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Ask HN: What did you learn from your recent project failure?

by raydenvm on 5/26/25, 7:20 AM with 19 comments

Everyone’s had a project that failed —startup, side project, or ignored feature. What was your recent failure, and what's your take away? Not just "validate early," but some insights that changed your approach. Curious to hear and learn from your experiences.

  • by whatamidoingyo on 5/28/25, 5:41 PM

    That payment providers label certain projects as "high-risk"*, and will refuse to allow you to use their platform. For example, supplements. Stripe and PayPal will close your account. You're left with providers like CCBill, which require a $1,450 fee to setup Visa and Mastercard.

    So, always read the terms of service of platforms you intend to integrate into your projects. And do it before you spend weeks or months developing the project :').

    * - High risk involves dating, supplements, CBD, and various other things.

  • by ben_w on 5/26/25, 7:48 AM

    That there is no correlation at all between (mobile app) code quality and business success.

    Not an anti-correlation: I'm not saying bad code is a good business; I'm saying it's no correlation, that it doesn't make much difference either way.

    The worst code you can imagine and then some? Business awards and acolades in one case, business went under in another. Latest design pattern, CI, code review? Too slow for market in one case, strong market position in another.

    https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2025/02/26-14.04.07.html

  • by yamirghofran on 5/26/25, 9:28 PM

    Use dev containers and try to deploy a toy system (all the components but toy code) early on in the project. We did a lot of work and couldn't deploy Qdrant, even though it was working on localhost.

  • by apineda on 5/27/25, 6:52 PM

    even small projects cost a lot of time ( marketing !! ), better to focus on something you really care about rather than opportunistic items

  • by account-5 on 5/27/25, 4:04 PM

    I learned I hate docker and elastic stack.

  • by eyesofgod on 5/26/25, 7:00 PM

    To just not bother with side projects. Got too costly too quickly.

  • by aristofun on 5/26/25, 1:51 PM

    1. There is no link between quality and popularity of the product. As long as the product is just good enough - it is only a function of marketing.

    2. There is no universal lessons to learn, or wisdom to apply in every situation. Including the point above. Every complex enough situation is unique. “bad generals prepare for the past war” as someone said.