Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Reflections on a Failed Computer Vision Startup
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.
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Reflections on a Failed Computer Vision Startup launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
Hello everyone, I doubt this would be relevant to the kind of person who uses HN, but I thought I could share for some feedback. I built this site because there is a whole world of people who believe in new age spirituality and I am very much one of them. It is a site where you get the users gender their goals and their images and use AI and psychology to generate images of them in the process of achieving their goals. I am so deeply struggling with how to get this highly on Google. I don't even know if that is important anymore. What are your suggestions with distribution and getting in…
2025 · visionboardsai.com · its alternatives →
- 2IB
Hey, just wanted to share with you guys and app that I built and deployed in a day with Lovable. So, as a founder I always wanted to have an advisor but my budget would always be less, then on the other hand hand I had Paul's essays on Startup Advice, which I never read because I was busy building stuff. Hence, I built this product which comes into a sweet spot of both at the same time being more reasonable and capable than the alternative. ps: it's running on a reasoning model and tbh I've been able to gather pretty good insights from it. Note to PG: If you're seeing this. I'm your big fan.…
2025 · paulgraham.resurrect.space · its alternatives →
- 3TF
http://lookingbackaretrospective.posterous.com I've posted this before while it was still in progress, but the final chapter has been added, and so I wanted to submit it one final time, for people to be able to read the work in it's entirety. This is the true story of one developers life while he worked for a start-up that never got more than a few feet off of the ground before a pitiful crash and burn. It spans nearly 4 years, and focuses mainly on the people and events that helped to define the work. It's very much a personal memoir, and not at all a dive into what kind of role our stack…
2011 · lookingbackaretrospective.posterous.com · its alternatives →
- 4
- 5IV
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 →
- 6IW
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 →
- 7IB
Think of HackerNews, but only for AI content. Did build this out of the wish for easier discoverability of new technologies in the AI/ML space. Obviously, so far only a tiny small community, but maybe a few of you find it nice to be around and want to post a link there every now and then :)
2023 · news.aiapipro.com · its alternatives →
- 8MS
A little history first. Back in Jan 2011 I quit my day job after saving up my $ for a year and began my first startup, a hardware + SaaS business. It was exciting and at the end of 14 months I had a handful of customers but not enough incoming to keep me going so I went back into the workforce full time, running it on the side. Naturally my time is pretty limited. Users kept signing up and I had to constantly print and post them unique welcome forms, direct debit forms, post out monthly invoices etc, the list goes on. The paperwork alone took me hours. I'd have just coded up each form into a…
2013 · its alternatives →
- 9
I had a successful startup exit five years ago (we got very lucky) but recently realized I'm most happy when building software products. I spend the last ~2 months building this as a fun way to get back into software development; and to find out what all the kids are up to these days. I am also a passionate life-long Japanese learner so this project was really fun. It's been nutz how different things are now with all the AI whatnot. This for sure would have taken me a year, without all the AI. I did not spend much time doing market analysis or any of that jazz. Mostly because I was…
2025 · seikai.tv · its alternatives →
- 10
Hey HN, When I was learning to code I was always intrigued to see the guys on twitter making money with a SaaS. I always wondered how to make them and after a few months I developed my own. I wanted to share a Boilerplate for any new devs who are wondering how to start their own SaaS or wonder how things work. Boilerplate comes with Auth, Payments, UI and all the good stuff. Ali
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
- 12IM
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 →
- 13MF
Promptly is my first SaaS Project. I built it because I wanted to refine my dev skills and also to have a central place to store my prompts for GPT, Midjourney, and other AI platform and systems. Would love some feedback on the website itself, as well as advice on how I should go about the marketing
2023 · promptly.host · its alternatives →
- 14IC
I spent the past week implementing a 1 Layer Neural Net and training it on MNIST within the visual scripting language provided by scratch.mit.edu. It was tedious, but ultimately not too difficult. The code runs incredibly slowly, so much so that 64 samples of MNIST takes 5+ hours to train on my machine. There were a lot of little mini challenges that were fun to overcome (implementing softmax was very tricky). If you're interested, I encourage you to try and improve on it! More details in the linked blog post.
