

Ask HN: What is your project/MVP that NEARLY made it? - onlyup

Share some stories about projects that nearly got off the ground or just failed at some important point. I'm interesting in hearing the general stories and about the causes that made the project fail.<p>(By "NEARLY made it" I mean projects that seemed to be gaining some traction in some way or another but failed. Maybe due to lack of time, founder dispute, patent troubles, etc)
======
will_brown
I developed a search engine, Tomorrowbook.com (no longer active), which
displayed results, not in text form but as the website favicon.

1st day of launch Tomorrowbook received 5,000 search queries and about 10,000
on day 2 and 3 respectively and on day 4 we received about 250,000 queries. My
only prior web experience was a webstore that receives about 40 visitors a
day, so I thought with numbers like this out of the gate I would gain the
attention of: media, VCs, anyone...

Needless to say, while I was happy with the early numbers/traction, traffic
dramatically fell off. I am not even sure how I got those initial numbers
having used Twitter and a (sorry excuse for a) press release to market. Even
though I wrote the engine to use both Google Search API and Bing API neither
MS or Google had any interest in talking to me about my project, and after a
year I dropped the hosting and no one has heard of tomorrowbook.

I know how unrealistic it is to think I could come along and create a search
engine that anyone will use over any pre-existing search engine, but I
maintain the favicon search engine is a better user experience on
phones/tablets than Google, Bing, Yahoo and it is better for domain owners
because it forces users to actually visit the end website.

Overall it was a humbling experience but while most people would be afraid of
such failure and give up, it has only encouraged me to keep swinging for the
fences.

~~~
onlyup
Cool story, answered my question perfectly. I wasn't sure if I explained
myself or not.

Do you still own the domain?

~~~
will_brown
I still own Tomorrowbook.com. Are you interested in it? Haha.

------
jimmmylost
"An Unsuccessful Web Entrepreneur" was my title! I've been working since 8
years ago, and I'm busy now too! Among all my 10 startups there are only two
successful and the rest is completely defeated. Just wanted to say: do not
despair!

Because of the problems with funding and lack of promotion strategy all start-
ups failed!

1\. Founder of Onlines.ir (2005) — my first startup,with 300,000hits in first
48 hours / Dead — <http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://onlines.ir>

2\. Founder of Zaxino(2006) — miniblog service / Dead —
[http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/zaxino-com-get-a-mini-
bl...](http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/zaxino-com-get-a-mini-blog)

3\. Founder of LandZo(2007) — a photosharing network / Dead

4\. Founder of HostFinder.ir(2008) — the first hosting directory in Iran /
Dead

5\. Founder of Zajet(2009) — a social network to share anything / Dead —
[http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/zajet-com-sharing-
made-s...](http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/zajet-com-sharing-made-simple)
— [http://www.startupwizz.com/2009/06/zajet-what-are-you-
sharin...](http://www.startupwizz.com/2009/06/zajet-what-are-you-sharing-
today/) — <http://www.webdevtwopointzero.com/sites/zajetcom/> —
<http://www.listio.com/web20/app/Zajet-1/>

6\. Founder of LifeDesktop(2010) — the first web-based life organizer —
<http://www.lifedesktop.com> — [http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-
Tools/lifedesktop-com-...](http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-
Tools/lifedesktop-com-organize-your-life) —
<http://www.webdevtwopointzero.com/sites/lifedesktop/> —
[http://sigalonwebapps.soup.io/post/116420479/LifeDesktop-
com...](http://sigalonwebapps.soup.io/post/116420479/LifeDesktop-com-Organize-
Your-Life) — [http://slydnet.com/web/lifedesktop-organiser-sa-vie-en-
ligne...](http://slydnet.com/web/lifedesktop-organiser-sa-vie-en-ligne-tres-
simplement/)

7\. Founder of Noolt(2012) — the mix of DMoz, Stackoverflow, Wiki and Digg /
Dead

