41–50 of 100 posts
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.
There are a lot of bookmakers around, like 60 decent ones and hundreds of trashy. I wrote a lot of scrapers collecting prices from them, invented an algorithm for automatic name matching (different bookies spell names of same players differently, like R. Federer is same as Roger Federer, or even Russian or Polish spelling of same name etc), so i can compare prices in different books.
Idea was that: betting on the line of one bookie using inverse prices of another bookie as a source of probabilities, run statistically over a long period of time (i.e. virtually betting on all events where price in one booke multiplied by inverse price from another one yields a profit, then recording which bets 'lost' or 'won' and aggeregating profit/loss, doing so for each vs each of the books), finding out as a result, which book 'knows' a particular sport best and worst of all (if i bet in the best of them using a line of worst for probabilities, i get maximum loss, and maximum profit vice versa). Then i wrote a script that does the execution, placing the bets.
Surprisingly, i found an investor willing to back all this in half a day, after pitching just a few of my former clients (i do custom development).
Estimates indicated a lot of profit, but it took just a week to know that there is no such thing as a 'betting market'. All of my accounts have been suspended: they seemingly track events which come into arbitrage with other books, and show down people who bet on them, which i did (except i didn't bet on both sides of the arbitrage, only one that was more likely to win).
I was quite disappointed and depressed for a month.
Fortunately, the investor didn't lose anything: he needs the resulting code for a totally different thing (no execution of bets), and quite happy with what he got, so it ended up being just one more custom development project - very fun to do.
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…
I was pretty interested in scribblingspree.com, sounds fun! But got frustrated by how hard it was to draw (especially if you accidentally release your click off of the drawing space). In the short term you could listen for mouseup on the whole body/document instead of just the canvas, I think that would help.
As I said, the project is pretty much dead now. But your idea (listening for mouse up on the document) would probably solve several problems, thanks!
I made a website where you put sunglasses on a photo - seemewith.com. After face.com shut down its facial landmarking service I deleted it, but it was a failure anyway. I spent a ridiculous amount of time implementing various strategies for turning photos of sunglasses into 3d models (using bundle adjustment, advanced appearance models, and some symmetry specific photogrammetry) - in the end I did the simplest thing…
Lessons learned? Well I did a full run down of all the projects I could think of (that got somewhere at least) a little while ago and I did have some interesting insights. Mostly I try to invent new categories of things and fail (both the idea and the newness thereof tend to fail in case you're wondering).
The promising direction that I hadn't followed was my first ever paper, and I think thats because it was a Human Computer Interaction project. At least for this project the focus was on new ways of doing tasks that people already do with computers - so it had some built in relevance. So now I'm trying work with my own psychology and find innovation in interaction - not in the entire category of product.
The site is here, although my webhost seems to be acting up at the moment. http://grainofsalt.info/
1. Photagious (online photo sharing/management/slideshow site) 2004-2008. Raised angel funding @ $500k
2. Socialbib (peer to peer textbook exchange platform) 2008-2009. Side project.
3. Textbook Revolt (peer to peer textbook rental platform) 2009-2011. Side project, evolution of #2.
4. Melts My Heart (mobile photo app for mothers) 2011. Side project
5. OpenPhoto (open source photo service) 2011 - present. $25k on Kickstarter + funding from Shuttleworth Foundation. Success TBD. http://theopenphotoproject.org
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...
Like.fm, the original version. The MVP was an applescript that published your iTunes play history to a web page. It got users by itself as soon as I put it online. There weren't many users, but greater than the zero from my last project. I took this, rather naively, as the sign of the next Facebook. My ultimate goal became to create a marginally superior version of Last.fm. To my surprise, I got accepted into YC with this idea, and from that high I ran with it.
However over time I lost confidence in and motivation towards the idea as no one saw it as novel enough (not necessarily users, but people I met in the Valley), and everyone told me to stop doing something related to music because it's too tough (personally I think all startups are tough). Because of all this I never polished or completed Like.fm enough to be even on par with Last.fm. I had slow to zero growth, and no clear exciting future for the site. Probably at least these factors left me unable to raise an additional seed round after Demo Day. Being a single founder didn't help with any of this either.
After these failures I've stopped focusing on raising money or even making money. My primary focus is on making something that people love to use that's also novel and innovative, retains users, and successfully delivers long-term value to peoples' lives.
I've never stopped experimenting on Like.fm after the failure though, and I've been gearing up for the next big launch!
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.
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).