
Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why? - NoOneNew
With the recent posts on successful&#x2F;profitable side projects, I figure it&#x27;d be good to learn about some failed ones. Let&#x27;s stick to &quot;launched&quot; projects instead of those that never happened.<p>What was the project and why did it fail (best to your knowledge)? Or what&#x27;s a side-project of yours that&#x27;s actively losing money?
======
WheelsAtLarge
Given what I've read here, it seems that most people here forget or don't know
that most apps need a strong marketing plan from the start to give it a decent
chance to succeed. Writing an app that sells itself is very rare and even if
it takes off it needs constant marketing.

If you read the financials from most software companies that are public you'll
see that marketing costs are way higher than development and maintenance
costs. It's the primary way to get customers to buy or use your app.

~~~
umvi
Why can't you build it first, and _then_ market it? You can pretend it is
still under development if that will convince more people to sign up, but I
don't understand why marketing needs to be there from day 1.

But also marketing seems like a money black hole to me. I could sink tons of
money into marketing and have little to show for it.

~~~
erikrothoff
As developers we often assume ”build it and they will come”. Or that marketing
or sales is something that is bolted on afterwards. What we forget is that
marketing is a full time job that requires a full set of skills, experience
and intuitions to do well. If you build something for 6 months and THEN start
the marketing, its like starting from scratch all over again. You have zero
experience to work from or iterate on and havent built any of the foundation.

It’s like waiting to build the backend until the frontend is 100% complete.
While building assumptions change based on things you learn. Marketing for
your product works the same way.

By putting the effort into marketing (meaning any form of reaching out: blog
posts, direct sales, social media or even paid) you might even avoiding
building features that nobody wanted anyway.

~~~
jakequade
I think you're both giving marketing too much credit in the product's
creation, and inverting the creation process in general.

> It’s like waiting to build the backend until the frontend is 100% complete

It's more like building a backend, then realising that the data structures
could be improved when you're building the front. Marketing at best provides
enhancements, not core changes (unless your product itself was incorrect to
begin with).

Honestly, if your marketing affects your product as much as you're suggesting,
you have a pretty unstable product.

~~~
rapphil
But marketing can help the dev team focus on the core functionalities that the
customer really want.

~~~
watwut
No, marketing as driver will cause massive feature creep.

~~~
speedplane
> No, marketing as driver will cause massive feature creep.

Marketing is about exposing your product to your target customers. It's
relatively orthogonal to product features.

------
cdiamand
I launched, and have now shut down oppsdaily.com.
[https://oppslist.com](https://oppslist.com) is still up as a zombie.

We asked people about problems or inefficiencies in their industry that could
be solved by Saas products and then sent those ideas out as a daily
newsletter. I learned a lot, but had difficulty making money with it. Also,
I'm not totally sure my heart was in it. I think about it a lot.

I've recently launched a new project -
[https://topstonks.com](https://topstonks.com) where I'm exploring this new
speculative culture of investing emanating from places like reddit's
Wallstreetbets, and 4chan's Biz.

We currently look at the most mentioned equities and send out a list of those.
Once or twice a week we'll post an analysis with some comments from those
communities (heads up, if you're easily offended, the language can be a bit
crude.)

There are bigger plans on the roadmap, but we're just starting w/ the
newsletter for now.

~~~
Geee
Looking at the oppslist - I think the larger issue is that lots of people are
unaware of software that already exist. The top request for example has been
solved multiple times since 60's already. It's basic inventory management.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Yeah. Looking through the list at least half have SaaS solutions you can
purchase off the shelf. The rest you can mostly cobble something together or
they just aren't practical.

The Mom Test has a great rule of thumb when doing customer development and
that's to ask "last time you needed to do X, what did you do?"

For the inventory management stuff the answer would probably be "I checked my
usual spreadsheet and made the orders".

And thats likely what the person will continue to do forever. If they wanted
to solve the problem they would have found the software by now most likely.

------
modoc
[https://www.thechillypony.com](https://www.thechillypony.com)

An email alert for horse owners/barn managers when the forecast will be colder
than a configured threshold temperature. It's saved us a lot of mental energy
this winter (having to check not just the forecast but also making sure to
check the temp at 3 AM with windchill factored in, etc...). Got zero interest
from various equestrian forums. _shrug_.

I taught myself Spring Boot through so that's a win!

~~~
botwriter
forums are a tricky one. It needs multiple accounts to shill for you and
praise you. I've got BHW and a few other forums wrapped around my little
finger.

~~~
tyrust
Contributing to the destruction of online trust is a pretty uncool method of
growth hacking.

~~~
williamdclt
I'm hoping they're talking about multiple legitimate account, held by people
that legitimately and individually support what you do.

If not, shame

------
WrtCdEvrydy
Those that will eventually happen:

Turning a Ender 3 3D printer into a belt printer was put on the back burner
pending TaxAmmend.com

TaxAmmend.com was put on the back burner pending AmIAccessible.com

AmIAccessible.com was placed on the back burner pending my AWS Certifications.

My AWS Certifications were put on the back burner pending a Computer Forensics
research paper into Consumer Grade Forensics.

My research paper was put into the back burner pending an IDE 3.5" hard drive
from ebay.

The IDE 3.5" hard drive is coming but I am now 3D printing a cosplay nailgun
for going as Kohta Hirano from high school of the dead, rebuilding my Open
Media Vault machine (as it has had a critical software failure) and publishing
a Computer Networks paper that I had kicking around since 2019.

So I am probably going to be a busy busy boy for the foreseeable future.

------
askvictor
Column Tools - a FOSS (&free) add-on for Google Sheets that adds missing
functionality (e.g. horizontal sort, convert columns to named ranges).
Google's increasingly onerous, specific, and ever-changing requirements for
market place listings takes up too much time for a free project. I could try
to monetize, but then I'm having to spend too much time in bureaucracy-land
(between working out billing and complying with Google's requirements) rather
than making good product. At least the source is there for anyone who wants to
set up themselves.

~~~
saadalem
Can you give tips about this ? I'm trying to build a Gmail add-on that works
with Spreadsheet(contacts + headers to filter) and reverse chrono counting
unread emails

~~~
askvictor
Tips about what specifically?

~~~
saadalem
About working with Spreadsheet as database ? About running it automatically
etc..

~~~
askvictor
I used Google Scripts for everything. Can programmatically read and edit a
Google Sheet easily enough; true DB queries are trickier. Running is based on
triggers you can set up for a script; or I think a script can programmatically
set them up. Look up the Google Developer site; it's a good resource.

~~~
saadalem
Ok thank you, so the google server is always running and fetching, this is
actually something good ! TY

------
jamestimmins
I made [https://www.hackersubscribe.com](https://www.hackersubscribe.com) as a
way to get email notifications when certain people post/comment on Hacker
News.

So I get an email with patio11, Patrick Collison, or Alan Kay posts. When I
first made it, I submitted a Show HN thread, but got zero response.

~~~
NoOneNew
Add in a list of interesting people you would recommend on the site.

