What Do You Do With A Failed Product? | Hacker News Reader

What Do You Do With A Failed Product?

sachagreif.com

39 pointssgdesign23 comments

6 days ago, we launched

I wouldn't call these projects "failed", but many developers abandon, pause, stop their projects for various reasons.

So far, we have had more than 50 projects posted and as of this morning two projects have been sold.

Loved the approach that Sacha is taking as suggested in the post, sideprojectors could be another way of saving an interesting side project that could benefit others!

That's a great idea. Maybe I should submit http://thetoolbox.cc/ ? I still like that project but I don't have the time to keep it up to date…

That would be super. :)

Done: http://www.sideprojectors.com/project/project/70

Although I'm a bit wary about selling it, because it's the kind of project that could easily be used for spammy purposes…

Awesome to see you guys finally launched this. I was another finalist in Hackagong (a local hackathon here in Wollongong, Australia) when the initial version of this was being built and I loved what I saw. I'll have to keep it in mind next time I build a cool side project. I actually worked with Vero, one of the companies mentioned in Sacha's blog post, for a short time too. It's great to see so many Australian startups showing up on HN.

This looks awesome. What kind of traction have you seen? Anything getting sold for decent amounts?

Final amount is between the seller & the buyer. I'll try to write up as a separate post, instead of doing it here. :)

The problem with Folyo is the upfront fee. If the intended market is startups, most projects are bootstrapped. They'd kill to get a great designer, but $100 posting fee is a huge psych barrier.

IMHO, the proven formula of service providers shaving off their earning for you should work better. There are other innovations possible, like peer review for design, design critique from an expert, outsourced usability testing etc.

Its always easier to swim downstream.

I'm not sure what you mean by "shaving off their earning for you"? Do you mean taking a cut of the project budget?

I could do that, but A) it would end up being more expensive for customers (although maybe that's irrelevant if they don't perceive it that way?) and B) it would be more complex logistically.

So I will probably stick with the current model at least for now, even though I know it has its flaws.

It won't be more expensive for customers because they'll do their best to negotiate a fair rate on the project. This leaves the service provider to pay your fee, but since you hooked them up with the work (and by extension payment for it) it's more natural.

I really like folyo.me, even though I ended up finding a designer off Behance, I certainly considered folyo.me for a while. However, I still disagree with your business model. At $100 a pop, you would need so much traffic from this niche to pay the salary of a full-time developer (or designer, in your case), unless you broadened the scope.

Elance/oDesk/99Designs and other sites just have more room to monetize than a one-time $100 upfront fee. If designers get a lot more inbound from this, you're essentially giving them leads, so it makes sense for the startups to find great designers and the designers take a percentage cut for having much of the heavy early lifting done for them.

I also don't think you're going to reach much scale with a domain like folyo.me -- it's just not good. I love your design work, but branding is key too, and while a domain like that might be good enough to validate your idea I don't think you can have a runaway hit with that.

I'll have to think about the business model thing. But what's wrong about the domain? Is it the .me you don't like? Or the name itself?

I think there is a lot more upside in tweaking the business model. For example if you wanted a few employees working on a $1 million revenue business, that's 10,000 projects per year going to fruition in your current model.

The reason people use .me is because all the good .com's are taken, but folyo.me isn't a very easy name to say out loud to someone and remember. Your competition scoutzie.com isn't the best domain in the world but it's a .com and it sounds more like a brand than folyo.me -- I know domains are expensive if they're good so not sure if it's worth the investment in something better.

But there's your opportunity. If you ignore it just because its more complex, you'll be having Schlep Blindness. http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html

If you don't like to pay the upfront fee, you're welcome to try https://scoutzie.com -- You get to connect directly with great designers and you only commit the payment once you know who you'd like to work with. Enjoy!

You need to put more links to your homepage near the bottom of your blog post.

"I rethought the homepage’s message from the ground up to really explain what Folyo does, instead of just projecting a nice image (compare [THE NEW HOMEPAGE] with the old homepage).

"So take a look at [the new Folyo](I'm a link!) and let me know what you think!"

Also, add: PPPS: Perhaps a fresh design is what your startup needs. Guess where you can find new designers? [Hint: Folio](link)

Anyway, good luck with your next shot.

Thanks, that's a good point!

"If your launch didn't work, launch again. We launched 3 times" - Something similar to a quote from the Airbnb guys I think. I'm too lazy to look it up, but this is the Internet! Keep launching! Coffitivity.com launched 3 times before literally anyone used it, and a million people have used it the last 4 months. Re-launch, reload, recycle - then give up!

The examples of designers on the site are almost too cool. There's a benefit to edgey designer types, but not everyone is looking for that ultra cool, high-personality type.

I say this as a designer who is going to submit on the site.

What I've always done is this:

Die a little inside when something you labored on for 18 months ends up being sold for half cost on Woot.

That's just me though...

What Do You Do With A Failed Product? -You could Open Source it. That's what I did.

What were the results? Did people end up using it? Did they start contributing?

They get the power to change it something else.. something that could work or not failing ... in the end It wasn't a failed project anymore.

(sorry for the late comment)

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