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Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

#11

Post by struppi »

I have several ideas I never started working on. I guess they don't count. Then I had some others that I never finished/validated.

http://gclimbing.com is not really a failed idea, more like a failed project. Some years ago, I administered a shared climbing blog in Austria. After some time, nobody was using it anymore (It was quite complicated to use). I wrote a new software and put it online, which is gclimbing.com - but it didn't really take off. Everybody was on facebook by that time.

Another idea I tried was http://scribblingspree.com - A player would draw a picture, the next would describe it, the next one draw something based on the description. This started as a project to practice wicket and javascript. It was just not that much fun to play after a couple of rounds. Note that I did not know DrawSomething when I wrote it.

I leave both projects online so I can link to them from my CV, but otherwise both are pretty much dead.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot: http://davidtanzer.net/node/82

Re: Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

#12

Post by shousper »

ddd1600 wrote: post #7

If you answer to yourself "none of them", there are two possibilities. No, three. Third one first: you're young enough to not feel guilty about not taking enough risk. First one: you're not taking enough risk. Second one: you know who you are.

I can choose option 4? I don't have the time and/or financial support to even give it a real shot.

Or is that the same as not taking enough risks?

Re: Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

#14

Post by dherken »

My greatest failed project was http://appsmerge.com

The idea was that you could combine all your social media news streams (fb, twitter usw..) into one stream (just like a rss reader). It never got above a few users, and i did not have any ads or anything in place. Still use it myself though...

Re: Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

#15

Post by yitchelle »

dherken wrote: post #14

My greatest failed project was http://appsmerge.com The idea was that you could combine all your social media news streams (fb, twitter usw..) into one stream (just like a rss reader). It never got above a few users, and i did not have any ads or anything in place. Still use it myself though...

If this project was to scratch your own itch, then I would say that this project is a huge success if you are still using it.

Re: Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

#16

Post by terhechte »

I have many, but the one that I invested most time in was QuoteVault http://www.quotevault.org/ It's a website where you can save interesting quotes from other sites or even pages / books. There's also a browser bookmark that allows you to select text on a website and import it into quotevault right away. Finally, there's a small public stream (much like your twitter stream) where you can share interesting quotes.

Here's a public quote from my public stream: http://quotevault.appspot.com/public/terhechte/261221

I've used the tool a lot, but I never really advertised it, in fear of failure I guess, so there're very few other users except for me. I still have a huge database of assorted business and entrepeneurship quotes in there though.

Re: Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

#17

Post by brandoncapecci »

consultutah wrote: post #3

My biggest failures have been: 1. A sms polling site that I ended up selling flippa for less than I'd like to admit. 2. A component that made authorize.net easy for .net developers. Over the years, I made quite a bit of money off of it, but stripe released, I decided to sell the site and component off to someone for about one month's revenue.

Your two biggest failures were acquisitions? Must really suck to be you :)

Re: Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

#18

Post by thibaut_barrere »

http://www.hackerbooks.com is a direct financial failure.

The income does not cover the hosting as is! Early on I expected it would be a small earner (maybe $50/mo) but we're not there even.

On the other hand, it had a fairly positive impact on the consulting/learning side of things (ETL, data processing etc).

Re: Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

#19

Post by suresk »

Too many to remember/list, unfortunately - some of them before I even started, many when I was halfway through building sort of an minimum product, and some after I'd actually launched them.

The one that hurts the most is an advertising analytics service (one of the first of its kind) I built over a decade ago - I was young and stupid, so there were some technical things I did wrong, but I also failed spectacularly at marketing. Looking back on it, I can see a huge amount of potential, and if I'd just done a handful of things differently, it could have made me a bunch of money.

I ended up selling it for a few thousand dollars, and the new owners didn't do anything with it.

Re: Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas?

#20

Post by peterjmag »

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #18

http://www.hackerbooks.com is a direct financial failure. The income does not cover the hosting as is! Early on I expected it would be a small earner (maybe $50/mo) but we're not there even. On the other hand, it had a fairly positive impact on the consulting/learning side of things (ETL, data processing etc).

That's a fantastic site. Bookmarked!
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