I never thought about actually paying attention to _who_ posts on HN, only
what's posted. It seems obvious now that you've mentioned it.

~~~
jamestimmins
That's a good idea! I'll update it to include a few suggestions.

------
NoOneNew
A little bit ago I stopped a twitter bot I created for game development news.
It was a php script that aggregated gamedev news from ~10 different sources
every hour. It took the raw headline, converted them in tweets, then filled up
the remaining character count with a link and #hashtags. I had a safe list of
hashtags that it was supposed to match against in the headline first, convert
those if possible. Then fill in hashtags at the end, setup a drip feed and
post a random tweet every ~30 min. I randomized the time and set a window
between 7am-9pm.

Gained 1k following in about 2 or 3 months. But after investigating twitter
traffic, I noticed most followers are bots and tweets I put up trying to sell
some game assets gained lots of likes and retweets, but never a sale.

It was a fun project on its own and confirmed that I'm not missing out by
avoiding twitter. The web scraping portion was actually the most fun to it.

------
james_impliu
We launched a 1:1 tool for sales managers that used predictive analytics to
suggest which deals needed to be discussed (ie Deal X looks like it's stuck).
The reason being, when I was a sales manager, I found people would naturally
talk about positive stuff rather than easily giving the whole picture.

It failed because quite simply, when we tried to get other sales managers to
use it for free (hoping it'd be popular), we found they wouldn't make the time
to spend 2 mins planning a 1:1, probably as they're managed on 'selling deals,
right now' in many cases, which is a bit sad!

Learning: I should have read the Mom Test.

With hindsight, I wish I'd built it for engineers based on Pull Requests (PR
#181 had a ton of back and forth / NLP shows it got heated). It would have
been fun if nothing else!

~~~
jcims
This would work for customer service ticket systems as well. Having been in
that role, i definitely buried a few issues over the years that would have
been better dealt with in the open.

------
redman25
[https://parepdf.com](https://parepdf.com) A web app for comparing PDF files.
Figured that a more intuitive comparison experience would be an obvious
advantage. It didn’t gain traction although I still use it personally on a
weekly basis.

~~~
eschutte2
Hey, cool idea and implementation. I think even a single screenshot (of a
diffed part in the sample PDF) front and center on the homepage would go a
long way, if you ever update it.

~~~
redman25
That's not a bad idea, I had an example in an earlier comp design, but removed
it for some reason...

------
jotto
[https://www.roast.io/](https://www.roast.io/)

I launched it shortly after
[https://www.prerender.cloud](https://www.prerender.cloud), which server-side
renders JavaScript SPAs, to make integration easier.

Prerender.cloud kind of sells itself, but roast.io does not. I've wondered if
it appears too complex.

~~~
snisarenko
Dude, you need better SEO. I heard about your product last year and didn't
bookmark it. I was trying to find it on google with no luck. (talking about
prerender)

Also what does [https://www.roast.io/](https://www.roast.io/) do better than
netlify. I think you should highlight it on your homepage. Thats your main
competitor as far as I see it.

------
bcherny
Lease.ly, a common app for apartment rentals.

\- In SF (a seller’s market), prospective tenants only wanted to use it if
their prospective landlords asked for it, or if it gave them an advantage over
other prospective tenants

\- Landlords have their existing process that works, and didn’t want to change
it. Things like comparison views for tenants, pulling in social media info,
and automatic credit reports were helpful, but since for most SF landlords
getting new tenants is low frequency (unlike, say, NY), the value was low

For each, the value prop was unclear.

If I were to try it again, I’d try to understand the market better and find
the right subset of landlords and tenants, and the right geo, to focus on
first.

~~~
h00dui
did you pivot to VIN #s?? I'm interested in seeing what you had/have for
lease.ly with regards to the common application.

~~~
bcherny
VIN #s?

------
bckygldstn
For my first real coding project I set up a book price comparison website.

It relied heavily on third-party APIs and scrapers for prices, search, book
details, currency conversion, and the PaaS hosting service. Over 8 years many
of those services slowly shut down until the site didn't work any more.

It was a fun project, both for learning to code, and for better understanding
the tradeoffs around third-party dependencies. I wrote more about it here:
[https://www.ajnisbet.com/blog/maintaining-a-zero-
maintenance...](https://www.ajnisbet.com/blog/maintaining-a-zero-maintenance-
website)

------
danfang
[https://get.thread-app.com](https://get.thread-app.com)

It's an ad-free social network that is supposed to be a richer and more
private alternative to Facebook.

It's been adopted by my closest friends and family, but hasn't grown much
beyond these initial users. The product itself tries to do a ton of stuff:
messaging, photo sharing, event planning, location sharing, video sharing,
etc. Perhaps that's part of the problem -- it doesn't do one thing
particularly above and beyond existing solutions.

~~~
goldcd
I've been running a very shitty threaded message board for years ("running"
being a very loose term - I mean it's still there). There is a parallel
facebook group that exists solely to tell me when I've f'd up.

The people still on it, are the people who use it as a "separate space" to all
the rest of the bazillion dollar alternatives - hellbent on shoving adverts,
tracking and all the rest.

I'm only going off on this tangent, as maybe what appears to be lack of
traction, could also be (if you squint hard) a benefit. Could you cookie-
cutter out instances of your product?

If you can, then maybe you could position it as a micro-ecosystem for events
people don't immediately want to integrate into their existing mega-social
world.

e.g. Weddings. Could on-board all people invited to the app (click this link
to say if you're going or not), let them get to know each other a bit first,
share photos they took of the event, plan stag events, enter dietary
requirements, link to the wedding list, buy a nice photo from the official
photographer, send a message to that bridesmaid you thought you were getting
on well with, click on faces in photos to see who they are etc etc.

~~~
rolleiflex
Have you thought about using an email group instead of running your own thing?
I'm asking this because this is kind of what I'm doing — threaded email groups
that act as a message board within the emails. There's a few people using us
to do similar things as you, and since we only charge for admins (i.e. you)
and not the number of mail receivers, it'd be dirt cheap since you'd only need
one seat. In any case, definitely cheaper (and zero maintenance) than running
a message board.

It's here at
[https://aether.app/email/#/force](https://aether.app/email/#/force). If that
turns out to be your thing hit me up and I can extend the trial for you as far
as you need to give it a shot.

------
jotm
Spares Outlet - selling home appliance parts salvaged from used
washers/dryers/fridges/ovens. I even developed testing methods that don't
require the control board to be on an actual machine. It's the hardest part to
test properly, I wanted my buyers to get a fully working item that would last.
Returns would've really cut into profits, too.

That and using intrepid Russian hacking/engineering to make most control
boards compatible with any model (essentially a firmware reflash, but by God
do the manufacturers make it hard).

Really proud of it now, it helped hundreds of people and small businesses
while being as environmentally friendly as it gets - all of those broken
appliances were headed for landfills in third world countries, and I feel like
I actually made a difference.

Failed because of my departure from the UK and losing those suppliers. Looking
at finding new ones, so far no one wants to work with me, they either sell
refurbished complete units or just send all their scrap to landfills. Easier,
I guess.

Not finding a partner or any employees was a huge part, I even automated
replies for buyers - based on specific keywords, it would reply stating
availability of parts and delivery time. Again, proud of that, but having more
people working with me would've been better.

------
bunya017
Catalog platform for SMEs in Nigeria.

Clothing vendors (whom were my primary target) find difficulty putting their
products online, major ecommerce players in the country require one to be
residing in Lagos before one can use their platforms, and most them took lion
share of the profits.

I felt a catalog platform (where no buying and selling between vendors and
their customers occur) will be best, since the vendors prefer dealing with
customers directly as they get their money in full. I ran it by some vendor
friends and stranger vendors, they promised to signup for the beta phase.

When the project was in beta, they bailed. Without users to help me with
feedback, I felt demotivated and abandoned it.

I think the fault is from my failure to get an MVP ready asap, I ran into
problems with my PC at that time. To add salt to injury, whatsapp business
accounts added catalogue feature, pushing me out of market I never entered.
After all, if the vendors can get it for free, why pay.

I'll shut the server down month ending and focus on freelancing gigs.

link to a demo store/catalog on the platform

[https://dashboard.getgalleria.com.ng/stores/galleria-demo-
st...](https://dashboard.getgalleria.com.ng/stores/galleria-demo-store)

edit: Fix typo

------
beatgammit
Mine failed before I could really launch it. Basically, I wanted to do a
financial app to help people get out of debt, but the company I was going to
use changed their fee structure just before I launched, causing transaction
costs to eat all of my margin.

I may try to relaunch if I can find a good partner, but it just seems the
anything related to finance is going to be a huge pain. I'm currently looking
at other options.

