

Ask HN: Ever started a project with only a name? - andrey-p

Plenty of times I&#x27;ve come up with a name for a project and thought, &quot;this is a thing that needs to exist&quot;. I assume this happens to a lot of people.<p>Has anyone actually followed through with something like this? As in, came up with a name, developed a suitable concept afterwards, and actually went ahead and did it?<p>How did that turn out?
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mattl
Libre.fm

I knew I wanted to make a free last.fm but with no code and a name I started
it, crowdfunded the domain and began code a few fays later.

5 years in, still going, lots of users, well supported by the apps that might
support it.

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sharemywin
I have about 10 domain names where I came up with an idea, came up with an ok
name. not much after that. 1 I built a page advertised it not much in lead
gen. gave up. another built a site got trademark no sales gave up. for 30
bucks a month I have several domains hosted. in various degrees of
development. mostly around skills or hobbies. www.post2zip.com similar to
hacker news but with hash tags and local slant.

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atroyn
Built an app called "Hipstar". We find new restaurants and bars on yelp that
have few reviews, and gamify being the first to review them. You know, for
hipsters, so they have proof they were there first.

We built it at a 48 hour hackathon and won some kind of prize, so overall it
worked pretty well, but we weren't all that invested in the concept.

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amac
Octopus (theoctopusapp.com)

An app to sell anything. Inspired by the Octopus payment system in Hong Kong,
I've reasoned that technically, why can you buy or sell anything with your
mobile device.

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Mz
Not exactly and not a programming project.

I kind of flippantly said (something along the lines of) "I should do a comic
about living with my medical condition. No, it should really be just a comic
about my life with a main character kind of like Mae West, only opposite. Say,
Mae East." And my son rebutted "November West."

I did an initial drawing of a comic that weekend. I bought the domain name six
months later. I then spent a few years trying to flesh out what to put into
the comic. (I was working for BigCo and it took up most of my mental
landscape, so all my initial comic ideas sounded like Dilbert meets The
Nightmare Before Christmas or something really macabre like that. I was afraid
I would get fired if my employer discovered it and then I would lose my
audience for no longer having a job to bitch about acridly.)

I eventually did get it off to a very rocky start. It's stalled currently. So
not exactly a wild success story at the moment but I have gotten better
feedback on it than other projects I launched in the past. I don't think it's
dead yet but I don't yet have much to show.

