[herval]

All these have a thing in common: he gave up because they weren’t immediate successes. Some even had traction: 5 users in 3 months isn’t the incredible outlier story you hear time and time again, but it’s 5 people you can talk to, listen to what they want (and why they signed up anyway), then you gear up from there.

We’re too conditioned to believe in the stories of immediate success and MVPs making tens of thousands of dollars immediately. Those are exceedingly rare, and you might be able to pull it off when you have a massive audience. Jumping from project to project won’t net you that audience, so you end up spending time in circles… and earning $0.

[kjksf]

I don't think "just stick with it" is a good advice in general and especially not for his projects.

He was smart to abandon his minimal time tracker, minimal metronome and jobs website.

BTW: he didn't get 5 users for minimal time tracker, he got 5 people who signed up for a mailing list based on screenshots of non-existing product.

Even smarter would be to not do such projects in the first place.

With jobs websites you need a giant, unfair advantage over all other job websites.

Metronome and minimal time tracker are both vitamins, not pain killers. They don't solve a painful problem that people are obviously willing to pay for.

They are also extremely competitive.

The only idea that was somewhat viable was time tracker, but only if he managed to stand out from all the other time trackers and masterfully execute both the product and marketing.

There is no recipe for a successful projects but there are plenty of giant red flags that you should notice and avoid.

High competition is a red flag. Low value to potential users is a red flag.

[herval]

“Stick with it” is by no means what I said. A time tracker isn’t an end-all product - you start with it, then spiral out based on customer feedback. I’ve seen plenty of companies start that way and succeed, even time tracker and job posts.

High competition is also not a red flag by definition. It’s a strong indication that the market exists, and as a solo or bootstrapped founder, that’s a HUGE time & money saver.

Low value to users isn’t necessarily a issue on itself either - you start with something with low value, then value-add as you grow. There’s room in the world for vitamins and painkillers.

There’s room in the world for red sea strategies and blue ocean strategies. In none of these worlds is “not doing projects in the first place” a good idea though, no matter if they fail. The best way to never succeed is to keep dreaming and never try :)

[holler]

> High competition is also not a red flag by definition. It’s a strong indication that the market exists, and as a solo or bootstrapped founder, that’s a HUGE time & money saver.

I can't tell you how much this resonates with me having been slowly and methodically building a project in a competitive domain over the past two years. I have a handful of organic users who've continued to show up and inspire me to continue pushing forward, but in that time I've also had people close to me question what I'm doing and why it's taking so long (as if there is a finish line).

My experience so far is that building a software product is a hard and time-consuming process fraught with obstacles of all variety. There are many instances where abandoning it will sound like a good idea, so you just have to ask yourself how determined are you to bring it to life and push through when it gets difficult?

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

[brabel]

> I’ve seen plenty of companies start that way and succeed, even time tracker and job posts.

That would be a good argument if you mentioned which ones.

[nix23]

https://clockify.me/about-us

>>Nothing fancy or intrusive. We just needed a record of how much time a certain project took in a certain month, and how much we need to bill clients.

[67929]

I think you just said “stick with it is by no means what I said”, and then gave a longer, richer explanation why he should have indeed just “stuck with it”. I agree with the original commenter. Seems these app ideas were all pretty unoriginal and in markets with giants already. Making a video game is the software equivalent of opening a restaurant… And so are a few other of these app ideas.

I think it’s good to see failure posts like this on HN. Helps balance out some of the toxic positivity you can run into. Not everyone will succeed, even the ones that work hard for years and are very talented (like these folks).

[redisman]

Yeah the first step if you want to be successful on some metric is to type “time tracker” into AppStore search and see that is completely hopeless and pick something else that doesn’t already have 100+ professional and commercial implementations

[prox]

As Guy Kawasaki once said in Art of the Start : “You want to be high and on the right.” You make something everyone wants and is of great value, and only you can make it. The worst place is making something that 50 others do and is of no value to the customer.