~~~
therealbobby
You could just raise your prices. Look at the value it provides and price it
accordingly. Do not price it based on what you personally can tolerate.
Different people are willing to pay different prices for a product that works.
Start high and work downwards. Find the sweet spot.

------
rrivers
Free election campaign platform for local candidates. (501c3 Non-profit w/ a
revenue model) Purpose is to remove the financial barriers from running for
community office (Mayor / Council / School Board). We incorporated a number of
UX features to make the process as easy and convenient as possible for users
to better understand which candidate options best aligned with their personal
values.

In 2018 we ran a beta test in central NJ that was well received. I am the non-
technical founder and our entire team was volunteer based. I also self-funded
the project (outsourcing development) and although the beta went well the
product is unfinished. Now on the back burner because we have no team anymore
and I don't want to invest more personal cash into it at this time. I pay to
keep it live for interested parties.

Site: [https://oursociety.org](https://oursociety.org)

Git: [https://github.com/OurSociety/OurSociety---Free-Local-
Campai...](https://github.com/OurSociety/OurSociety---Free-Local-Campaign-
Platform)

~~~
ARCarr
I love this idea! I was recently trying to scrounge up information for the
primary about who these local candidates were using Ballotpedia, but a lot of
them had no website, or if they did it was it was _terrible_(both visually and
information-wise).

It was honestly a lot of effort to determine who to vote for.

------
sethlivingston
I launched a little consulting side gig on Fiverr to build dashboards and
reports on Google Data Studio.

The good: \- I got plenty of customers (side gig volume) from all over the
world. \- Many of them were very happy with the results. \- Collecting
requirements for reports and dashboards is notoriously difficult and volatile,
but I was able to keep this under control. I credit my age (48) and experience
for that.

The bad: \- I hitched my wagon to a tool that is not ready for prime time:
Google Data Studio. I spent too much time wrestling with the tool. \- The
success of many projects depended not on my skills with Data Studio, but with
the quality of the data sources and APIs that were feeding into Data Studio.
Almost half the time, the quality was well below expectations, and I spent too
much time wrestling with the integration.

In the end, I wasn't even close to making a reasonable hourly rate, and
getting to the point where I could get past an hourly rate and make money at
scale seemed impossible.

I happily shut it down after six months.

~~~
jpasden
This is why I like using Fiverr as a buyer... Occasionally you find someone
doing something cool for an absurdly low cost as an experiment or an exercise.
Those are the good deals, and they're ephemeral offerings. Glad you enjoyed
your time there!

------
embrassingstuff
My situation is the complete opposite.

I have a great idea, did some decks/mockups/simulation's.

Was actually offered 6-figure angel investment (I passed).

Yet haven't been able to make reall progress with an MVP. I am a very
experienced developer, but never did any web/saas stuff.

I feel embarrassed.

I have tried joining recently a tracking and discussion forum and it's been
really helpful.

~~~
stazz1
Web is its own beast -- even movie making software has to be learned,
certainly true of new software domains. I'd recommend researching your tools
thoroughly before diving in, and finally when you choose a few candidate tools
try and build small prototypes in each that would become modular chunks of
your main app. In this way you can evaluate which tools you'd like to use from
some low-risk investment of time and effort, and walk away with clear tool
commitment. Once you commit to a toolset, you can dive into development as
much as your toolset accommodates expression and feedback. I'd recommend using
something that has a REPL (Clojure/script with Selmer and even Python with
Django have this) which is a way to get immediate feedback from changes in
your code. The feedback loop in traditional web development is way too long to
make responsive apps in a reasonable amount of time.

Definitely find forums for the tools you are using and ask questions in the
beginners channels. No need to be embarrassed, if you've never held a cup it's
not a big deal, it just takes time to learn how to hold one. Then time to walk
to the river, then time to scoop some water into the cup. But eventually,
piece by piece, you'll get a delicious drink that satiates, and you'll know
how to fashion a cup even more cleanly for the next time(s) you need a new
cup. Aha, at this point one can start seeing code reusability, state
management via atomic actions through swaps, and functional approaches as
fundamental to achieving incremental progress. Laying the foundation hardly
looks like progress, but actual progress is impossible without an excellent
foundation.

------
benibela
My library app ([http://www.videlibri.de](http://www.videlibri.de)) is failing
since 2006

It reminds the users when they need to return books borrowed from public
libraries to protect them from paying late fees. It is extremely useful for
library users, but they do not know that it exists.

First I wrote it for Windows and Linux, told the librarians about it and they
said, we do not want any apps. Now the libraries have Android apps, so I
ported it to Android, but when I tell the librarians about it, they say, we
already have an app, we do not need two apps. But they still do not Windows
and Linux apps.

I cannot test it without traveling in person to the public library in Germany
and renting some books, so when the librarians changes something on their
webpage, it stops working; and I cannot fix it, until someone from there tells
me what was changed, so it is losing functionality every year

~~~
karatestomp
Do German libraries not email reminders? Also I usually shy away from projects
that can be replaced with a “hey Siri”—if people aren’t already taking the 5
seconds to set a reminder, they probably don’t care that much.

~~~
benibela
Some send email reminders and some do not.

But I primarily wrote it because of a library that sends reminders. I borrowed
books there, did not set a reminder myself, since they always send reminders,
and then they did not send reminders. "We had a mail server failure", and then
I had to pay 60€, because they cannot maintain their servers properly.

And it has more features. It also renews the books automatically to extend the
lending period. Siri cannot renew the books. And it keeps a list of all books.
Before I had it, I had read books that I would like to read again, but I do
not remember which books that were

~~~
nkrisc
Wow, that's quite a fee. Here in the US, every library district I've lived in
had paltry late fees. As in, maybe a few dollars for many weeks overdue.

------
stakkur
Last year, I built a local/regional tech job listing website, targeted at
helping 'older' people (35ish and up, of any gender) looking to find work--
experienced or not. $100 listings.

