Ask HN: What are your failed projects / ideas? • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by sree_nair » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 7:55 AM UTC

shousper wrote: post #12

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?

I would count that as 1. If we wait till we are financially secure to do things we want to do, We might as well never do it. Your idea of financial security changes as you earn more money !.

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

#32

Post by udit99 » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 7:59 AM UTC

http://4.everalone.com

Built as a dating site for redditors...got off to a bad start because it required reddit credentials..never bothered taking time to fix it. Maybe one of these days..

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

#33

Post by thibaut_barrere » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 8:01 AM UTC

hilti wrote: post #28

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).

I think Your site has great value. Just keep it up and do marketing.

Thanks! The thing is that it got plenty of coverage but nonetheless it brings very few in commissions.

I'm currently focused on a SaaS product (profile for info), but who knows, maybe I'll get back to it a bit.

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

#34

Post by thibaut_barrere » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 8:03 AM UTC

peterjmag wrote: post #20

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!

Thank you! People seem to really like it (I got plenty of emails etc).

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

#35

Post by latitude » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 8:06 AM UTC

Killed several months on CertTime - a digital time-stamping service for graphic and logo designers. Got very enthusiastic support for the idea, but then got zero interest in actually using the service.

[1] http://certtime.com

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

#36

Post by john2x » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 8:11 AM UTC

I was working on a book social site where users earn badges after reading books. (Basically Foursquare for books. There would be badges for reading the top 10 books of a genre/author, milestones, etc.)

Gave up on getting a good book database.

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

#37

Post by dworrad » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 8:11 AM UTC

Probably www.tagmark.org A Chrome and Firefox extension for - Tagging (i.e Bookmarks), Tasks, Notes. I still use it everyday but I never really followed through with marketing or getting feedback on it. One day maybe.

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

#38

Post by suresk » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 8:12 AM UTC

john2x wrote: post #36

I was working on a book social site where users earn badges after reading books. (Basically Foursquare for books. There would be badges for reading the top 10 books of a genre/author, milestones, etc.) Gave up on getting a good book database.

Sounds like an interesting idea - I love reading, and a lot of ideas I've had have been book-related.

Just curious - why not utilize Amazon's book database, since that is likely how you'd make your money anyway (via referral fees)?

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

#39

Post by robinwarren » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 8:13 AM UTC

The first version of http://jobstractor.com was meant to be an alternative to advertising revenue for bloggers. I worked on it for about 3 or 4 months, built a huge amount of functionality (which no one ever saw) then finally did some market research. I discovered to similar offerings which had gone and failed before me. Contacting the bloggers involved in those generally turned up people who had not made any money from those efforts.

Ultimately I learned the value of doing the research before writing ALL the code. My subsequent project on the same domain was thrown together in a few weekends and evenings, was buggy as hell and put out with the intention of killing it if people didn't like it.

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

#40

Post by ecesena » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 8:17 AM UTC

The slide machine [1] to make latex/beamer slides out of mind map. See also [2].

The core is an xslt that we use almost daily, we did a quite old-style web site which is still running with almost no users, but unfortunately we have absolutely no time to redesign/maintain it.

If anyone wish to contribute, we'll be happy to release code and share ideas.

[1] http://www.sli-m.com

[2] http://security.polito.it/doc/public/torsec_didamatica2011_s...