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Dead Startup Toys

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Re: Dead Startup Toys

#151

Post by ansible »

dale_glass wrote: post #69
kmeisthax wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. The list is actually two different categories mixed together: 1. Products which failed because they were targeting their niche poorly (e.g. Juicero, OLPC) 2. Products which failed because they were outright scams (e.g. Theranos, Coolest) However, I do think the failure of OLPC is still interesting enough to deserve a mention on this list. With OLPC in particular they were trying to be like three diff…

Theranos was a scam, but I think Coolest Cooler wasn't. It was just a stupid idea and they underestimated the difficulty of getting them made. It cost far more than they thought and they tried to dig themselves out of that hole by selling them on Amazon and trying to use the profit to pay for the copies they owed to their Kickstarter backers. This caused all sorts of drama, but my impression that they did their best…

Coolest cooler was intended to address a perceived need. One that may still exist.

What the world "needs", is an easy-to assemble frame that you can yourself integrate the functions you need. So if we made coolers to a standard size, with some standardized attachment point, that would be a start.

Then you could have a lightweight wheeled frame of standard dimensions and attachment points, that you could then integrate the components you need: portable power pack, BT speaker system, etc.

We have so few standardized systems for connecting things together physically. There are things like the screw mount for cameras, picatinny rails, and 19in equipment racks, for instance. But so few of the other items in our everyday lives, like BT speakers are engineered that way. They are all designed for style, and can't easily be combined.

If you had a system where everyone with nearly zero mechanical skill could attach things together, this would get us closer to the world where everyone who wanted one could have a coolest cooler. Otherwise you have people trying to stick things together with duct tape, which usually works very poorly if at all.

Re: Dead Startup Toys

#152

Post by thrower123 »

ohazi wrote: post #114
tinco wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it, and netbooks as a hardware category, failed, it was because in the end they turned out to not have been worth it. I used a netbook happily for about a year or two, it cost ~$400 if I recall correctly, and afterwards I donated it to my sister who I think used it for a while as well. That's at least $150/yr for a low end product fun but uncomfortable product. After the netbook I upgraded to a Macbook Pro that wa…

For "cheap," netbooks as a category have been replaced by your run-of-the-mill entry-level laptop. The cheapest Dell Inspiron starts at ~$300. $400 gets you an Intel i3 or an AMD Ryzen 3, both of which are leagues better than an Atom. For "small," the category was replaced by Ultrabooks as people realized that it's usually better to have a thin laptop that doesn't force you to compromise on the display or keyboard si…

The Asus eeePCs were great for the time as a beat-around little on-the-go laptop, when most laptops were still 15 or 17 inches and weighed 5-10 pounds.

I really enjoyed the one I bought in college - it actually fit on those terrible fold-out desks that lecture hall seats have.

Re: Dead Startup Toys

#153

Post by Digit-Al »

sandworm101 wrote: post #123

I want one of those soccer balls with an inbuilt dynamo. Or those tiles tested in UK schools that harvest power from footsteps. I'm thinking of a similar website for all the failed products that tried to use children as a source of electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empower_Playgrounds https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/28/the-soccket-is-an-electric... https://theswitch.co.uk/energy/guides/technology/energy-harv.…

No need for anything super elaborate if you want to generate electricity from kids. Just shove 'em in a big hamster wheel with a large can of red bull and a bag of sweets. I mean, sure, some of them will probably die but if we carry on the way we are with the environment they'll all die anyway, so swings and roundabouts. /s

Re: Dead Startup Toys

#154

Post by garmaine »

Trufa wrote: post #102
mushufasa wrote: post #38

Did One Laptop per Child truly fail as a startup? It was always a nonprofit, so of course it didn't make money. While the technology was lacking in many respects, it did serve a lot of children at the time, and proved the market that Chromebooks came to later dominate with a similar approach (linux-based OS with minimal resources at $100-300 price point).

Every child in the Uruguayan public system got his/her laptop, I don't know at a global scale but it gave access to the internet/technology to thousands of children that would otherwise wouldn't have. So calling it a total failure seems off to me.

By all accounts they were not really useful, broke easily, and couldn't be repaired in the field. Many countries backed out of their commitment once they tried out their samples. Those which took delivery ended up not integrating them into curriculum because they didn't deliver on their promise.

It did kickstart the "netbook" form factor, which ended up replacing most OLPC use cases. So not a total failure from a technology standpoint, like Juicero and Theranos were. But it is a bit of a poster child for everything that's wrong with the MIT Media Lab.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop...