Plenty of traffic. Totally failed. Started MVP by pulling in listings from
elsewhere, but couldn't get a single listing.

Why did it fail? I think because:

1\. Companies had zero interest in targeting 'older' workers in tech, despite
them being the second-largest discrimination group (after women) in
technology. I got more than one 'why would we target them?' response.

2\. I didn't solicit the right people (or in the right way) for listings

3\. Inexperience: I'm not very skilled at marketing, and saw a real need but
clumsily approached it

~~~
ACow_Adonis
I don't know what it's like on your jurisdiction (although I'm still laughing
a bit at the notion that I'm an 'older' worker at 30 something), but could
part of the problem be that it's technically illegal/regulation risk?

By which I mean, we all know that age discrimination happens, but you're not
'supposed' to do it. By setting up a website that explicitly discriminates
based on age, you're exposing the employer to a verifiable action that they're
taking to discriminate on age. It doesn't matter that it's an attempt to
counter the widely perceived current discrimination.

Imagine if you set up a website for another protected group (sex, religion,
pregnant). Most companies would run a mile from that. The whole thing about
structural discrimination is the plausible deniability that you're consciously
doing it...

~~~
JamesBarney
In the U.S. you can discriminate against someone for being younger all you
want. You just can't discriminate against someone for being too old when they
are over age 40.

[https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm)

------
harrisreynolds
Chartly [1] is a project I worked on for about a year and launched but is no
longer under active development.

It failed because we spend so much time building lots of random features and
never got much feedback.

In retrospect I think the data vis market is just too saturated to get noticed
at this point. I am sure it is possible for someone, but it wasn't for us.

Current "side" project is Webase [1] where we incorporate many ideas that were
in Chartly, but addresses a broader and much earlier market.

[1] [https://chart.ly](https://chart.ly) [2]
[https://www.webase.com](https://www.webase.com)

~~~
brahyam
Hey!, tried Webase and looks very good. While testing it I found something
that could be a bug?. I created a new app, and a new table with just one
string field, and then whenever I create a new row it gets added twice. (Name
of the app/table is Test App/Robot). Keep it up!

------
ad31mar
[https://binnedart.com](https://binnedart.com)

A marketplace to connect artists looking to recoup the cost of supplies with
art lovers who are looking for a bargain. Didn't pick up, even tho the initial
feedback was great - guess the demand wasn't there after all, from both sides.
It's still live, only losing money.

[https://damnshort.com](https://damnshort.com)

Recently launched a service to serve nice (or so I thought) dotcoms at well
below market value, however it doesn't seem to be picking up the traction I
was expecting.

~~~
bmm6o
I really like the idea of binnedart. I checked out the site. Are the prices
USD? Measurements in cm seem incongruous. And maybe I'm not really the target
market, but i didn't see anything i liked.

~~~
ad31mar
Good catch, thanks! I changed the currency from EUR to USD recently and forgot
about the measurements. As for not liking anything, I guess beauty really is
in the eye of the beholder ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
simon_weber
[https://repominder.com](https://repominder.com) sends release reminders for
your open source projects. It works by monitoring the diff between your
development branch and how you release (eg tags or another branch).

It works well for me and one other power user, but hasn't grown beyond that.
My guess is it's just a failure of marketing -- I make lots of these projects
that scratch an itch and then just hope people will find them.

At least it's cheap to run ($2/month for the vps plus <$10/year for the
domain).

~~~
elcomet
Where do you run the vps?

~~~
simon_weber
I've moved everything to [https://buyvm.net](https://buyvm.net) after trying a
bunch of cheaper providers. They've been good to me for the ~two years I've
been using them: no outages and quick support.

If you end up liking them, here's my affiliate link:
[https://my.frantech.ca/aff.php?aff=3397](https://my.frantech.ca/aff.php?aff=3397)

------
Tepix
Came up with an innovative 360° camera accessory. Built a first functioning
prototype. Then i came up with a much improved design concept and changed way
too much at once about the product (electronics including SoC, code,
development tools, case, other components). It also required a PCB at that
point. It overwhelmed me with my limited time budget, extinguished my
motivation and has been sitting unfinished in my basement since. I guess
hardware is hard. I hope to get back to it someday, perhaps when VR enjoys its
next comeback.

------
aberry273
While I'm still working on it, I currently have 0 DAU and have been in a
perpetual MVP / beta for a while now. I'm still collecting signups however it
doesn't have great growth numbers at this stage.

[https://bustl-app.com](https://bustl-app.com)

A Trello + Zapier productivity app that acts like a PA, scheduling your
events, reminders, etc. There's going to be a point sometime this year where I
decide if its dead in the water or whether to keep going.

------
juliend2
Failed project: The Daily Wordpress Reference[1]

I wanted to give an easy way for people to learn the intimidating WordPress
API[2], bit by bit, every morning, in their email.

It failed because monetization was an afterthought. Even though it gathered a
steady 1100 subscribers (daily emails) at the end (for about 6 months), I was
unable to make a buck with ads (Amazon books related to wordpress).

Now I'm on my way for another failure with my online course on WordPress
plugin development[3]. This one, I think I failed because I'm not a public
figure in WP development so it's harder for people to trust me, and (related
reason) I don't have much reach on social networks.

[1] [https://www.juliendesrosiers.com/2012/03/10/the-daily-
wordpr...](https://www.juliendesrosiers.com/2012/03/10/the-daily-wordpress-
reference-newsletter.php)

[2]
[https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/](https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/)

[3] [https://statusmachine.com/online-
courses/](https://statusmachine.com/online-courses/)

------
SebastianKumor
I have tried to build a language learning app called Talking Ninja, heavily
based on voice. I started with danish as thats where I live and its hard fro
me to learn new language without being able to speak to someone/something. It
was not the best choice of language to start and also the complexity of the
voice tech behind it grew beyond my one man army skills at the time. Maybe one
day I will try again.

------
allie1
Built [https://gotmemo.net](https://gotmemo.net) . Couldn’t find a way to
identify where/how I can target potential customers. Got listed on asana as an
integration but interest seems very low. My plan was to rely on paid ads (fb)
but their costs ended up higher than expected.

In retrospect, launching a lander to see if I can even get some emails before
building a product is a must.

------
impostervt
[https://www.sprinterval.com/](https://www.sprinterval.com/)

It's like Couch-2-5k for sprint intervals. I think that not a lot of people
are into sprint intervals, or understand why they should be.

Got around 70 users of the app per day on ios&android combined, but just
couldn't get it to get any more traction. Pretty much mothballed now, removed
from app stores.

~~~
bko
Fitness apps are brutal. I have my failed fitness side project [0]. I thought
a killer feature would be to have the popular 7-minute workout free with nice
images, and customizable intervals. I even paid for some adwords and facebook
but the market it brutal. The funny thing is alternatives were at the time
(IMO) not better. They were corny, had ads or crazy permissions. I also made a
free calculator as I was frustrated no ad-free calculator existed for ipad (at
least one first few search pages). That was a dud too. Sometimes having a good
product is not enough

[0]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twelve31la...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twelve31labs.lujafitness&hl=en_US)

[0] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/luja-
fitness/id997566972](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/luja-fitness/id997566972)

[1]
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opencalc/id1403173317](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opencalc/id1403173317)

~~~
wolco
Apps look great. Where it fails is the thumbnail. It has the correct feel but
something about it prevents me from considering clicking it.

What did you use to make the logos?

