…

> The money award helped pay for my entire grad school tuition. Is that what the award was...intended for? You maybe don't want to brag about that on the internet.

Usually the recruitment org will use the grant money to hire someone to work on the grant project, at which point the money is successfully laundered for any legal use by the employee.

Or you can simply attribute X% of an existing salary to the grant, and not even bother hiring someone new.

It's relatively easy to spend grant money on anything, as long as it's not in unreasonable amounts.