Failed projects, abandoned ideas, and valuable lessons. These didn't ship, but they taught me something.
Why share failures?
Success stories are everywhere. Failures teach more. Every project here made me better at shipping the ones that worked.
A habit tracking app with streak mechanics and social accountability features.
Scope creep killed it. Started simple, then I wanted social features, gamification, analytics dashboards. The MVP became a monster. By the time I had something "ready", I'd lost interest and the market had moved on.
Recipe scaling and meal planning app with smart grocery list generation.
Built for myself, but never actually used it. Turns out I just Google recipes and buy groceries ad-hoc. Solved a problem I thought I had but didn't.
Multi-column Twitter client with scheduling, analytics, and team features.
Twitter's API pricing changes made it economically unviable. $100/month minimum for basic access killed the project overnight. Platform risk is real.
Roam Research clone with local-first sync and graph visualization.
Underestimated the complexity of bidirectional links and graph rendering at scale. Performance tanked at ~1000 notes. Sync conflicts were a nightmare. The "simple" MVP needed sophisticated CRDT implementation.
SaaS starter kit with auth, billing, teams, and admin dashboard.
Kept polishing instead of selling. Added feature after feature thinking "just one more thing" would make it sellable. Meanwhile, competitors shipped and iterated with real customer feedback.
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
— Thomas Edison