~~~
bko
Affinity Designer

------
tapejek
It was the opening of a flower shop. My business didn't make a profit.

~~~
jcims
Kudos for trying, having taken advantage of these recently it can really help
people cope with loss. Finding one you trust is huge as they vary widely in
care and competency.

On the business side, the supply chain seems like a nightmare. Any specific
lessons learned?

~~~
kozakor
Goods that quickly deteriorate hard to deal with

------
mStreamTeam
Fog Machine [https://fog.fm](https://fog.fm)

It's not dead, but on an indefinite freeze. It lets anyone host a server from
any device. The goal was to market it to users who want to host their own
Minecraft servers, and IoT businesses that need to do on-premise hosting using
an internet connection they don't control

------
skreenr
Something I started as a "Scratching itch" thing:

\- new way to personalize a smartphone with Wallpaper which plays animation
aka Greets you! at Unlock: see example videos at wakeanimation.org

Seeking validation of the idea, I posted on Reddit at /r/androidapps which
routinely gets 700-800 people hanging out at any time. Only 3 replied
actually, which I interpreted as lackluster interest, although comments were
strong positives.

Since then I built this little page explaining the concept, but had difficulty
getting more definite hands up- or hands down- signal.

The app would take a bit more work and testing before it's ready for release.
So I really would like to get better handle if this can get traction.

Looking at monetization figures on SensorTower, the Android Personalization
category is not anywhere near the Games; only one/two apps really make decent
sales.

Appreciate any pointers or thoughts, if anyone have experience and ideas to
try.

------
jackthebadcat
I created Frifrofru
([https://www.frifrofru.com/](https://www.frifrofru.com/)). Another china
stores dedicated coupons/promo-codes website build using free stuff (Azure
free, Mongo Atlas, Docker Hub, Github Actions). The domain is also free (2
years free). It's alive but with no more development. Why? Most of the stores
that I want to share, only provide files that I can't get automatically, no
API's and from my side no time to do it manually. The project started because
some friends start asking if I know some promo codes. Most of them stop buying
things 1 years ago. Bonus note: it's something that I'm against (consumerism).
I prefer some of the other side projects that are focused on "green" things or
in helping animals and persons.

------
vivan
Outlook add-on to give the ability to "undo" sending email. It just mimicked
the functionality in Gmail where it holds your email for 10/30/60 seconds
before sending, which gives you a chance to stop the message being sent if you
notice an issue. For some bizarre reason Microsoft built this in their web app
but never in the desktop version of Outlook, which is what most people in big
corporate environments use.

Finished the project, built the tool and it worked great, had a bunch of
people using it. Then I got to the point of having to actually
distribute/market it and I gave up - the idea of having to actually support a
desktop application was just too much for me.

I'll probably throw the code up on GitHub at some point so people can still
get some value out of it, since a lot of people have been asking.

------
total_plus
My two latest failed projects were a SaaS to help landlords manage their
properties, including rent payment management, and an analytics tool that
consolidated data from real estate property in a excel so people looking to
buy or rent could analyse the options in a more effective way than going
property by property in the listing site. Both projects failed because I could
not attract users in a consistent way. I could not find any paying user during
the 2 months that each project stayed online. Nevertheless, it was a good
learning experience and it was one of the motivations to derive the project
that I am working now ([https://turbovar.com/](https://turbovar.com/)), which
is a full-stack Java Web APP template.

~~~
kioleanu
Hi, I am in your target for Turbovar, but it's not clear to me why I would
chose it (and pay) instead of JHipster

~~~
total_plus
Good question. I am not a specialist in JHpister, but I think that two of the
reasons that would drive you to choose TurboVar are: you prefer code over
configuration and want more control over the code base; you do not want to
learn/use Spring on the server side/back-end;

Feel free to leave any additional question or feedback.

~~~
kioleanu
Hey thanks for answering. I'm actually thinking of building something like
this if my current project fails, but on different programming languages.

I'd love to bounce some ideas back and forth with you. Could you drop me an
e-mail at the e-mail I have listed in my profile, please?

~~~
total_plus
Sure. I am aware of some other products with similar premises that are based
in other programming languages. I will drop you an e-mail.

------
jotakami
Tried to start a local in-person meeting for CGAA (Computer Gaming Addicts
Anonymous). Posted flyers all over my university campus, which has like 30k
undergrads. Nobody showed up, week after week. Not sure how to let people know
and I’m not a “growth hacker” type so I gave up.

~~~
hn_acc_1
To be fair, that was probably a tough crowd to "market" to... most addicts
need a pretty significant kick to force them into a change, and flyers don't
provide any kick and are easily ignored.

------
shireboy
I published Trello Dojo
[https://leanpub.com/trellodojo](https://leanpub.com/trellodojo) a while back.
I’m not sure it’s a complete failure: Joel tweeted it, it helped some people,
and I made about 20k in royalties. But they have since added templates and
other features and I haven’t updated the book in a while. I’ve been trying to
find time to update it for a few years now, and just haven’t. I also have a
company that wants a developer specific version and haven’t gotten to that
either. I also have a Trello board of a hundred or so ideas, but have learned
ideas are cheap- making time and energy to actually build and market is the
hard thing.

------
dizzydiz
My last project QuoraScanner was a browser addon that helped marketers decide
what questions to answer next on Quora based on views and tracking users.

[https://24hrstartup.com/products/quora-
scanner](https://24hrstartup.com/products/quora-scanner)

It failed as Quora changed how much info could be seen/scraped on the frontend
without a login. Even if they hadn't I likely wouldn't have been able to get
enough LTV from each user to spend enough acquire them at a decent pace.

No regrets though, it was my first experience doing user feedback sessions
over Skype, which I can't recommend highly enough vs. asking them to fill a
form.

------
bemmu
Felt like playing with Twilio, and not having released anything in a long
time, I thought I'd push myself to finish something.

Since I happened to need to send & receive a fax, but didn't like to commit to
a longer subscription plan, I made this website for doing that:
[https://5dollarfax.com/](https://5dollarfax.com/)

I had a plan to promote it by writing a deep blog post about the contents of a
fax handshake, and got pretty far into it, but at one point it required some
signal processing knowledge I didn't yet have and the post languished.

~~~
enayetn
Writing and publishing longer blog content in parts can help shorten the ‘go
to market’ time which I’ve found helps with keeping motivation up and shorter
articles rend to have higher readership

------
ron22
A crowdfunding site for product feature requests.

Stripe closed my account before I was able to launch as it was "unable to
accept payments for crowdfunding"..... Their marketing doesn't match their
policies.

~~~
james_impliu
This is a really cool idea.

You could add a tag to feature request issues that it'd read from, maybe as a
github app or something. I run an OS repo and it'd be really cool to be able
to get through them all faster with a bit of money to pay a freelancer, for
example. I imagine the users-paying side would be very hard to find though.

I'd also love to be able to attach a bounty to PRs with this money, although
quality control would make me worry it'd be hard.

I imagine Patreon is never an enormous sum for people because the money is
goodwill - it isn't tied to receiving anything back. You could make it like
this.

I'm surprised there wasn't some other way of doing this - clearly other crowd
funding sites exists, what do they use?

