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18 Comments

Tell us about your failed projects

Hey IndieHackers,

Every day I see a post of the successful product, but I’m curious about your failed products. What are your failed products before the successful one?

I will also feature it in Pondum.io, which gives upcoming founders key learning and ideas for the next products.

Please share this information also

  1. Failed Product Name
  2. Failed date
  3. Why it failed
  4. Key learning
  5. On which product you are currently working

If you have a success story for your product, I love to feature your interview on Pondum.io
Ping me on mail

  1. 5

    man. there are too many to tell...lol.

      1. 2

        i mean, what i can tell you is that the #1 reason for my projects that failed were people issues. not technology ones.

        ... 100% of the time. not hyperbolic or joking. truth.

        1. 2

          people inside or outside your org?

          1. 2

            team. the market doesn't care about my interpersonal issues. lol.

            1. 2

              ahah, I feel you. so what's your 2021 resolution?

  2. 2
    1. Nova Lux
    2. Around August 2020
    3. Lack of marketing skills, but more importantly there was this blind belief in the idea that never actually solved problem that it was supposed to solve. I guess I was just starving for anything that I could work on and that's how it happened.
    4. Really think about problem you are trying to solve and ask yourself if you have the means to actually do it. (solving the previous problem was actually kind of impossible)
    5. Compozly, a place for people that need to get their music done for a film/video/game by real music composers. https://compozly.com/
  3. 2

    Name: BackerPass

    Description: Recurring funding for Instagram creators. Create a private Instagram account for premium content and backers automatically get access to that account (aka OnlyFans for IG creators). I was focusing on just visual artists at first.

    Failed date: Sometime in 2015

    Why it failed: Shortly after I launched, IG removed the ability to use their API to have a private account accept a follow request. This made my flow more cumbersome, as after payment you'd have to wait until the creator accepted your request. I ditched the private account model and instead focused on perks, a bit like Patreon. Figuring out perks is a lot more friction, took a long time to onboard creators. In the end I had a handful of creators doing around $200/m in total and I was only taking 10% of that. Not enough to build a business on without significantly more scale. Wasn't differentiated enough from Patreon.

    Key learnings: Building on other platforms is risky. Helping creators make money requires a lot of handholding. Small creators won't make much, if anything, so don't bother targeting them. Big creators will be very concerned about how it looks to their audience and it will take months for them to go from page setup to launch.

    Working on now: divjoy.com

  4. 2
    1. Deep Sight
    2. Summer 2018
    3. Lack of technical skill, no profit margin in the industry, required high initial investment.
    4. I need a filter for your business ideas (I wrote more about it here: https://medium.com/jimmys-ten-cents/you-need-a-filter-for-your-business-ideas-2931cb408f89)
    5. A chrome extension to help you make smarter online buys. To do so, it shows you how much you'd have if you'd invested the money instead of spending it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/how-much-does-it-cost/kadnlkahlmfllnlkpdngdckiaakfhkgk?hl=en&authuser=0
  5. 2

    There's way too many to choose from, so I'll pick the most ambitious one.

    1. Failed Product Name: "Byte World Project"
    2. Failed date: ~April 2017
    3. Why it failed:

    At some point, I wanted to create a graphics library that can draw 3D graphics, but instead of using floating numbers, it would use integers ... This was an idea I had years ago, when I was still new on how 3D graphics work.

    The idea behind it was to make performance faster, and to potentially draw 3D-ish graphics even when no GPU is present. I implemented part of it, until I gave up, as the task was getting bigger and bigger.

    Without going into much detail, it turns out that's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

    1. Key learning:

    Working together with the GPU to draw graphics for video games, isn't as bad as it sounds. Definitely not enough to re-invent the wheel.

    1. On which product you are currently working

    I moved on from that project, made my own programming language specifically to make video games with, and recently released my latest video game The king is gone.

    Currently working on how to improve that language to make game development easier and faster.

  6. 2

    Hi @iOmkarBirje

    Good idea to share this between the community.

    I share:

    Failed Product Name: Chyster. A jokes app that reached top charts in G. Play but then lost visibility
    Failed date: 2016
    Why it failed: Google Play algorithm made disappear the app presence in the store
    Key learning: If you are in top 5 of Google Play for a particular word and you have enough organic downloads, do not change the description.
    On which product you are currently working:
    Tweetline Podcast: Android: http://shorturl.at/duEI6
    iOS: http://shorturl.at/nGK09

    1. 1

      I like the tweetline concept make the icon more descriptive means the icon is little small.

      1. 2

        Thanks for the comment.
        In this days we are changing the logo from one that is "yellow" (the one seen in the google play store) to one that is "cian" (the logo of mu IH profile).
        Which one do you mean that is little small?

        1. 1

          The mic and bird if you actually half cut mice at one corner and bird with only face at one corner it looks good

          1. 1

            Ah ok. Yes. If you are taltink about this "mic and bird" logo, we are replacing it. Thanks for the advice

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