[HN Gopher] After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code
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After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code
Author : gniting
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-12-17 12:38 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dylanhuang.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dylanhuang.com)
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| A failed startup is nothing to be embarrassed about, most of us
| don't have the guts to try it!
|
| You shouldn't expect much interest in the code, the value of a
| company's code without the business and people is quite negative
| when there isn't some technical secret sauce. Even if there was
| some technical wizardry people would just care about
| understanding how that one part worked and probably not use any
| of the code itself.
| dphuang2 wrote:
| Konfig founder here, 100% agree. I wouldn't recommend anybody
| to actually try to decipher/deploy Konfig for their own use. I
| will say that one of our customers was able to deploy our docs
| platform for themselves while they find a way to deal with the
| blowout of Konfig shutting down.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >I wouldn't recommend anybody to actually try to
| decipher/deploy Konfig for their own use.
|
| This is interesting. I used to work for a mortgage start-up
| years ago. They built several products for banks and home
| builders, such as a mortgage vault and tools for signing
| mortgage documents online.
|
| One condition I still remember was that bank customers
| required us to put our code in escrow, held by lawyers, in
| case the company went under. I always wondered if customers
| could rebuild the code, allocate more resources to develop
| and maintain it, or simply look for an alternative solution.
|
| they came to us for our solution. I assumed they either
| couldn't build it themselves or didn't want to invest in a
| custom solution.
| jspiral wrote:
| i have been involved in quite a few code escrow agreements
| but none that were actually used. i'd be curious to hear
| any stories about cases where that did happen.
|
| in my experience it has just been a way to help business
| decision makers credibly claim they are managing risk when
| buying from a startup
| codingdave wrote:
| This is not the first story I've heard of a product that isn't
| quite right, but when deciding where to pivot, fell into AI as
| the answer and then failed. I've said it before, but it bears
| repeating - when we figure out what AI is good at and what it is
| not, we will start treating it as a tool instead of a goal, and
| our product ideation will stabilize.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| Are you saying AI can't rescue a bad product idea by automating
| things? Like more efficiently doing something nobody wants done
| isn't a business?
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| My opinion: In software, the best use of AI is to create a
| do-what-I-mean UI. That is so-called AI (more to the point,
| use of LLMs and vision, speech, and audio processing) can
| allow new modes of interface that help a user operate the
| computer and achieve something that was nearly impossible
| with the user at the raw controls.
|
| This will not produce superior work to someone who knows what
| they're doing at the controls. A competent programmer doesn't
| need this. An excellent touch typist doesn't need this. But
| let's say someone who has a vague idea of what outcome they
| want, but an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms to
| get there, can get further with a do-what-I-mean UI.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| Probably true with a more nuanced definition of "knowing
| what you're doing". I'm pretty good at writing code, Cursor
| is faster.
| afro88 wrote:
| Not OP, but this isn't what Konfig did. They didn't try and
| rescue a bad idea by automating things. They attempted an AI
| focussed pivot.
|
| Using AI to automate things to rescue a failing product idea
| is kind of treating AI as a tool. But AI won't fix a bad
| product idea.
| williamstein wrote:
| > "Our main product was an SDK Generator that could take any
| OpenAPI specification and generate high-quality client libraries
| in multiple programming languages."
|
| This is something I could really use! Is there a product that
| does this and doesn't cost an arm and a leg?
| dgellow wrote:
| That's what we do at Stainless. By curiosity, what languages
| are you looking for?
| ddorian43 wrote:
| liblab.com
|
| All others are too expensive at ~250$/language/month (still
| less expensive than human developer).
| ndimares wrote:
| Caveat that I work for Speakeasy, but there are a few tools you
| can look at:
|
| - Speakeasy
|
| - Fern
|
| - Stainless
|
| First SDK with Speakeasy is free and we also have discounts for
| companies who are just starting out.
|
| Feel free to shoot me an email if we can be useful:
| nolan@spakeasy.com :)
| xnx wrote:
| https://github.com/OpenAPITools/openapi-generator has 22K stars
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Although the code dump could be interesting, this appears to have
| no license attached. Making it properly open source would make it
| a lot more useful.
| mkl wrote:
| An MIT LICENSE file was added about an hour after your comment.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Fantastic, that's great:)
| popalchemist wrote:
| I remember Konfig. Sorry you couldn't find fit, but great work
| nonetheless.
|
| About the code - would you be willing to add an MIT License? I
| don't see the code being used without a permissive license.
| kaoD wrote:
| There's a LICENSE file. MIT in particular.
|
| https://github.com/konfig-dev/konfig/blob/main/LICENSE
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Admiring your courage in dumping your repo raw and uncut.
| asdev wrote:
| Thank you for sharing.
|
| >"We then decided to pivot into a vertical B2B SaaS AI product
| because we felt we could use the breakthroughs in Gen AI to solve
| previously unsolvable problems, but after going through user
| interviews and the sales cycle for many different ideas, we
| haven't been able to find enough traction to make us believe that
| we were on the right track to build a huge business."
|
| I think we are unfortunately going to see this outcome appear a
| lot in the near future as the AI bubble pops
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