[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Should I quit my project and move on?
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Ask HN: Should I quit my project and move on?
I've been working on a project called Expose Menu for the past few
weeks. It's basically a website that returns reviews that reference
a specific menu item regarding a specific restaurant. I'm really
close to being done but I'm being plagued by the thought that
nobody will use it. Honestly, I don't even know if I would--I'd
have to see what the final product looks like. But building it out
would require spending some money and a significant chunk of my
time. And I really don't want to build something no one wants - I'd
die of embarrassment and I'd just be sad about wasting my time.
This is my first time doing something like this, I'd really
appreciate any advice!
Author : rsktaker
Score : 14 points
Date : 2024-08-26 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
| nullindividual wrote:
| > It's basically a website that returns reviews that reference a
| specific menu item regarding a specific restaurant.
|
| The more fundamental problem with reviews is:
|
| A) People have shit taste in food (grandpa who can't taste salt
| anymore and the family in BFE where every Sunday dinner is at
| IHop shouldn't be reviewing food)
|
| B) Food is inconsistent
|
| Health Department reviews of restaurants however, is a great
| indicator of quality and care.
| paretoer wrote:
| An even more fundamental problem is in trying to judge
| something completely subjective like how good food tastes.
|
| I assume you believe you have good taste in food and I very
| well might find what you think is good to be terrible. It is
| not impossible the majority finds what you think is good to be
| terrible too.
|
| My experience is that the only way to know if I like a dish is
| to eat it and reviews are completely useless.
| allanren wrote:
| Launch it first and get feedback. Just think it as a preparation
| for your next project.
| SavageBeast wrote:
| Provided it's not going to cost you a fortune in time or money,
| provided its not going to "wreck your reputation" etc, I'd say go
| for it as you're "close to being done" (hahaha - famous last
| words).
|
| You will get some valuable experience and learn a lot about the
| process of going to market and about yourself personally too.
|
| Go on the journey, or in your case finish the journey. The next
| time you get a good idea, it will no longer be your first time
| and you will have lessons from the is experience to draw from.
| You will make mistakes and by the end of this you will look back
| and know what you would and wouldn't do again. If you derive no
| other value, that by itself is a worthy prize.
|
| Go get your hands dirty and get your first time behind you I say.
| Nobody builds Facebook on their First Rodeo and you won't either.
| Consider it an exercise to prepare you for the future.
| brudgers wrote:
| _I'm being plagued by the thought that nobody will use it._
|
| If you don't finish it, nobody will use it. If you do finish it
| and nobody does, so what?
|
| _building it out would require spending some money and a
| significant chunk of my time_
|
| Working is the hard part of working on ideas.
|
| _I really don't want to build something no one wants_
|
| Wanting to build something is the reason to build things.
|
| _I'd die of embarrassment_
|
| No you won't.
|
| _I'd just be sad about wasting my time_
|
| Inefficiency is the luxurious reward of creative work. Good luck.
| bartonfink wrote:
| What the hell do I care what "people" on the internet think about
| menu items? I say cut your losses and move on. There are real
| problems out there.
| qup wrote:
| People want this, but you probably won't reach most of them
| because discovery is a hard problem.
|
| That's okay, build it anyway.
|
| Put your ego down and finish it. Set goals about completion of
| the project, not receiving accolades and making sweet user
| acquisition graphs.
|
| Ship it.
| andirk wrote:
| Always see what's out there first. And don't get cold feed
| because someone else made something similar, or identical, such
| as Oink [0] made by Milk [1]. This example shows that all these
| can be true: app is useful, app has some users, app fails,
| somehow make $15 mil off of it. \\_(tsu)_/-
|
| Build and use stuff for fun. No room for ego with software
| hobbying. I use Foursquare/Swarm and now none of my friends do
| but I have a blast with it.
|
| Post your Github repo to get feedback!
|
| [0] https://techcrunch.com/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-oink-shuts-
| dow...
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/kevin-rose-joins-
| google-2012...
| solumos wrote:
| WineNDine[0][1] was the highest-profile iteration ca. 2016 --
| around that time the broader trope of "A Social Network for Pet
| Owners"[2] was making the rounds as various versions of
| "Instagram for [niche] Influencers"
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170609232551/https://www.winen...
