HN Explorer

Ask HN: What's your favourite startup that didn't work out?

6 points by ohong ↗ HN
With more startups winding down lately [1], I was wondering:

What are some of your favourite startups that unfortunately didn't work out? Whether your involvement was as a builder, user, or just a fan of their mission.

Bonus points if the founder has written a thoughtful retrospective / post mortem that documents the decision and explains why their idea was ultimately not viable as a business.

[1] From Carta: Startup shutdowns up 58% in Q1 2024 compared to last year https://carta.com/blog/startup-shutdowns-q1-2024/

18 comments

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ohong
To start, I really liked the idea behind Muse, but they couldn't find PMF: https://adamwiggins.com/muse-retrospective/

And more recently, buildspace :(

Nothing but respect for all the hackers & founders who tried to put something new out there

shahbaby
Great read. Thanks for sharing.
toomuchtodo
Keybase. Crypto primitive digital identity, efficiently delivered at scale.
aborsy
This was a good product. Are there any alternatives?

The keybase app is still working. But I’m not sure if it is dependable, and to what extent it is maintained.

FractalHQ
I still use this for private family group chat and it’s such a fantastic piece of software. It’s really in a league of its own with all the features it has. I was heart broken when Zoom ate them up and shit them out like a proper American ~~business~~ anti-competitive tumor.
cssanchez
Pebble (smartwatch) is probably one of the best stories of company failures despite having amazing product.
benoau
OnLive. They did game streaming and spectating just a few years too early!
al_borland
I was a big fan of Sparrow (acquired by Google) and DarkSky (acquired by Apple).

I miss them both and think of them often. Sparrow truly changed the way I used email. Once it was shutdown, I went back to the trudging through it.

leros
I forget their name. You gave them access to your mailbox. They would pick up your mail, digitize it, and give you an email like inbox for your physical mail. It even had a spam filter. It was awesome.
ohong
I haven't used it myself, but I've heard good things about https://www.usestable.com/ which sounds similar!
leros
There are several solutions like this for PO boxes and such, but I haven't seen one again for your residential mail.
nicbou
There is something like that for Germany, but it's not fully reliable.
pseudo_meta
FourSquare, or rather location-based social networking in general. Bummer that this category of apps did not work out, had real potential to connect people locally.
lostworld
I don't know if it was actually a startup but there was once some idea of Wikipedia starting a search engine based on serving the customer rather than serving ads. I thought it was a great idea.
mikewarot
I was hoping that someone would come along and pick up the technology hinted at by UltraConductors[1]. Image cables 10,000,000 times as conductive as silver at room temperature, made out of plastic!

[1] http://www.superconductors.org/ultra.htm

ipaddr
Ubiome was helpful after an antibiotic series helping measure where I was with different bacterias levels and how that changed introducing new foods