Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

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?

Flowers are difficult to contain small business. That's if it's a greenhouse.

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.

Thats an interesting idea. Have you tried talking with Directors/Executive/VPs?

My thinking is to target sales orgs that are going through restructuring or are focusing on major improvements/goals. Execs would push their managers to setup 1:1s for development in the company and career

FWIW success for my latest failed side project wasn't making money, it was having people use the tool/find it useful. It's free, no ads, etc... But I missed the mark on market fit.

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.

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?

> 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.

Wow. I understand it's their right to do this, but that's total horseshit IMO. I guess maybe crowdfunding is subject to too many refunds, but IDK.

Stripe supports crowdfunding sites. I’d be happy to take a second look if you email me at edwin@stripe.com.

Damn, knowing some horse owners, I don't see why they wouldn't like the extra reminder. Sure, you should always know yourself. But a little backup wouldn't hurt.

Are you still pushing it? I don't think you should give up on that as just a magnet idea, at the very least. Maybe try fleshing out an extra feature/service?

Out of curiosity, how are you handling the emails? In house or 3rd party service?

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.

I'm in the early planning stages of doing something somewhat similar for motorcycle riders (which I am one), you feed it your commute route, typical times and it then sends you a summary of the next days commute (or ride) including interpreting the forecast in the context of a motorcycle (i.e. gust delta against base wind speed, temps below 0 in the preceeding 12hrs, estimated windchill at 40mph, 50mph, 60mph and suggested clothing - plus the ability to set alerts for particulary directions of wind etc).

I've zero interest in commercialising it, I'm building it to play with some technologies I want to learn and because it beats anything I've got currently which is mostly just remembering to check the temperature/wind direction for the next day.

I'd suggest making it a little more generic and targeting the agriculture space. Have templates for animal alerts etc but also days without rain when plants need to be watered, etc. You might get more usage from busy people trying to have a backyard garden than more professional farmers that have already solved this problem.

And email doesn't cut it as an alert mechanism. You'd need to support both SMS and have native apps to support iOS/Android notifications.

Those are actual, real world requests in the oppslist?

how did you survey people? if you dont mind me asking

I was a subscriber for a while. Fun idea!

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.

I subscribed for a while. I noticed the problems were mostly solved by things that existed already, or were ideas I didn't see much potential in. It was worth exploring though.

With regards to oppslist, I think many people don't realize they have a problem. They might copy and paste data from one list to another, never realizing that the daily 1 hour job can be done with a script within seconds and with less errors. It might take someone to watch them during the work day or maybe you need to be working in the industry already and do a self-analysis.

(marketing guy here) - Topstonks is a wonderful idea. Like Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine and Janelle Shane's AI Weirdness blog had a baby.

I don't have a clue whether you can monetize it, though.

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

Or maybe they just use https://pingdom.com

Sounds like you didn't clear the "why this over NewRelic?" threshold.

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/

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.

There's a lot of these type of services and there have been since the mid-2000s. It's not that there's no demand, it's that the market is very crowded.

I know of one that closed 10 years ago offering exactly the same services.

neat. expensive.

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

Where do you run the vps?

you could say 'get woke go broke' applied.

Why would companies put themselves at a net disadvantage by actively targetting older SE's who are more likely to know their rights and not accept 18 hour days.

Hey, I might be in a similar boat, building a job listing, still I haven't pushed it out yet. Is there a way to get in touch with you?

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...

How old are you?

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

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.

Seems really cool -- what's the unifying idea? It's gotta become my "go to" for some one thing. What is that one thing? My recommendations are: personal or public Journal; ability to make combination timelines with friends (photos/experiences) to "weave"; build it around location with a more tethered approach to specific zipcodes -- now you can host actual meetups via app; dive into the idea of clubs or groups. If it can become the "go to app" for some one thing, it could take off pretty quickly

Your mobile app looks really well done

Is registration disabled? If not, it seems like there's no way to sign up. Most likely why it's not growing.

I think this may be one of them https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22309316

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.

This seems like a solid idea but it seems to me like it needs to be marketed on a per restaurant and it needs to be part of a more comprehensive suite that helps restauranteurs get customers into the restaurant, ultimately.

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.

Let me know if you could use a partner.

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.

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