[ramblerman]

Did he also say that you want to bring in more money than you spend?

Sorry for the snark, but how is this actionable advice? It's just a fortune cookie anecdote of a situation that of course would be profitable.

[zeroc8]

The only problem is that pretty much anything I can do has been done a zillion times by others.

[kjksf]

I doubt that's true.

I have literally hundreds of ideas.

As an experiment I put them on a website for anyone to see and "steal": https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d815...

I'm not saying those are all great, profitable ideas.

I'm saying that they are doable by a competent programmer and unique enough. Certainly not "done a zillion times by others".

[herval]

Almost all the “ideas” in your list are “make X with Y”. They’re not unique by definition. It’s a nice exercise for the brain, but you won’t really ship anything people use that way.

[myk9001]

Sorry for an off-topic comment!

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your work on SumatraPDF. My favorite, hands down.

(Following the link you posted, I realized you're the author.)

[yayr]

Try to translate this list into:

Let [customer group] do [pain point solved].

[zepolen]

That list really drives home the 'ideas are cheap' phrase.

I guess the good ideas are expensive.

[kjksf]

I very much agree that ideas are cheap.

I don't agree that "good ideas are expensive".

The issue is: we don't know which ideas are good or bad.

The stats from Venture Capital markets are showing that clearly.

Before someone even gets a meeting with a good VC firm the idea is already filtered 100-1 if not 1000-1.

Of those who get the meeting, maybe 1 in 100 get an investment.

Of those that get an investment, out of 10 maybe 1 or 2 become the really great successes and the remaining 8 are somewhere between "mild return" and "complete failure".

Since even the best of the best cannot tell what idea is good and which one is bad, we value all ideas as bad ideas i.e. at zero.

I'm quite sure that in that list I've posted there are at least few good ideas i.e. ideas that, when well executed, would lead to a profitable, solo business.

I just don't know which ones are good.

[sokoloff]

That might appear to be the case, but probably isn’t. There’s often not anything harder to implement a CRUD app that solves a novel problem than implementing a CRUD app that solves the same problem as 100 other people are hawking.

[adrianN]

Figuring out what problem to solve is the most difficult part for most side projects. Unless you personally have an unsolved problem that by chance many other people also have, finding something good requires either luck or talking to many potential customers.

[bumby]

I think one way to narrow down to something relatively unique is to look for the Ven diagram of skills and interests. If you layer enough, there's bound to be some areas where relatively few people how the knowledge and passion to pursue. It's no guarantee you'll make money, but it at least helps identify areas you can stand out.

[tjpnz]

How thorough have you been in researching competitors? I'm willing to bet that there'll be some differences either in target market or execution. Even if it's effectively the same product maybe there's something they've missed which would give you a significant advantage early on?

[jhoechtl]

With the internet economy enabling perfect markets, everyone is competing with good enough monopolists so tiny niches remain to become successful.

perfect market = Market with a perfect allocation between demand and supply, because of no information deficiencies.

[pvaldes]

Find a specialized niche then

[xyzzy21]

Yep!

You have to learn how and when to KILL YOUR CHILDREN (your ideas)!

I typically come up with a dozen ideas a week - most of them don't pass hurdles of basic physics or economics, or once you research "the market" you discover there isn't one. So you plunge a knife into the idea and kill it quick. You have to learn how to do this. I do minimally document them and then file them away, however. Things can change.

Then you absolutely may need to spend YEARS at the few that survive. But you are always checking, setting hurdles and milestones and being ready to kill off the idea that doesn't have any more to work.

Or you discover YOU aren't the one who can take through that jungle and then you have to decide what to do about that. Sometimes you find someone who can and take a minority venture stake in what they can do with it. Sometimes you have to wait until ideas or technologies become more mature. Or you need to put it on the back burner as you can accumulate more capital to "do it right".

You do need an incumbent in most cases to prove the market exists but you want to shy away from the "popular" products because of high competition you won't likely match.

