Commerce · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to First project and lessons learned
A little background. For the last 1.5 years I lost what could be considered an embarrassing amount of money hiring other people to work on a project that I thought had potential, I got some important people involved, had some great coders, but couldn't launch. The failure was depressing, rejection by YC didn't help.. I had to take a job, I didn't enjoy and I had a girlfriend who stood by me despite going into debt. But bouncing back over the last 45 days I've taught myself Rails some Jquery, and Javascript and built this www.hangout.io. It's empowering to build something myself because I'm…
Hangout.io is a commerce platform built by a solo founder who taught himself Rails, jQuery, and JavaScript over 45 days following a failed startup attempt. The product allows users to connect and conduct transactions… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. First project and lessons learned launched in 2011; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
FoundersWall▲35I used to be just a blogger. Now I build internet products, still without code, using AI, design, and taste. I was building in public on X for last 2 months. And honestly, I got tired of how it became performative and started to feel fake. I shipped 2 products. Both failed to get any real traction. I kept sneaking into popular builders’ profiles, hoping to learn how they do it. One thing I kept seeing everywhere, product launch directories. I thought here is the scope. So I started building one. Same UI like the rest. Nothing special. Suddenly one day when it was half built, I realized…
2025 · founderswall.com · its alternatives →
- 2MF
I quit my job a month ago and have been heads down working on my startup. It's my first time working with Ruby or web development at all. I launched on the 7th - http://www.onefatpig.com Now I'm done with the easy part (code) and working on the substantially harder part (getting users). Any advice?
2011 · onefatpig.com · its alternatives →
- 3WB
2013 · giveit100.com · its alternatives →
- 4FO
HN, I've been mostly lurking, semi-active on HN for over 4 years. For most of that time, I've been working on my startup, Learndot. I have always wanted to do a "Show HN" post, but I never thought it was ready. We've now finally launched web signup and using a freemium business model. I feel I can now post and offer something to the community (a new app to try out) and hopefully get good quality feedback. Here's the site: http://www.learndot.com Would appreciate any or all thoughts: From pricing/positioning, to design/performance. The app is written in Sproutcore and backed by an API written…
2013 · learndot.com · its alternatives →
- 52G
4 months ago sucked. Our technical co-founder quit after 6 months and we still had no product. My co-founder and I had been 'working' on our startup for 8 months. I say 'working' because as the "business people" - there wasn't a whole lot we could do except philosophize. We had gotten really awesome intros to some of the top VCs and entrepreneurs, but had nothing to show. And now we felt stranded. Had we wasted 8 months of our lives? Identity crisis? Check. So we did what any rational person would do - we ran to the mountains. Literally. In Boone, NC - we talked about why we started Knowit,…
2012 · knowitapp.com · its alternatives →
- 6IM
Hi Guys, I got overwhelming support and feedback from my last post about secondfounder.com but still, I felt the need of connecting founders together so that they can together buy a side project. It's very often when a non-technical founder buys a project they have to find a technical founder to take that project further. Today I have implemented this feature in secondfounder.com Link: https://secondfounder.com/find-founder Your feedback is always welcome. Thanks
2022 · its alternatives →
- 7IV
Hey my name is Ivo and I'm a developer and a startup entusiast. My girlfriend was out of the coutry for the weekend and I decided to do something cool like building a startup. I've done a few startups over the years but that's the first I actually released, I would love to hear your feedback on it.
2024 · craftlynow.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Two years ago, I started building this site that allows people to document their learning and progress in real time. The idea is: as you learn new things, you document your progress piece by piece, creating a collection of failures, breakthroughs, and knowledge. Along the way, your friends can cheer you on, and the community can give you tips and feedback. Over time, we'll create a public collection on how different problems were solved. With each progress, the site prompts you to reflect on questions like, "If you could go back in time, what do you wish you had known?" This was my first web…
2024 · opus.cafe · its alternatives →
- 9JL
Hello everyone, I just launched my bootstrapped (no funding) online learning startup, after 3 years of solo development part-time (2 to 3 days a week) - https://onlinecoursehost.com I would love for you guys to go through the landing page and give me your feedback on the page itself, the idea, the pricing model, any feedback would be much appreciated. About the product, it's an online course hosting platform. Online instructors upload their video courses, integrate with Stripe, set a price, create a course landing page and website home page (there is a website builder component to…
2021 · its alternatives →
- 10IM
I am a non-hacker "idea guy" with zero discernible talent. Like most, the story starts with me doing things the hard way. I dreamt of a tool that would save me countless hours. Like most of my ideas, it was supposed to die in a couple of hours, but this one had some legs.... "If I needed this, surely others did too" kept looping in my head. Could I get this built? Could I build it myself? Nah...too lazy to learn how, but before I did anything, I had to promise myself one thing: No more ideas! If ideas were sit-ups, I would have a six pack instead of this tire. It was a constant mental…
2012 · readwriteweb.com · its alternatives →
- 11HI
I’ll put the tl;dr up front: I built my first web app with HN’s news.arc: http://hubski.com The long version (I can be verbose): Recently, I was in a startup that sputtered out. It was my seed idea, but my contribution was on the design/UI end. We applied to YC fall 2010, and were rejected (rightfully so, in retrospect). My previous coding experience entails a bit of Fortran from undergrad research, and building a couple of simple websites (Frontpage even. o-O). Anyway, I had tons of energy for the project, but lamented not being able to contribute to coding, where it was badly needed. After…
2011 · hubski.com · its alternatives →
- 12MF
Please have a look at www.socialeaks.com and tell me what you think. This is my first adventure in coding (my background is not CS). I started learning rails about a month ago via railstutorial.org. When I finished that, I felt the best way to continue learning would be to just build an app from scratch. I came up with this concept while observing how crazy the world had gone over WikiLeaks. I thought this was a funny idea. I also thought it would be fun to build! So, here I am. I built this in rails 3 and it is currently living on Heroku. It took me about two weeks to code, doing just about…
2011 · its alternatives →
- 13LJ
I've been working for about 8 months on http://www.Learneroo.com, a site to teach programming and more through challenges. I created the site and all the content on it, and I'm looking for some feedback. Thanks!