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/05/wine-n-dine-is-a-meal-
| revi...
|
| [2]
| https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html#:~:text=For%20examp...
| LASR wrote:
| > I'd die of embarrassment and I'd just be sad about wasting my
| time.
|
| Welcome to entrepreneurship!
|
| Doing something hard knowing very well that it's most likely is
| going to be a waste of time is just part of the game.
|
| Every once in a while, you may strike gold and make it big. But a
| lot of the times, you strike silver and it's just promising
| enough to keep you going.
|
| Striking silver is the exact "waste of time" failure mode you
| want to avoid. I speak from experience when I say that I blew ~3
| years of my career chasing after a product idea that hovered just
| at breakeven. In hindsight, I should have given up in the first 3
| months and moved on to something else.
|
| But you won't know until you release something to users. Don't
| give up before you start, obviously.
| itake wrote:
| I've worked at Yelp and Grab (food delivery) as an engineer on
| ads and moderation, respectively, but never directly on the
| reviews team.
|
| My sense is users want this, but no one will pay for it. Yelp
| does this already. Grab doesn't, but if we did, we'd do it in
| house and not pay a 3rd party. The human capital within these
| companies would be excited and capable to build such a project
| internally, so this would be challenging to sell b2b to review
| marketplaces.
|
| Maybe, there is use for e-commerce websites that don't have an
| army of engineers that can diy?
| klntsky wrote:
| You need to integrate it and sell as b2b. Users certainly wont
| pay for this, but maybe tripadvisor or food delivery will? It's
| easy to ask
| architectfwd wrote:
| Your username is risk taker!
|
| Take the risk!
|
| Actually, seriously, how did you come up with the idea, and did
| you test it with anyone?
| achempion wrote:
| The decision you face is not about continuing or quitting. It's
| about being true to yourself. True creation comes not from a
| desire for success or recognition but from a place of
| authenticity. The fear is rooted in the need for external
| approval. The only real waste of time is living a life that is
| not your own.
| tyleo wrote:
| Having tried to start a company and fell flat on my face, it was
| one of the best learning experiences in my life. I'm back at big
| corps now and I feel like my scars are a wealth of knowledge.
| I'll probably try again some day, blessed with the experience of
| failure.
|
| I'd go for it. You are better off embarrassed and learning than
| safe and stagnating.
| twelve40 wrote:
| The only way it can succeed if you are determined to make it
| succeed no matter what, work day and night, throw away most of it
| and pivot into any direction after many failures but determined
| to make it work. If that doesn't sound appealing, then it's
| probably not worth it. Dabbling in something rarely produces
| great hits.
| briankelly wrote:
| I just think that it's way too fine grain to be realistic and
| wouldn't use it personally. I'd save your energy for something
| you're more sure of.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Depends on the time, money, and effort you think it will take.
| This is why Vercel, Turso and so many SaaS/PaaS exist to enable
| you to build and scale... Nobody likes to get locked in, that
| said getting something working is better than nothing.
|
| In terms of embarrassment, there's no inherent shame in creating
| something that fails. Most ideas don't work out, that's fine,
| it's what you learn and what you push forward that matters.
| vednig wrote:
| it's some best advice right here, failing is the part of
| journey of life. It is this experience that makes you who you
| are today or in future. Think of it in terms of baby steps into
| development, you fall and get back up again.
| NotAnOtter wrote:
| It probably won't be successful, such is the nature of these
| things. If you're trying to pocket some money off this thing,
| really your only path forward is to get a utility patent and then
| stir up enough noise that Yelp or Uber or someone buys it off
| you. It's a long, long road ahead with a fat pay off at the end
| but 99% you lose your time and money. 1% of the time you walk
| away with a few million if you created a big enough dirt storm.
|
| Not trying to discourage you, but you should know what you're
| getting into.
| solumos wrote:
| Honestly, I think you should quit. If you're not excited about
| it, then you're not going to like working on it anyway -- even
| assuming that it takes off. And you could be spending the time
| and money on something that you're more excited about instead.
|
| Some reasons I could be wrong: if you're actually excited about
| it, but the potential embarrassment is clouding your judgment.
| Honestly, nobody cares if you have a failed project. Or even a
| failed startup. I've watched people blow seed rounds on things
| they were passionate about but couldn't get traction with, and
| they don't have any regrets. And more importantly -- nobody else
| really cares. Try to think about why you started building it in
| the first place. Do you still care about the problem you're
| solving?
|
| One more thing -- I've been pitched this same idea multiple times
| over the past 10 years (some seed-funded, some bootstrapped). Not
| saying that it's a bad idea, but it's not clear what's unique
| about your iteration that would give it better odds of success
| than previous attempts. In my opinion, it suffers from the "not
| 10x better" problem. If I want an awesome burrito, it's not that
| hard to find an awesome burrito place without going through item-
| level reviews. And if I want the best item on a menu, I can
| usually ask the waiter or go through some of the reviews (Google
| sometimes highlights certain menu items).