~~~
ron22
For open source issues there's already a few solutions, one to look at is
[https://issuehunt.io/](https://issuehunt.io/) (they use Stripe)

Most use Stripe. I guess it's just a case by case thing. I really don't know
why they rejected me when they advertise that exact use case [1]. But the
policy I was directed to says the opposite [2].

[1] [https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/connect-
crowdfunding](https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/connect-crowdfunding)

[2] [https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses](https://stripe.com/restricted-
businesses)

------
snisarenko
[https://www.weekendpal.io](https://www.weekendpal.io)

What I learned from talking to people, the only people who have trouble
finding weekend activities are travelers, or couples. But I am not sure if
those markets are big enough considering the complexity of building this. I
have some iteration ideas that i might try in the future. I also discovered
existing solutions that are "good enough" (sffuncheap etc.).

------
raksoras
[https://www.scanfortable.com/](https://www.scanfortable.com/)

No traction so far most likely because of founder not good at sales.

~~~
speps
Blaming it on the founder is harsh... Restaurants actually like having long
queues all the way to outside. It shows they have a good reputation.

~~~
raksoras
I’m the said founder so Thanks for your kind words :)

------
hermitcrab
Launched
[https://www.easydatatransform.com](https://www.easydatatransform.com) earlier
this year. It has sold some licenses and I wouldn't call it a failure yet, but
the visit to download ratio is low compared to my other 2 commercial products.
Not sure why. I'm pretty sure the traffic is targeted, I am solving a real
problem and the website explains what it does. Any feedback would be welcome!

~~~
pragmatic
In a recent job, I was a software engineer who worked with the data science
people in an "analytics" group.

A big PITA for us was the data we'd get from various sources
(vendors/clients/whomever). Oh, there's a rando string in a "number" field in
row 9,100,500, huh, that sucks.

You can't always build the validation into your ETL pipeline for various
reasons. Or it fails the whole file (b/c the data science folks built it that
way really aren't that experienced at handling exceptions in the file loads,
etc)

Anyway that rambling is trying to lead up to me saying that there's a chasm
between your supposed target market (marketers, BSAs, scientists) and the
engineers/devs etc that could probably use some better tools for CSV/JSON
munging.

Excel is terrible at this job. What I often did was load the csv into sqlite
to and then ran queries on the data to figure out how many records were
horked. Or if it was a process we were testing, to verify that we had the
right data or a good approximation. That works for csv, but with JSON, it's
even harder.

Anyway, I'm just not sure that your target market knows to look for a tool
like this or would really know what to do with it. On the other hand, an
engineer might look at this tool as too down level.

\- No cli options \- No api?

I think there's a market for tools to help "data plumbers", software devs,
engineers, support personal, etc. There's all kinds of application
consultants/support etc that are moving data between systems for migrations,
upgrades, custom exports, etc.

~~~
rusticpenn
I can tell you from experience that this is primarily a Business
Transformation problem more than a technical one. A tool would of course be
helpful but solves only 5% of the real problem.

~~~
hermitcrab
And what are the 95% of 'real problem'? Are you talking about soft/people
issues? Is it even possible to address these things with a tool?

------
RikNieu
[https://coddle.app/](https://coddle.app/)

Coddle is a service that checks if your sites are online, how fast they load,
and lets you know if something is wrong. As a bonus, it takes screen shots of
your sites with a selection of device options.

It didn't pick up the traction I was expecting, guess this is not really
something people need.

I learned a lot making it though and will use it for my own sites, so not a
complete loss.

~~~
CaptArmchair
Here's my (uninvited) observations:

You seem to have a strong focus on persona's: makers, bloggers, designers,
agencies. But have you actually checked if these specific target groups need a
service like yours? And if they are willing to pay for it?

The vast majority of makers, bloggers and designers, arguably will use cloud
services or platforms to get their content out. Those who do host their own
website, probably are either tech savvy, or rely on a third party to take care
of the operational side. Agencies either go with dedicated hosting parties who
include monitoring services in their SLA's already.

There's also this weird spread between individuals - bloggers, makers,
designers - and agencies, which is a totally different market.

You are competing with others who offer the same service either as a part of
their offering or as a separate offering but better and far more focussed.
Like these guys:

[https://ohdear.app/](https://ohdear.app/)

For instance, you offer basic monitoring, but you also add this concept of
"snapshots" and it's entirely unclear how that tacks onto monitoring.
Moreover, you're vaguely stating "Coddle will help you check that your work
looks tight on various different devices." and "You can choose to take
snapshots with a variety of different device options too. Perhaps you could
use some of these in your marketing and designs too?" So, what are you
offering here to prospective clients?

The other guys simply solve one single question through 6 distinct parameters:
Is my site still up? Yes or no? That's it. It's crystal clear what they do.

They focus on the quality of their service. Do one thing, but execute it to a
T. For instance, by offering all kinds of API integrations for their uptime
monitoring service with push notifications.

Then there's the pricing. It's unclear if those prices are per month, week or
year. Also, how does the "checks frequencey" make any difference to the
customer? And what does "check logs" mean? What are you actually selling here?

Moreover, the other guys offer their service - 50 sites - for 25% cheaper then
yours. Plus, their pricing contains far more tiers to cater to different
segments of the market.

Notice also how they don't differentiate their users. It doesn't matter who
you are. The only differentiator they have: do you have this problem? Yes /
No. If yes, then this is what we offer without thrills.

I don't endorse Oh Dear app. It was the first thing that came to my mind when
I clicked on your link. I think you might find it useful to see a comparison
on how that might help you in the future.

I think my biggest tip would be to clearly define which problem your solving,
make sure you ruthlessly stick to the scope (does it help solve the problem) -
no matter how interesting tech like snapshots might be - and you make sure
your communication / marketing is unambiguous about the solution you provide.

~~~
RikNieu
Awesome answer, thank you very much! I'll consider everything you mentioned
and see how I can improve things.

------
powmikepow
I built an android app called NisekoPow which was for the backcountry skier +
snowboarders. I got annoyed going on three websites every morning and
refreshing to see: * Recent snowfall * Avalanche report * Forecast

So I built a backend service to send a push notification when available.

I was out there for a season and it was good but I didn't return the next year
and I lost the urge to fix an issue I no longer faced. Was a great learning
experience though!

------
ryandrake
All of my side projects are technically failures because I cannot release
them. I have worked in software for a few decades, and all of the companies
have IP assignment clauses in their non-negotiable employment agreements that
specify that any project I do, even on my own time and with my own equipment
belongs to them. There’s no point to releasing something that will be seized
by court order if it becomes profitable.

~~~
snisarenko
You might want to check your state laws, and consult with a lawyer before
making that conclusion

------
ilaksh
People need to learn the difference between something being widely popular and
something being good and achieving it's technical goals.