2024 · bell-boy.github.io · its alternatives →
- 15MA
Hi there, So a buddy a couple of days ago came up with the idea for a new SaaS product regarding gpt and image generation. We did a quick MVP that barely works, it breaks almost 50% of the time but we still wanted to validate the idea before going all in. We have almost 1k followers on Twitter together. Did a quick post describing the idea with a stripe link in the comments with a 5$ value, no landing page, and no shipped product. In exchange, the buyers become beta users. Around 30 mins later we got our first sale next 30 mins another 5$ and so on. Do we consider the idea validated? The…
2023 · its alternatives →
- 16MS
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 →
- 17IA
Ever wanted to create a startup but couldn't think of an idea? I'm doing a test launch for part of my MVP and would really appreciate any feedback, or if you could join my discord server: https://discord.gg/s9GtVNx7hf I'm a 16 year old entrepreneur with the goal of making startups easier to make for others.
2024 · innovatize.xyz · its alternatives →
- 18IM
I'm documenting everything about my process. From learning to code, to building the app, and all the way to my outreach efforts. I'm learning as I go and sharing it with everyone who's not a programer, and is daunted to build a software on their own. Trust me. If I can do it, anyone can! You can find my updates on: https://Claritask.com ...as well as video updates on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdmqmifW4kIcPclXigay1dQ Would love to hear your feedback on my progress and if you have any suggestions on what I can do better. There's so many task managers out…
2017 · its alternatives →
- 19IM
Hi HN! I'm Amber (13) and my dad Raj, and we built Nityasha AI from Guna, India. After my dad's 12 years of failed startups (2012-2023), we created a personal AI assistant that handles email, coding help, research, and planning in one conversational interface. I started coding at 9 on a 4GB RAM laptop. We failed 8 times before this—coupon sites, freelancing platforms, consulting. Nityasha is different: it uses Thesys generative UI for visual charts, includes Study Mode with Socratic teaching, and integrates everything so you don't need 10 tabs open. 500+ active users now. We just launched…
Oct 2025 · ai.nityasha.com · its alternatives →
- 20LS
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 · its alternatives →
- 21IM
Hey HN! Thank you for all the support and feedback on my original submission 2 months ago. I've been improving the backend using a MCTS/AlphaZero approach and it's currently producing much better results. My long term goal is to allow users to manage multiple projects, deployed autonomously, both from scratch and by making continual updates all prompted with natural language. The cost of each project has been lowered to $9 as performance with smaller models has improved (I migrated from Claude-3-Opus to gemini-1.5-flash). Thanks for checking it out!
2024 · saas-quick.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Most of us founders won’t publicly admit it: We’re very lonely and stressed. I know from 20 years of building 4 companies (1 failure, 3 acquisitions). We can’t be truly transparent with our team, board, investors, twitter, family or friends. We want to, but can’t. No matter what we’re thinking or feeling, we have to project strength. During my entrepreneurial journey I longed for a group of always-available experts that met these criteria: 1. Experienced 2. Trustworthy 3. Kind yet extremely direct 4. Available and affordable Obviously now with LLMs like gpt-4-1106-preview, we’re unlocking…
2024 · ryancarson.com · its alternatives →
- 23AA
Hey folks, I'm Yuval. I run a tiny startup called Glitter AI. It's just me full-time here, with a couple of freelances to help here and there. A couple of months ago, I went from managing zero requests to hundreds -- overnight (won Product of the day on Product Hunt). As someone who gets VERY easily distracted (maybe you relate), I had to find some sort of way of handling all the chaos if I didn't want to burn out. I came up with a pretty cool automation flow that I thought folks on HN here may be interested in reading about :) So here goes: Most of my interactions come through Intercom.…
2024 · its alternatives →
- 24
I've been experimenting with ways to increase AI adoption for non-technical people. Basically, all companies are pushing for AI because it's all over the news and they feel left behind but most people have no clue where to start. I think 90% of people (ie non coders) are sufficiently well served by using cowork instead of claude code or something similar. If we can get people from sales, customer support, marketing, etc to collaborate with skills and cowork to form a company brain, I think it's gold. So I think there's opportunity for the community to share skills that work well for 1000s of…
Jun 2026 · claudinho.xyz · its alternatives →
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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 →