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| Just ship the MVP and get feedback. Just one feature, ugly but
| usable and don't spend any more than you absolutely have to like
| free tier level of hosting and storage, worry about scale when
| you hit those limits and make sure to let people pay you, have a
| demo period if you want but you must charge money if you want to
| know if it's any good or not.
| d--b wrote:
| Depends on how you will feel if you don't ship it.
|
| Will it remain a thorn in your side, like that idea that actually
| could have worked, and that you'll finish it later? or will you
| just be able to move on without second thoughts?
|
| If the former, then ship it now, it'll fail, and you'll get
| experience in understanding how hard it actually is to reach
| people.
|
| If the latter, drop it now and move on.
|
| Honestly, no one is going to use this.
|
| - you're in a restaurant, you look at the menu and think "ah I
| wonder what the internet is thinking about the ragout", I don't
| buy it for a second, but let's imagine it happens
|
| - then you take your phone out
|
| - then you authenticate
|
| - then you look for that app that you barely use, what's the name
| again?
|
| - then the app locates the restaurant through GPS, nice.
|
| - then you need a way to tell your phone which dish you're
| looking at, will you type it? too long. Will you dictate it? in a
| restaurant? Will you shoot it with your camera, in a dim-light
| environment?
|
| - then the app connects to other services to compile reviews,
| this is slow af.
|
| - then you see an ad, cause monetization
|
| - then 80% of the time, the app responds that no review talks
| about the dish you're looking at.
|
| - and by the time you're there your date is gone. A shame, cause
| that ragout was pretty good.
| terribleperson wrote:
| So FWIW, I literally do this except by browsing yelp/maps
| reviews, and it sucks. Maps won't even let you go from a photo
| of a menu item to the review that included the photo.
| yumraj wrote:
| Rest of your advice is good. But, regarding
|
| > Honestly, no one is going to use this. - you're in a
| restaurant, you look at the menu...
|
| IMHO, you're making a lot of assumptions, the primary being
| that it'll be used while in the restaurant. Why not at home,
| whether you're planning to go to a restaurant and trying to
| decide if it's worth or just ordering a take out. How about
| planning a party? And so on.
|
| There are several definite use cases, of course that doesn't
| mean it'll be successful, it's just that it's not clear but
| that no one will use it. Only post launch data will tell you.
| paxys wrote:
| Good reasons to work on a personal project - It helps you
| build/hone skills. The work is exciting for you, and something
| you enjoy doing. It gives you a creative outlet. The final result
| is something you can be proud of.
|
| Bad reasons to work on a personal project - You expect it will
| get tons of users and gain broad adoption, and will consider it
| embarrassing and a waste of time if it doesn't.
| bitbasher wrote:
| Maybe this perspective will help-- even if you release an amazing
| product, it's still most likely the case no one will use it.
| Getting users (and more difficult, payers) is incredibly hard.
|
| With that in mind, what do you have to lose or feel embarrassed
| about? You'll most likely fail either way, but you will never
| know unless you try. By shipping, you'll have accomplished more
| than 95% of the developers out there.
| perihelion_zero wrote:
| Make the information easily accessible to customers. But actually
| sell the categorized review data to the restaurants themselves.
| They will appreciate the feedback/info and can afford to pay
| something for it on a recurring basis.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >It's basically a website that returns reviews that reference a
| specific menu item regarding a specific restaurant.
|
| The seems like an interesting concept at least. I think you
| probably need a better name and some idea how to market it. I
| think you should use the same data so instead of 'what are people
| saying about x item at y store' or be more like 'which store has
| the highest rated y', same concept but easier to market.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Quit and move on. Nobody will be using your website to get
| reviews of a particular item.
|
| Now if it was a mobile app with which you could scan a menu and
| based on the location it would immediately know which restaurant
| and through AR show you reviews of the food overlaid on the menu
| image coming through the camera along with "notes", now that is
| something people might use.
|
| Edit: for consumer apps, if you cannot get to the aha moment
| within 2 - 3 seconds, shut it down.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| There is no shame in building something that doesn't sell. You'll
| likely build tons of apps which don't work before making money.
|
| It's a nice idea, simple to execute an MVP on tech side - but you
| need a truckload of money to reach customers and sell it.
|
| Unless you get significant adoption you are unlikely to be
| profitable.
|
| Do you like marketing and sales? Are you good at it? This will be
| the bulk of the work that makes or break the product.
|
| If you are not ready to do that, you need to decide if you want
| to build it for the pleasure of building or for getting into the
| rhythm of shipping - both are valuable goals.
|
| TL;DR: you won't make money with this.
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