My project vintagesimulator.com did not become popular, but that doesn't mean
it failed. It just means I did not put enough time and effort into creating
content and promoting it. I achieved the technical goals. Despite a lack of
interest I would never call it a failure.

------
zkmon
I have started worktheme.com and planning to shut it down. It pulls h1b case
data from govt web pages and some nice visuals around it. It also has has a
message board with thousands of people talking. it has about 32k messsages
posted at the moment.

The reason for shutting it down is, it is just my playground area and I have
done everything I wanted to do. Not sure if I can make it any bigger. So
closing it down.

------
woile
[https://rentee.app](https://rentee.app)

It's for renting apartments, houses and rooms. We failed at marketing. You can
publish, search by place, monument and whatever you want.

Our idea since the beginning was to learn and be able to deliver something
(with some friends). Next steps are to learn more about growing communities
and publicity.

------
Max-20
[https://transfershops.com](https://transfershops.com) a marketplace for
ecommerce businesses and shops, I am currently trying to sell it. The problem
is that with two sided marketplaces you have a chicken and egg problem.
Without buyers nobody will take the time to create a sale listing and vice
versa.

------
jamil7
Offline article reader for scraping, tagging and playing articles as audio. I
built it mostly for fun and to use myself but released it anyway, I failed to
market it as I don't really know how to and I it doesn't work as well as the
existing solutions. So it remains basically something for me and some users
who found it organically.

------
woutr_be
Private emails; Forwarding emails to random addresses for privacy reasons. It
supported multiple recipients, black listing of senders and domains, muting
addresses.

I know it had been done before, but I wanted to see if I could improve
existing solutions. I never ended up launching because I felt insecure about
my solution (even though I tested it).

------
kenforthewin
[https://quickq.app](https://quickq.app)

I'm not willing to spend money on marketing it yet and didn't get any
dedicated users after launching on all the usual platforms. Also competitors
in the b2b space (stackoverflow for teams and others) have a huge head start.

~~~
darkhorse13
This is a great idea, but not sure if you can survive the competition.

------
dukoid
[http://flowgrid.org](http://flowgrid.org)

Idea was that on mobile, programming would be simpler graphically, taking
advantage of the touch screen.

It wasn't really. Or I gave up too early... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
rusticpenn
I think you should explicitly market it as an educational tool for kids.

~~~
dukoid
One option might be to turn it into a game but I was really aiming for
something that I might use myself on a boring flight...

------
__john
[https://atlas-api.com/](https://atlas-api.com/)

I probably need to promote it better, and get a better landing page set up. It
could probably benefit from an interactive map as well.

------
nubb
Could someone link the referenced post on successful side projects? Thanks.

~~~
icer2312
I think this may be one of them
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22309316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22309316)

------
hmvipin1
[https://youtu.be/6BfaZOkKh2U](https://youtu.be/6BfaZOkKh2U)

------
tonystubblebine
I had been working on a Copyright enforcement company modeled on Patent
Trolls, but, in my opinion, operating for good. The idea is to buy up the
copyright on content that you know is being infringed on and then sue the
infringers. I got side tracked by other things that seemed faster and easier,
but I still wish someone would take up this idea and use it to purge the
internet of large-scale willful plagiarizers.

This is not about suing platforms like YouTube. What clued me in to this
opportunity was actually the company Upcounsel, which is/was a sort of eLance
for lawyers. I caught them cut and pasting one of my articles. When I looked
into it more deeply, it looked like they'd hired an SEO firm to build a
massive content farm around the basic strategy of taking the top two results
for a search term, merging the content into a single article, rearranging a
few words, and then publishing the result as their own.

All of those articles live in one of their sitemaps. It's about 10k articles.
I spot checked them and could find the original plagiarized sources for 70% of
these articles within five clicks. Just search the article title and start
clicking on other search results. So that's maybe 14k potential instances of
copyright infringement.

The reason I thought Upcounsel was a reasonable target is for two reasons.

A) They passed my own moral filter, which is higher than just "what makes me
money." I think it's outrageous to pass off plagiarized legal advice as
legitimate. These are people who should know better too. And I reported this
to one of their investors who reported it to their CEO, so I know they know.

B) They briefly had money. It actually seems a little bit expensive to file
these lawsuits. I'm not 100% on the details, but it's things like needing to
actually register the copyright ($800) and only have the ability to sue in
federal court ($10k to really get going). Upcounsel raised a $12M round and I
thought you could probably win a chunk of that just for the fact that an
embarrassing lawsuit could really cripple a company that's trying to move
quickly from milestone to milestone.

The key to making the financial side work is proving willful infringement.
That can allow up to $150k/instance.

The key operational issue for this side project it a process for buying
copyright. I never practiced the actual pitch. "Hi, I want to buy your
copyright for the purpose of suing someone who is infringing on it. I will
give you a perpetual license back, i.e. I have no interest in using this
content myself." There are a couple of variants on the pitch and you'd
probably have to experiment.

This is something that really needs a lawyer and I only talked to a lawyer
about one issue. I bought a session with someone on Upcounsel (thinking that
using their services to sue them would make for a good story). And what I
asked was about acquiring of copyright. Would it be enough to just acquire a
license or would I need to be the actual copyright holder? I thought the
license would make for an easier pitch to copyright holders. But the legal
advice I got was very clear that I needed to be the actual copyright holder in
order to file suit.

Part of the underlying theory here is my belief that this work was done for
Upcounsel by an SEO firm rather than invented in house. If it's a firm, then
that means there are other past clients who would be targets for a lawsuit.
Unfortunately, Upcounsel has basically announced they've gone out of business
and so they aren't a good target anymore.

Summing all that up, it looked like a decent risk where you might spend
$50-100k per target to win/settle for $500k+ with the most annoying thing
probably being how slow this would move. That's a good business, right? Plus,
these people are in the wrong, so it's something you could feel good about. I
mean--suing people is a pretty violent act. But the target balances it out.
You'd be like Omar in The Wire executing Rip&Runs on drug dealers.

Last, as a publisher myself, this sort of thing wouldn't worry me. I'm sure
one of our authors has passed plagiarism by us, but there's no way we ware
willful infringers. We pass articles through plagiarism checkers, respond
immediately to reports, ban authors, etc. What makes this whole idea work is
that there are companies now who made plagiarism core to their business
strategy. They aren't necessarily wrong to do this since there aren't any
forces, legal or social, which seem to be punishing them.

------
dt3ft
[https://20-things.com](https://20-things.com) \- not counting on it to become
anything, but as a learning sideproject, I'm glad I spent so much time
developing it.

------
hermitcrab
I wrote up an analysis of 13 failed commercial software products here:
[https://successfulsoftware.net/2010/05/27/learning-
lessons-f...](https://successfulsoftware.net/2010/05/27/learning-lessons-
from-13-failed-software-products/) it is from 2010, but I think it still
pretty relevant. (TL:DR mostly a lack of market or marketing)

------
brlewis
First I'll explain what I mean by "failed". I'm not shutting down or ceasing
development. But since I have a previous side project that never became
profitable, I made an agreement with my wife that if I didn't get 10 paid
users in February, I'd de-emphasize this project and focus on other things.

So far I have 2 paid users, and they're both people I know. It's pretty
obvious February won't see 10 paid users. Now the project moves to the back
burner; fail.

What is the project? I hesitate to describe it. One person I described it to
said, "Nobody will ever pay for that." When I finally developed it and showed
her the intro video, she clapped and later paid for it herself.

HN readers might understand it as a personal Kialo or an Evernote/Keep for
trees of reasoning. You write pro and con statements under a main statement,
evaluate their truthfulness, then evaluate the main statement. Click into a
pro and con to explore its pros and cons. Here's the introductory video:
[https://youtu.be/PXvU1h44jVw](https://youtu.be/PXvU1h44jVw)

OK, so why did it not succeed in the allotted time? There are many possible
explanations.

It could be that people are not feeling the pain of how difficult it is to
explain your reasoning to yourself and others. Sure, there's a lot of useless
arguing online that could turn more useful with this tool, but perhaps at this
point people who are frustrated with this have given up arguing online, and
the only people left are ones who have adapted and gotten really good at
prose, or who like useless arguing.

Perhaps the problem is that, even when you have a tool that makes it easier,
exploring the reasons for why something is true or false is still work, and
people aren't inclined to do that work. Maybe there's a chicken-and-egg
problem here, where people will only find the tool useful after other people
put good content in it that they can copy/use.

Perhaps this is a tool that people are mainly going to use for their own
personal decision making, so there's no motivation to use the paid version,
and worse, no viral coefficient.

Perhaps I'm just a tweak or two away from making it take off. I'm excited
about the core functionality that's there now, but maybe others will only be
excited about when some tweak makes that core functionality appeal to them
more. I really wanted this to be the kind of thing that people want so badly
that they'd put up with it not working exactly how they want, but I guess
that's not the case.

Perhaps the simple design I use that's supposed to look neutral and be the
opposite of flashy, is just too bland.

Perhaps if I had spent money on marketing I would have encountered that first
really enthusiastic user who would have made it go viral.

Perhaps there's a niche where this thing could have a strong start, and I just
haven't discovered it yet.

I know the goal of this Ask HN post was to gain some lessons about things that
cause side projects to fail, but unfortunately I don't know. I suspect in most
cases people don't know. I'm open to suggestions.

You'll still see comments from me on HN that include links to
[https://en.howtruthful.com/](https://en.howtruthful.com/) whenever I think a
prose comment isn't enough to explain my reasoning, but I'm not expecting that
to be a successful marketing campaign.