2013 · its alternatives →
- 14MF
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.wtfsoftware.wtfgeneratorfunnypics I submit it as a proof that in 14 days anyone can become a (crappy) programmer :) I'm 32, educated in humanities, I work in a bookstore and in my entire life I have never tried programming. Just a typical user, I knew basic HTML, like adding bold to text etc. Few months ago I started lurking on hackernews, I read about CodeAcademy and decided to learn how to code JavaScript. Fast-forward 14 days: Wow, it's easier than I thought;) Here's my first app. It's written in Javascript and compiled in Appcelerator Titanium.…
2012 · market.android.com · its alternatives →
- 15AI
2012 · theindianlist.com · its alternatives →
- 16MN
2013 · startupconfessions.io · its alternatives →
- 17IM
Hey HN, I'm Aydin, a 13-year-old developer and indie maker looking to improve the world with my small startups. Recently, I built 2 micro SaaS projects. I spent days & weeks coding features, always telling myself that after coding one more feature I was for sure to get traction. This never happened. The reason: I never launched. With IndieReq, you can launch your startup fast and get real user feedback so you know exactly what features to ship and improve. All you have to do is sign up for free, create a feedback board, and share the public link with your users. It's that easy! If you've…
2025 · indiereq.com · its alternatives →
- 18MS
For years, I have struggled to understand my cash flow and save for the future. In addition to that, my wife has many credit cards and accounts that complicate matters. I am building a tool that connects all our accounts, helps us create a budget, and tracks and adjusts expenses on the fly. I am also sprinkling some AI magic on it for financial suggestions. I am looking for feedback on the implementation. More importantly, I am looking for more beta testers to improve the product.
2023 · financemadelovely.com · its alternatives →
- 19
It's called learnfrom.co, a platform for creating, hosting and selling online courses. I started building it because I wanted to solve a problem I had with existing course platforms. I kept running into things I wanted to change, so I started building them myself. The problem: I wasn't really a software engineer. Instead, I started using AI to build the product. I'd describe what I wanted, let it write the code, test it, fix things when they broke, and repeat. That somehow turned into a real product. LearnFrom is now used by 100+ creators and businesses, with real students and real payments…
Aug 2026 · learnfrom.co · its alternatives →
- 20IW
I'm an ML engineer. I know how AI works, the limitations, the hype. And I was still drowning. Couldn't stick to goals. Couldn't stay consistent. Productivity apps became digital clutter. Therapy waitlists were 3 months out. Friends were tired of my complaints. So at 2am I started building: zropi.com What shocked me was it actually worked. It felt human. Last week I mentioned a tough client call. Didn't set a reminder. Two days later it voice messaged me: "Hey, how'd that call go? You seemed stressed." When does technology ever do that? What makes it feel alive: It doesn't reply instantly.…
Jan 2026 · its alternatives →
- 21
I wrote up a retrospective on my time working as a founder at DirectAI (https://directai.io). We learned a lot and I wanted to share some things I wish I had known ~18 months ago.
2024 · brooks.team · its alternatives →
- 22HP
Hey everyone, I've been experimenting with collaborative learning and active learning for a while (I launched Coderoulette a couple of months ago) and I'm launching something new today that I'm really excited about. Online learning is pretty passive (video lectures) and lonely, and I think we could create an online learning experience much engaging and effective than that. Only 5% of people who start a Coursera course finish it. My hypothesis is that we can increase that number significantly by matching learners online in teams of 2-3 and giving them a real project to build together. On top…
2016 · its alternatives →
- 23KM
http://kitify.com I'd love to get HN's feedback on Kitify (http://kitify.com), a new service I built. Kitify makes it easy for DIY project writers to document, share and sell kits for their projects. I built Kitify because DIY is fun and a great way to learn, but actually getting the parts together for many projects is a pain; I want to solve that. This is my first Rails project. I knew how to write simple PHP scripts before this, but I had no exposure to Rails - or MVC or, actually, anything meaningfully involving objects. I had the idea for Kitify months ago, but wasn't able to move it…
2012 · kitify.com · its alternatives →
- 24SO
Hey HN, I built a new platform called Indie Logs to help founders share their journey in a clear and organized way. Building in public is common now, but it's hard to stand out and share everything properly on places like Twitter. Your updates can get lost, and it's not easy to show the full picture of your good and tough days. There is no real way to present the full story. I built Indie Logs because I saw these problems. It gives you a personal page for all your projects, lets you put updates on your own site with embeddable timelines, and offers over 30 themes to personalize both your…
2024 · its alternatives →
Also compare
- FoundersWall alternatives
- My first start up (30 days in) alternatives
- We built our startup in 100 days alternatives
- Finally opening signup on my education for business startup, Learndot alternatives
- 2 guys -- Learned to code in 3 months and built this alternatives
- I made a simple platform to find founders and buy side-projects alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →