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After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

dylanhuang.com

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Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#11

Post by dphuang2 »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #3

A failed startup is nothing to be embarrassed about, most of us don't have the guts to try it! You shouldn't expect much interest in the code, the value of a company's code without the business and people is quite negative when there isn't some technical secret sauce. Even if there was some technical wizardry people would just care about understanding how that one part worked and probably not use any of the code itse…

Konfig founder here, 100% agree. I wouldn't recommend anybody to actually try to decipher/deploy Konfig for their own use. I will say that one of our customers was able to deploy our docs platform for themselves while they find a way to deal with the blowout of Konfig shutting down.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#12

Post by xnx »

williamstein wrote: post #5

> “Our main product was an SDK Generator that could take any OpenAPI specification and generate high-quality client libraries in multiple programming languages.” This is something I could really use! Is there a product that does this and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg?

https://github.com/OpenAPITools/openapi-generator has 22K stars

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#13

Post by slowmovintarget »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #7
codingdave wrote: post #4

This is not the first story I've heard of a product that isn't quite right, but when deciding where to pivot, fell into AI as the answer and then failed. I've said it before, but it bears repeating - when we figure out what AI is good at and what it is not, we will start treating it as a tool instead of a goal, and our product ideation will stabilize.

Are you saying AI can't rescue a bad product idea by automating things? Like more efficiently doing something nobody wants done isn't a business?

My opinion: In software, the best use of AI is to create a do-what-I-mean UI. That is so-called AI (more to the point, use of LLMs and vision, speech, and audio processing) can allow new modes of interface that help a user operate the computer and achieve something that was nearly impossible with the user at the raw controls.

This will not produce superior work to someone who knows what they're doing at the controls. A competent programmer doesn't need this. An excellent touch typist doesn't need this. But let's say someone who has a vague idea of what outcome they want, but an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms to get there, can get further with a do-what-I-mean UI.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#15

Post by stuartjohnson12 »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #13
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying AI can't rescue a bad product idea by automating things? Like more efficiently doing something nobody wants done isn't a business?

My opinion: In software, the best use of AI is to create a do-what-I-mean UI. That is so-called AI (more to the point, use of LLMs and vision, speech, and audio processing) can allow new modes of interface that help a user operate the computer and achieve something that was nearly impossible with the user at the raw controls. This will not produce superior work to someone who knows what they're doing at the controls.…

Probably true with a more nuanced definition of "knowing what you're doing". I'm pretty good at writing code, Cursor is faster.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#16

Post by MangoCoffee »

dphuang2 wrote: post #11
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #3

A failed startup is nothing to be embarrassed about, most of us don't have the guts to try it! You shouldn't expect much interest in the code, the value of a company's code without the business and people is quite negative when there isn't some technical secret sauce. Even if there was some technical wizardry people would just care about understanding how that one part worked and probably not use any of the code itse…

Konfig founder here, 100% agree. I wouldn't recommend anybody to actually try to decipher/deploy Konfig for their own use. I will say that one of our customers was able to deploy our docs platform for themselves while they find a way to deal with the blowout of Konfig shutting down.

>I wouldn't recommend anybody to actually try to decipher/deploy Konfig for their own use.

This is interesting. I used to work for a mortgage start-up years ago. They built several products for banks and home builders, such as a mortgage vault and tools for signing mortgage documents online.

One condition I still remember was that bank customers required us to put our code in escrow, held by lawyers, in case the company went under. I always wondered if customers could rebuild the code, allocate more resources to develop and maintain it, or simply look for an alternative solution.

they came to us for our solution. I assumed they either couldn’t build it themselves or didn’t want to invest in a custom solution.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#18

Post by kaoD »

popalchemist wrote: post #14

I remember Konfig. Sorry you couldn't find fit, but great work nonetheless. About the code - would you be willing to add an MIT License? I don't see the code being used without a permissive license.

There's a LICENSE file. MIT in particular.

https://github.com/konfig-dev/konfig/blob/main/LICENSE

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