[wikfwikf]

The thing is he might have learnt something if he had continued the project. Maybe he would have learnt something about marketing and market positioning. Or maybe he would have learnt about delivery and server provisioning, even without any commercial merit to his product.

The whole thing reads like he had a vague idea that writing a basic piece of software would allow him to retire, but could only bring himself to make a very limited effort.

The rule is: if you want to get money from it, you have to be prepared to work hard, and on parts of it that you don't find interesting, with no guarantee of success. If you aren't motivated by money and ready to put a lot into it with a high chance of failure, just work on things you enjoy. You will get further and learn more.

In neither case will you get much from it if you just do the minimum and then abandon the project.

'Side projects' have become the new programmer blogs, as something which everyone feels they need to have in order to get a job. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO STUFF LIKE THIS. If you're not excited by it then just don't. Just getting good at your job and enjoying your spare time will get you much further in life than pursuing things which it will be clear to an employer you don't really care about. For every employer which looks for stuff like this, there is another who just wants someone who does a good job and doesn't waste their energy on side hustles.

[moneywoes]

Great points, where do you suggest reading to learn how to think like this?

[martincmartin]

Reminds me of "Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it." by Joel Spolsky.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/21/good-software-take...

[ChrisMarshallNY]

This has been my experience.

I'm working on an app that will be released in the next few months (we don't have a definite ship date, yet).

It's based on two servers that I wrote. One, I wrote eleven or twelve years ago, and has become a world standard; but only in the last three years. Since it's a specialized demographic, the numbers are quite small, for "world standard."

The other server is one that I wrote, about four years ago. It took me seven months. It's a very good general-purpose application server. I wrote it for practice, but it's also ideal for the app I'm writing.

I've been working on the frontend app for over a year. It's really, really good. I deliberately took my time, because we went through a lot of "MVP" stuff, during its development.

The rest of the team seems to think it will take the world by storm, when it's released, but I don't think it will.

That's fine with me. I don't mind a slow burn. I've written software that lasts decades.

[pm]

I'm working on social software at the moment, and when I explain it to potential users, they seem to love the concept (which gives me confidence), but truthfully I don't know if will live up to expectations. I've found it best to downplay any potential success in my own mind so that I'm not disappointed if it doesn't take off. I hope your launch goes well; your comments are always insightful and glad to have someone of your experience around the traps.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Thanks.

I think that the general Quality of the app will be phenomenal. I spend a great deal of time “polishing the fenders.” This is stuff like making sure that popovers are pixel-perfect, Dark Mode is supported, it’s localizable and accessible, and has various fast animations for “flourish,” etc.

We know the target demographic well, and all indications are, that it will be well-received.

But I don’t think it has much monetary potential, which I feel is fine. We’re a nonprofit, anyway. It will be funny, because a free app will have a level of refinement that leaves many money-making apps in a cloud of dust.

Time will tell. More will be revealed…

[tpetry]

You should read the „Mom Test“. Very often people say they like the idea, but still won‘t buy it.

[pm]

Indeed, it's on my list of things to read, and it's why I'm not considering these signals to be definitive.

[skinkestek]

FWIW, there seems to be an issue with your contact form on rift walley software, here is what it looks like in mobile Safari:

  CONTACT US
  [contact-form-7 id="67" title="Contact form 1"]


(

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Sigh… I updated the plugin, and it seems to have borked.

Thanks. I’ll get on it. I may need to do a fairly significant site upgrade. I’ve been avoiding it.

[skinkestek]

No problem, I just wanted you to know :-)

Other websites have full lorem ipsum pages or have someones dubious web shop selling crystals running in a subfolder.

(Idea for webmasters: set up a few scheduled search for <words that should not be on your website> site:<yourwebsite.example>)

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Grr... It wasn't even that. A couple of days ago, the hosting provider had some kind of server bork. I complained, and I guess as they were looking at it, they renamed the plugins directory (fairly common practice).

After they figured out it was their server, they never went back and renamed the directory.

[Gigachad]

This seems true of small scale things but companies like google have been able to release good software on the first try. I don't remember it vividly but I used google docs and drive on the first year and I don't remember having a single issue with them and I can't even think of anything it does now almost 10 years later that I would have wanted back then.

[kahon65]

Wtf your pseudo dude, "Gigachad"?

[Gigachad]

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gigachad

[tppiotrowski]

https://i1.wp.com/www.joelonsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/...

This chart is a good example of having no traction for years and then growing exponentially. We usually hear about a company once it hits the inflection point so it seems like an overnight success.

[ZephyrBlu]

"no traction" lol. After 2 years that chart shows 35k users. That's only no traction in relation to the final outcome.

Imagine this was money instead, where the final result was $1B and after the first 2 years it was only $1M.

$1M is only "no traction" in relation to $1B. In absolute terms it's pretty damn good.

[xunn0026]

It would be an absolute disaster if people would stick to their dead-end side projects for 10 years before calling it quits.

[ChuckMcM]

So much this sentiment. I ask people I mentor "why do you measure yourself in dollars?" and they often respond with something like "all the successful people I admire are rich." or something along those lines.

Money is a 'first derivative' of success and a lagging indicator.

Measure yourself by what you learn not by what you earn and you will be sticking to projects longer because the payoff will be in what they are teaching you. Everything you learn gets you that much closer to a side project that brings in money as well as experience. Why? Because you'll know what is important and what is not, you will know how things waste money and how to avoid them, you will know what metrics are important and what they mean.

[ghaff]

One the one hand, I'd observe that most people's side-projects, aka hobbies, were never expected to make money. Short of opening a shop your pottery or whatever wasjust something you did.

On the other hand I recognize it's somewhat privileged to just shrug off making money with "side hustles."

[jabl]

Well, it's also kind of privileged to expect to have such a "side hustle" that you enjoy doing, and that generates income.

Sure, people used to have side hustles back in the day, but maybe more like weeding your potato plants after a back-breaking day at the factory.

[ChuckMcM]

I would be interested in how you got to here:

> On the other hand I recognize it's somewhat privileged to just shrug off making money with "side hustles."

Was it from what I wrote or was it unrelated?

[ghaff]

I was just referring to expectations that projects you do outside of your main job can be turned into money-making enterprises. And, from my perspective, this is usually not the case and I'm fine with it but it's easy to see that being dismissive of side hustles assumes a well-paying 9-5 job.

[rahimiali]

> Money is a 'first derivative' of success

Does that mean that even if my success stagnates at “quite successful”, I make no money at all? That doesn’t make sense to me. How would that work?

[Buge]

Yeah I think it would be the other way around: money would be the integral of success.

[pytlicek]

Absolutely agree with you, 5 users here, 5 there and you will have hundreds in 1 year, 500 after 2 years and so on... This happened to me with my side project hostbeat.info. I have started it bcs some of my friends wanted this kind of service. Then I have realized that I can do it as a multi-user SaaS. I was expecting thousands of users in the first month, still don't know why :) (perhaps I made it free of charge?) Made a post on 3-4 forums/discussions, etc... scaled my server to handle load almost to 10.000 daily active users. And.... 2 registrations happened in the first month. This was not expected and hit me hard. But later on, as you write, it started to gain some traction. One user per week, 2, then 3 users. Sometimes 2 new per day, the other day or week or month nothing. Sometimes I am surprised that some big player on the IT market has registered and is also actively using it (2 largest telco operators in DE and AT fe.) I don't care anymore about profit or userbase. I'm happy with it as is and sometimes users are sending me emails and thanking me for such service.

[conradfr]

So, do your friends use it? :)

[pytlicek]

Yes, they do. I did admin work a long time ago and mostly it was planned to have information about the connection, in case they have a dynamic IP. It works reliably to this day.