Re: Dead Startup Toys

#155

Post by johnnyfived »

dotBen wrote: post #56

Seems prudent to point out this isn't the product of a disgruntled's weekend project with fancy webdesign. This is a product from MSCHF which is a $100M+ startup [1] (feels like they're getting a bit of an astroturfed free ride of prime PR on HN because folks may not realize who is behind this) [1] https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/279769-42

Who's the target audience for this crap? A bunch of Hacker News-esque weekend projects that get a bunch of PR from Vice, WSJ, Verge, etc. every time they release something. Just seems like a team of copycats stealing hackathon ideas, giving them a slight twist, then calls it art and journalists fall all over themselves for it.

You won't see these publications writing about similar projects on HN, because they're not called "drops" (lol) and doesn't have an edgy site. Maybe I'm just jealous of their success, I just don't think it's noteworthy at all.

Re: Dead Startup Toys

#156

Post by tinco »

McMiniBurger wrote: post #105
tinco wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it, and netbooks as a hardware category, failed, it was because in the end they turned out to not have been worth it. I used a netbook happily for about a year or two, it cost ~$400 if I recall correctly, and afterwards I donated it to my sister who I think used it for a while as well. That's at least $150/yr for a low end product fun but uncomfortable product. After the netbook I upgraded to a Macbook Pro that wa…

but not anyone's OK with spending $1250 upfront if you earn $250 a month in a developing country, $1250 is like 9-month pay (* calculation may be wrong --- gotta sleep?)

Sure, but it is just an extreme example of the TCO of the OLPC being comparable to a high end professional grade laptop. It was just a very hard problem to solve, and the technology was not quite there yet.

Definitely not suggesting kids in Africa should just buy macbook pro's, but $100 is also a lot of upfront cost for a product that's actually not that useful and destined for the wastebin within a year or two.

I do hope I'm wrong and it brought some cool technology too some kids far removed from the big cities.

Re: Dead Startup Toys

#157

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Pxtl wrote: post #144
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought so too, but after months of occasional research I ended up buying (what I consider) an absurdly expensive pelican cooler. I looked at it based on some main criteria, like: 1. Is it durable 2. How long will it keep stuff cold? 3. What’s the warranty like? The pelican was 2-3x the cost of alternatives (but the same as a few competitors like Yeti), but ultimately scored best on each. Based on the material it’s…

Yes, but the Coolest Cooler with its blender and speakers seems obviously designed for beach parties and not outdoorsmen. I don't doubt there's a market for high-end coolers but there are very different use-cases. Like, as a car-camper I always spring for the plug-in car-powered Peltier coolers.

Oh I see what you mean, I thought you were more along the lines of someone who thinks the $50 cooler from Walmart is no different from the $350 cooler I bought.

The coolest cooler isn’t for me either, but I guess if you’re at the beach a lot it could have been nice.

I’d prefer to bring ready-made things in my pelican and a travel speaker (though I never play music in public spaces) - I’m not a fan of do-everything devices.

Re: Dead Startup Toys

#158

Post by londons_explore »

axiosgunnar wrote: post #2

Is „one laptop per child“ really as bad as the other vaporware/fraudware in the list?

I contributed to the OLPC project.

They had a lot of cool tech, but all the poor integration of a bunch of unrelated open source projects and a lack of people with the ability to design something to fit their market.

The end result was a cool product that nobody wanted that didn't work awfully well. I now use my OLPC as a sunlight visible status board - and I still need to reboot it once a month because the kernel has some memory leak somewhere.

Re: Dead Startup Toys

#159

Post by karmakaze »

mcphage wrote: post #41
karmakaze wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd feel bad having a $40 toy for a failed make-the-world-better $100 product. Wasn't there even a 2-for special where I buy one, and one gets sent abroad?

Yep, I did that, and got one for myself.

That's cool, better than the toy version as cute as it is. (For a sec, I thought you might have meant feel guilty and get a toy :-)

Re: Dead Startup Toys

#160

Post by ChrisArchitect »

mushufasa wrote: post #38

Did One Laptop per Child truly fail as a startup? It was always a nonprofit, so of course it didn't make money. While the technology was lacking in many respects, it did serve a lot of children at the time, and proved the market that Chromebooks came to later dominate with a similar approach (linux-based OS with minimal resources at $100-300 price point).

right, didn't really 'fail' as a 'startup' - it just took a very long time to develop and tech continued to move/struggles to be independent and stable with manufacturer messes and giant competing companies, various interests slowing things down all while user needs changed rapidly and capabilities of platforms increased. This was really a long time ago early 00s things were very different and nowhere near mobile device era and so at the time was very noble and promising.

I didn't need to hear Justin Kan talking stupid claiming it missed the mark because of phones in that video about the toys ignoring the timeline/history, it was years before that which is a lot considering how fast things changed

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