Startups tend to fail more often than they succeed. However, a lot of startup advice is given by those who made it, and therefore prone to survivorship bias. Hearing from founders that gave it their all but never succeeded should be enlightening.
I expect reasons like misunderstanding the customer, sunk costs, running out of money (especially with societal pressures like a family to fend for), wrong time, etc.
I’d categorize my flashcards web app as a project that never made it. Sure, I use it for my own learning, but I doubt it’ll ever be used regularly by anyone other than me.
Maybe I’ll one day embark on a startup, and the lessons from those before me will make it a bit less likely for me to fail.
Failed Projects
Real Estate app. Exhausted capital due to too many pivots and licensing costs. Preferred “first to market / build a unicorn” to “the pioneers get all the arrows”
GOSU Programming Language . Founder encouraged by the JVM language boom, but admits to underestimating the effect of dedicated evangelists in popularizing a new programming language.
Project management software for labs w/ interoperability between competing file formats. Founder’s professors loved it, but no one ended up paying. Founder vowed to release early and release often. Also, researchers tend not to have significant influence on IT budgets.
Balance between “sticking with it” and knowing when to wrap things up. One user’s test is if in 3 years, the project breaks even, or has interested investors / buyers.
Patreon competitor whose distinguishing features depended on Instagram and Twitter APIs. Founder’s takeaway was being ware of social network APIs.
Buttplug shaped like GW Bush. Underestimated manufacturing cost. Sold 100. Founder thinks price point was too high for a novelty gift, and the nose was too pointy. HN user notes booming Trump-plugs sales in Provincetown, MA.
Tinder-like app that auto-matches users by their FB interests. FB revoked API keys citing violation of ToS. FB later announced their own [similar] matchmaking service. Maybe the only way to win at an “extra feature of an existing behemoth” is something that provides marginal revenue that’s too low for the giant to reimplement, and high enough to be beneficial to the founder.
RangelReale/htmlbutcher: HTMLButcher is an advanced HTML slicing tool . Desktop app to splice PSD/image website designs into table-based HTML. However, the tide was changing and people started building semantic websites with CSS and abandoned table-based designs. Founder learned a ton of C++ though that helped him in a subsequent digital signage app.
Single player word game for Android (early years of Android, so easy to get noticed). Did not monetize enough during heyday (stuck with free ad-supported version). Stuck in perfectionism and decision paralysis trying to please everyone. Founder rebooting it here: Wordoid! A fast paced word game. by seanwilson .
ZguideZ: app for locals to create their own digital tours, charge what they want, and then collect majority of profits. The project was too big for a solo founder. Co-founder was coasting along, and there was no founder agreement to lay grounds for cutting ties (dead weight scares investors and potential teammates). In desperation, founder started working with a partner who had undisclosed mental issues that sabotaged meetings with investors, advisors and potential hires.
NN-512 : generate standalone C code for AVX-512 neural nets. Expected companies to pay for extensions to the open-source implementations. Founder cites the existence of free E2E deep learning tools developed by large, company-sponsored teams.
Library app VideLibri - All libraries and libraries in one app : App to track books borrowed from a library. Founder cites reduced library foot traffic; admits to not realizing that people believe that they’ll return a book in time and thus unlikely to pay for the app’s insurance.
WifiMask VPN - Fast VPN + CyberShield™ . Too hard to compete with the VPN incumbents w/ big marketing budgets.
UI library widgets in Flash for a Windows-like UX inside of a Flash app. However, the next version of Flash included all of those UI widgets. Founder cites being unaware of the roadmap of the products you’re consuming.
Free Hotel Property Management System which increases revenue through Local Experiences partnerships | Hoteliera Founder spent 9 months building it; talked to 1 hotel owner; found out it’s hard to sell it.
Trying to dethrone Craigslist in 2007. Actual user IDs and feedback system weren’t enough. Implemented endless feature requests from radio station websites, instead of being judicious about which features to build (“The Mom Test”). Didn’t scale well because lots of content moderation was needed.
References
- Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on? | Hacker News. news.ycombinator.com . Jul 14, 2021. Accessed Dec 24, 2021.
- If. Rudyard Kipling. en.wikipedia.org . 1895.
- Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't? | Hacker News. news.ycombinator.com . Dec 30, 2020. Accessed Dec 24, 2021.
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