Alternatives
Products that do what Startups.RIP does
Rebuild 1,738+ dead YC startups with AI
- 1
- 2
- 3DY
2016 · deadyet.lol
- 4
- 5
- 6M4
Hello HN, Later today I'll be shutting down the servers and moving on. This is my 5th startup and the 4th failure. The reason is very simple: I understimated the cost of user acquisition. This is the second time this happened. The dozens of users actually love the software and are using it on a daily basis. I'm ruthless when it comes to coding and money. So, if you are building a startup: do not ignore how much money you will have to spend to get a user. If you are not able to find that number, something could be wrong with your model. Maybe someone smarter than me could write something…
2012
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15KO
My co-founder and I saved up enough money to quit our jobs 6 months ago and go full-time. We began working on, while bootstrapping, a photo sharing startup. Unfortunately, after many iterations, it wasn't working well enough and we decided to kill it. However, through that process, we conducted a lot of user tests and interviews, and realized that finding users to test is a pretty hard problem. That's why we made Gemba, Japanese for "the real place", which is a service that connects companies to testers on demand for in-person interviews. URL: http://gemba.me Would love your…
2013
- 16
- 172G
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
- 18
- 19WD
Hey everyone! We spent the major part of the year preparing an idea we had for the YC application. At last minute, we decided not to go through with YC. I mean, we've had our fair shares of failed startups and this was one of those make it or break it scenarios. We took everything we've ever learned and strived to make an app that we were proud of. We spent so much effort into making this app that we couldn't bear stopping short and applying to Y Combinator. (Mind you, there's nothing wrong with YC.) We didn't want to apply to Y Combinator at the last minute because if we had really gone…
2012
- 20ZS
2014 · zombiestartup.com
- 21IB
Hey HN, I’m one of two people working on Hyperscreen AI, an AI that does mock technical interviews with you so you can pass more tech screens. I shut my YC startup down a year ago and had to look for a job afterward. Even though I had interned at and landed multiple FAANG offers out of college, I spent almost 6 months looking for a job after my company failed. I was fortunate enough to get technical screens due to my network, but I failed many of them because I didn’t have anybody to practice with. All of my friends either already had jobs and weren’t looking, or were still working on their…
2025 · hyperscreen.ai
- 22LS
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
- 23IB
I’ve been studying real-world SaaS ideas — some that took off, others that failed hard. I turned it into a small side project: StartUp or Flop? You get two real startup ideas. One became successful, the other didn’t. You guess which is which, then you get the actual answer plus a short explanation of what made it work (or not). It’s a lightweight way to learn from real startup outcomes, uncover the patterns behind success and failure, sharpen your product instinct — and maybe even confront some of your own startup biases along the way. It’s surprising, humbling, and kind of addictive. Would…
2025 · startuporflop.com
- 24WV
Hi HN, I'm the CEO at https://replay.io. We've been working on time travel debugging for web development for a while (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28539247) and more recently an AI app builder that uses that debugger to get past problems instead of spinning in circles (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43258585). We've gotten to where we can pretty easily build apps to replace business-critical SaaS tools, some of which we're now using internally: * We built our own issue tracker to keep track of all our development projects, tickets, bug…
Dec 2025
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Refine with a description →