Alternatives
Products that do what Launched my side project: Goalfinch does
http://goalfinch.com I had the idea for Goalfinch while reading an article here on Hacker News about economic incentives and how effective they are. It got me thinking: What if there were an easy way to set up economic incentives for the goals I have in my own life? A few months later, after working on it off and on in my spare hours, it's ready for prime time. With Goalfinch, you define a goal and make a contribution of cash that acts as an incentive for you to complete the goal. Your Facebook friends confirm whether or not you've accomplished it. If you succeed before your deadline, you…
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- 5MI
My goal when I first started as an Indie Hacker was to earn $100/day. Everything that I did was to achieve that goal. I reached that goal after 6 months and I increased my goal to $200/day. I reached that goal a year back, now my current goal is $300/day. This might look small sometimes and easy to achieve but it's not and when you get small wins, you move to a bigger goal all the while maintaining the momentum and enthusiasm. On the flips side, if I had set my goal to $10K/month, it would seem very big and I might have given up very early (Actually I wouldn't because I…
2020
- 6GA
Hi, we’re dittit.com, a startup that enables people to achieve any personal goal by automating accountability, incentives and disincentives to modify the economics of daily behavior. The way it works is you publicly declare your goal and get friends/family to sponsor you financially. You also commit to a weekly set of commitments to get to your goal. Then you submit proofs using our mobile app or any 3rd party tracking app (Runkeeper for example) which are certified by other members of the dittit community. When you miss a commitment we get your friends and family to help you out via Twitter…
2011
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- 8YP
Care to share a screenshot and the 'killer feature' of any of your personal, self-built productivity tools? eg. I made my own calendar and money-tracker last year - there are no other users, it makes no money, I have no plans to make it public, but it holds my life together :) http://i.imgur.com/h2keJDg.png GREAT BECAUSE... it tells me how much I'm going to get paid this month. Absolutely no ulterior motive here (ie. I'm not canvassing opinions for a productivity app startup or anything), just interested.
2013
- 9DI
This is my first web app, so there are bound be to be a few kinks that need to be worked out. That's why it's here, in hopes that some of the awesome people I read about on HN can take a minute to offer some criticism. http://dailydo.it/ DailyDo.it is meant to replace the canonical to-do list with a do-it list – a list of things that you will actually do. My monetization plan is based on team do-it lists, where you can see your teammates' do-it lists and assign them tasks, while keeping the individual do-it lists totally free. Please let me know if you find any bugs, what the pain points…
2012
- 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
- 11GF
2018 · itunes.apple.com
- 12AG
If you're like me, you have at least a half-dozen (half-baked) ideas for side projects sitting on your "idea shelf" waiting for the right opportunity to come along and give you that spark to get started. At my day job (Bridge.Academy), we found that many of the incoming developers entering our program shared the same experience so we decided to do something about it and formalize the process of picking up a new technology you are trying to learn and applying it through a side-project with a program we're calling "The Bridge Tournament". It's designed to give you that extra bit of motivation…
2019
- 13HN
Friends, Romans, HNers! Link: http://hackerbyte.com This is my first “weekend project” and it was really fun doing it. The sleepless weekends nights when all my friends were our partying or something we (me and two friends) were busy creating ‘hackerByte’ - a weekly newsletter to share inspiration with start-up people. Nothing fancy - just we’d like to share some really nice stuff we read and some news with you, every week. We know that newsletters like these already exist so why one more? Because we are not really satisfied with what they are doing and here is our version of the wheel. We…
2011
- 14TI
After a sprint towards MVP, we are about to launch what I hope is our most successful project yet. This is what motivated me. http://blog.thevideosdb.com/how-thevideosdb-came-to-be/ What motivates you?
2012
- 15WA
Hello everyone! We just launched our project for the 48H non-stop Codebits Programming Contest which took place this last days in Lisbon, Portugal. When a new project starts, you get all motivated to get it done. Weeks pass and now you are all confused and wondering why the hell you are doing what you are doing. We hope to help you get those thoughts out of your mind and focus on what's important: getting it done. http://www.whyamidoingit.com "Why Am I Doing It?" (WAIDI) is a personal reminder of why you are doing whatever you are doing disguised as a web app. WAIDI will help people like us…
2010
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I built a tool (https://1mil.app/hn) to help me test my intuition about various weird business ideas that were on my mind. Initially, I wanted to create a database with 1 million business ideas (hence the name - "1 million opportunities"). But turned out to be a dumb idea already. So instead I built this tool that returns only 10 ideas. It's all based on your input, market + your background. The first release scored on demand only and it gave false confidence. So I rebuilt the the scoring around "winnability": can a solo founder with a specific background "win" against what…
7d ago · 1mil.app
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I created http://devtest.net as a weekend project, and I'm pretty proud of it from a technical and UI standpoint. The problem is, I've built this by myself in a bit of a vacuum, to "scratch my own itch", and I don't know if this is useful to anyone other than me. I'm also not so hot on the business side and don't really know what I'm doing. Basically, I'm looking for some advice, now that I've actually launched, what now? One thing that this has shown me is that I'm capable of putting together a pretty decent web application on my own in my spare time. Should I stick with this idea, or…
2012
- 18BI
I’m a non-technical idea guy and a business guy that has been successful in my work for other startups. As someone who has been a founding employee at more than one startup, I’ve gotten to a point where I am sitting on ideas I think are brilliant and would love to build. I’ve noticed how difficult it is to find a technical co-founder, let alone convince them to come on board with an idea. That turned into a project for me, learn to build something myself. So I built a site that is meant to help idea/marketing guys connect with technical co-founders and vice versa.…
2011
- 19LS
We built this using investor tools. I really wanted to know which startups to work for. Are we on the right track? PS - there's a paywall but if you want to explore more, just DM me your email and I'll give you free access in our db!
2023 · usemassive.com
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Hello HN! Here's my November Startup Sprint project (coded in two days). http://hackerlunch.com It allows you to post your lunch plans and lets other hackers join you. I built this because I often see HN users are interested in meeting each other if they are in the same area. I am not a coder, so this version is very rough. If people use it, I will work with others to build a more polished version. I would love some feedback. What do you think? Is this something you will be using?
2010
- 21MS
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
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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
- 23IB
I built this as a Garage Project over the weekend. https://x402.backpac.xyz/ Still working on refining things, but let me know your thoughts. Cheers.
Sep 2025
- 24TO
All the apps that allow you to put stickys on a board to manage progress are missing the point. Tasks to do tasks dont necessarily lead you to accomplishing your goals. I built a tool with my team that makes users align all work to their goals. No way around it. We call them missions. Let me know your thoughts! Roast it, love it, be confused by it...let us know! https://twigflo.com
2022
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