[codegeek]

Yea if you read the article, it is actually more like 5 side projects in 4 years (took a 2 year break). That is way too many projects to try for real results. Nothing to take away from the effort and learnings though. I commend people who try to build anything. However, most people give up too quickly. It takes months or even a year or 2 to really get traction on any project if you want to be serious and I am not talking VC funded but bootstrapped. Yes the risk of doing something for 2 years is big but you need to do a lot more customer discovery/validation than just 2-3 months before you give up.

If you just want to learn how to build stuff for fun, sure do 5 projects that quickly. But if you want to build anything to make money (even if small), you must spend more than a few months on it. That is why software developers are not all entrepreneurs because even though a lot of us can build stuff, we don't know what to do with it.

[doctor_eval]

Also, only one of the side projects actually broke any ground at all. Mostly they were abandoned after less than a month.

A couple of weeks of part time desk research is not a side hustle. It’s simply due diligence.

Disappointed that the game didn’t go ahead as it’s something I’d definitely play. Reminds me of x-battle.

[ezekg]

Completely agree. Good ideas are abandoned too often because of bad advice from influencers and unrealistic expectations. I actually wrote about this a few weeks ago ^1.

^1: https://keygen.sh/blog/5-things-ive-learned-in-5-years/

[tasogare]

Also contrary to what is often professed here, a landing page is not a product. If you lure me to your website and there is no download and only a textbox to extract a personal information from me to spam me in the future, you just lost my present and future respect. Don't waste people's time like this please.

[ClumsyPilot]

When it comes to the time management app, he did exactly the right thing: created a mailing list, found out there is no market, left it alone.

Generally 'just making an app' does not produce a business, and has not for the past 10 years at least.

Games are a very special business, and there is no science as to what makes a game compelling: flappy bird was created in a weekend and made millions, some million dollar projects make nothing. I think that you have to be very passionate about games and have deep understanding of gameplay to even compete.

[pjc50]

This makes me feel better about 0 side projects earning $0 in 20 years: I've come out ahead of people who are "underwater".

[jhoechtl]

The question is if he created any public value with this side projects. Another example for UBI?

[UBI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income)

[silexia]

Counterpoint: He is trying to compete in sexy, very competitive industries. I launched a landscaping business with a partner four months ago and we already have over $100,000 in revenue.

[Dylan16807]

After a certain amount of work I think it stops really being a side project, even if it's not where you make money.

[soylentnewsorg]

I think the common thing here is not giving up w/o immediate success. That is a very good idea sometimes. Homer Simpson built a goofy car, people were exposed to it and he got negative feedback, and he rightly abandoned it. Some projects are a bad idea, you don't know they are, and once you find out they are, you absolutely should not keep wasting resources due to the sunk cost of wishful thinking.

His common issue is he expected to invest time to make money. You need to invest money to make money. This is why I sometimes laugh at a guy who can't get a good job, has no savings, is borrowing cash from friends to pay the rent and maxing out credit cards for food. Sometimes that guy's solution to being poor is "I'm going to start my own business." When you build on a foundation of nothing, your house collapses.

He ran an ad campaign - it clearly worked. He needed to run it more, and bigger, and yes, eat the cost of it from personal savings. In a business, you first spend money, then you make money. There are no freebies just because you have an idea. Stories of that happening are like self-learning guitar because you plan on being a rockstar.

The reason people don't want to pay for a new project from a new person? Because there's high risk of it being dead within a year - like all of this guy's projects. It's the same reason I don't start watching any new shows till they've had a few seasons out. Don't want to invest hours into the plot just to have it cancelled and left w/o closure in after two seasons.

It's also a reason no one joined things like google plus or used any of their other now dead projects. They proudly declare they try many things to see what sticks and kill the rest. Well, I'm not willing to give my time for free to their unpaid focus group.

So what he needed to do was save up, spend those savings on letting people know about his product, take the risk of loosing that cash, and give the product away at first. Then when the paid product comes, there is a huge user base he paid for, and people see the risk of it being killed as minimized.