~~~
pogorniy
I like the idea of modelling of reasoning.

I don't see enough examples to see full power of the tool.

> I think a prose comment isn't enough to explain my reasoning

Why didn't you put it in format of your tool?

~~~
brlewis
Yeah, maybe I need to give people more examples.

Here's the first non-trivial one I made:
[https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_power_is_a_crucial_comp...](https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_power_is_a_crucial_component_in_the_move_towards_creating_sustainable_carbon-
free_energy_for_the_united_states/68e13aad02e98d53843bc788f00ff193)

Here's one related to pg's most recent essay:
[https://en.howtruthful.com/o/essays_that_endeavor_to_be_pers...](https://en.howtruthful.com/o/essays_that_endeavor_to_be_persuasive_should_endeavor_to_be_useful_by_balancing_correctness_precision_importance_and_novelty/bbbb715f2d3dbf88418d34cc1c9ec0ad)

Why didn't I put this long comment in the format of the tool? I thought in
this case the logical structure of what I was saying was obvious.

------
1337n008
one of my last projects was a website for real estate(including warehouses,
garages, parking spaces, offices...) rental and sale that was made for
global(!) market with main goal being to get rid of real estate agents and
connecting buyers and sellers directly, for free. i would sell ad space as
source of income. i had no problem paying for the infra out of my pocket from
the start so that was not an issue. it had a UI with a big map with a filter
with similar feeling to airbnb. one of the main features was the filter itself
- it worked on scoring system that took the criteria and ranked all ads within
selected area accordingly, so if all criteria matched it gave it 100% score so
there was no sorting by price, area, distance or anything typical like that.
it had many more features but that is not important.

anyhow, i closed it down because today, in order to succeed, your idea or
execution does not matter. you need to put all your money into promotion. it
is not like in the early 2000s when you had a chance to build something
new(software, service, ...). today, everything has been done and all markets
have its established players. so even if you do it better, it does not matter
anymore. it is only about budget for PR. and i was not willing to spend a ton
of money on ads so I shut it down.

another project I made around that time as well was an online website builder
service. drag&drop essentially. but even after it has been finished and
connected to braintree payments and functional invoicing i came to realize
that the PR is again a massive issue and that it would take a lot of time to
build new widgets and try to compete with the best in the market. so i closed
it down.

my third project that i will mention here is one that i am working on close to
10 years now. this is a big one. i stopped and got back to it multiple times.
it evolved in concept, architecture and all other areas. currently the
project's goal is to provide a single place for online B2B and B2C. if i would
be able to get it up and running it would seriously threaten big players like
amazon, aliexpress, shopifiy and so on. the thing is that i came to realize
that for this iteration(as i have mentioned, it evolved from something simpler
throughout the years into something much, much, bigger) to work, I am just
unable to do it myself. It is way too big of a project for a single person. In
the past in its simplified version(it started as a shopping cart software back
in the day) I was betting on the fact that I can overcome money with time,
which I had plenty of(still do). But you see, 10 years later, I am still not
done. I took various paths in architecture and it just kept on evolving and
finding itself. I reacted to the current state of the markets and tech and so
it go me to where I am right now - massive concept where time no longer
suffices. So I am currently trying to figure out how to simplify the
architecture so it could be made by a single person within a year. So far I am
stuck. I would have gave up a long time ago but this is just something I don't
see being beating with a better idea to do in my spare time. It also served as
a learning tool that allowed me to get to be a pro at what I do and earn and
live like I do. So I have lost no time by working on this at all. One could
say that this is my Moby Dick :)

------
jacquesm
If you start a side project with the goal to make money then you are making an
error of definition. A side project should have the goal of teaching you
something or being useful in some other way. If it doesn't then it has failed.
If it makes money that's gravy but it should definitely not be the first
factor in deciding whether or not it has failed.

~~~
greentrust
The goal of a side project can be whatever a person wants it to be. Make
money. Learn something. Improve people's lives. Creative outlet. Your
definition limits people's ambitions.

~~~
exclusiv
Agreed. I started a side project SaaS with the goal of being the top product
in it's niche and making enough money that I could live on it passively (if
needed) and I accomplished that. I do think you should be highly interested in
the subject, so not doing only for the money. And also don't underestimate the
value of recruiting subject matter experts to help you.

But when I look at side projects for myself, I look at who's making money
already in a subject I care about and if I can do it better.

In the things I failed at in the past, I was chasing new things that I wasn't
particularly interested in or didn't get the subject matter expertise required
to succeed - one had an ad supported business model which just ended up
causing me to try creating 2 businesses effectively at once instead of 1. Many
people underestimate those things and I did that early on and failed.

As I've gotten older I mostly look at things where I can compete and just
outperform versus trying to do something novel. A lot of people come to me w
ideas and get discouraged when they find out that competition already exists
for their idea.

Very hard to do something entirely new and succeed financially.

