[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.

[bumby]

>ideas that, when well executed

I think this is part of the issue. Unlike the GP, I think the expectation is often both difficult and sometimes expensive. Often ideas seem bad only because they were executed poorly; good execution acts as a type of filter.

[antykodon]

Could you please share the source of these VC stats?

[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?