
Show HN: Fail it Forward – you fail so others don't have to - adamcanady
http://failitforward.com/
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habosa
@OP,

You should make yourself a few "fake" accounts on your own website and then
get to posting. Everything now is from AdamCanady which gives the impression
that it's just you (which it is ). If It was coming from a randomized set of
usernames, it would give the impression of a lively community.

Reddit did it, and ever since then I'm pretty sure it's considered acceptable
by the HN community and others.

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adamcanady
Thanks habosa! I was considering doing that, but it looks like some HN folks
have submitted a few articles already. Maybe it could take off?

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atwebb
That's how Reddit (and probably every link site) started as well.

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Killah911
Wonder if it will do well. If something makes people feel sad/down, they're
not likely to share it. So, visiting the site certainly did not inspire
happiness.

If you could somehow mitigate the sad feeling from sad news thing, it may
catch on and gain a decent bit of traction. Lord knows we need to be more open
to discussing failure and learning from it. However, I personally do not like
discussing failed startups from my past, and I wonder if I'm not part of the
majority.

Cool idea though. Wish you luck.

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adamcanady
I totally agree with your thoughts here. Is there a better medium to share
these experiences? I know there's a similar-ish subreddit [1] but I think
there should be a better service for business-related things like startups,
which is why I made this site!

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/tifu](http://www.reddit.com/r/tifu)

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AndrewKemendo
Oh wow. My guess is that you and I had the same idea following the "Started a
stupid company. Failed" thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806428](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806428)

I actually started working on something similar - but quite honestly I don't
have the skills to do it in any reasonable time frame. I am glad I stopped
when I did because yours would have crushed mine.

I hope it works out.

FYI one of the reasons I stopped is because I knew it would be really hard to
get solid content because it was based on things that most people want to
never talk about again. If this platform can get them talking it would be
massively helpful to the community. On the order of Quora.

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nilkn
I've never been a fan of the CSS and visual aesthetic of Telescope, but it is
a really great platform for a discussion board.

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scrabble
I like this idea.

As it is though, I feel like there is too much black on the page -- and it's
really black. All that black also makes it hard to read the gray content,
which is stuff that I really do want to read. It also makes it harder for me
to see the icons.

Sorry for the feedback on the aesthetics, just that the site is really hard on
my eyes.

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rumble_king1
Can't help but think about how this site about failing will likely fail... so
thanks!

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adamcanady
Hah, I have the same fear myself. Hopefully it will succeed! Would you
recommend a different format?

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chadkruse
Years ago a friend and I hacked together iFvckedUp.org with the intention of
focusing on videos of ourselves and other startup friends talking about the
fvckups we made (or were currently making) at our startups. We learned that a)
filming yourself was hard enough to begin with, but b)filming yourself talking
about how you royally screwed up was even harder. So yeah, don't change to a
video format :)

(though the storytelling/editing tools are better now, so maybe worth taking
another crack at?)

PS - Go Hawks

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adamcanady
Chad, interesting take! I can definitely see it being difficult to talk about
failures on video - it's hard enough to deal with them, let alone write about
them. I feel that the ease of editability (if that word exists?) of writing
makes it easier though.

When you can revise what you want to say over and over (how many times did you
hit backspace while writing that comment?), you can convey your thoughts
exactly how you want them to be conveyed. It's more difficult and time
consuming to do this with video, so the 'pain' (if you will) would last even
longer.

Go Hawks! - Are you from around here?

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chadkruse
Spent 4 great years at the University of Iowa...like half the school, I'm
originally from the suburbs of Chicago.

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franl
Awesome Adam, I think there's a lot of value in cataloging/discussing people's
failures like this (so much so that I started working on something very
similar a while back :) Good luck!

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adamcanady
Thanks a ton, franl.

What did you work on before to discuss things like this?

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franl
Just a simple web app for people to checkin with failures and the key lessons.
I wanted to have tags for different topics, and a feed based on tags you were
interested in. Pretty basic. I didn't take it beyond the checkins because I
couldn't envision myself checking in very often.

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irremediable
Kind of cool. What makes it cooler than e.g. a subreddit about failure
experiences?

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adamzerner
Because it's more focused and comprehensive (at least in theory).

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Hellenion
The site fails to load without javascript.

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adamcanady
Sorry about that! It uses Meteor, which is built on top of Node.JS, so it
requires JS on both the front-end and the back-end. I felt it was appropriate
since 99% of users have front-end JS enabled, and it was easier to launch a
site without dealing with edge-cases.

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mjhea0
nice use of meteor! :)

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adamcanady
Thanks! It's just a quick port of Telesc.pe[1] with a few subtle
modifications.

[1] [http://telesc.pe/](http://telesc.pe/)

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sgdesign
Awesome to see that you're using Telescope! :)

