Ask HN: Do you know of startup ideas that have failed multiple times?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25525446

by p2pai • 6 years ago

6 3 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Free speech platforms: People have tried to create content platforms where the premise is "we're just like <insert social media site>, but you can say whatever".

e.g. parler, voat, gab, etc...

The problem is that because they are not actually providing any technological innovation over competitors, and are basically just a low-rent clone of twitter, facebook, etc... (except you can say what you want), there is very little incentive for mainstream, sane people to migrate away from the current mainstream platforms. So these new platforms become a cess-pool of people that were too fringe and kicked off twitter, and ultimately the platform becomes unappealing to mainstream users.

dgeiser13• 6 years ago

It seems like it starts out unappealing to mainstream users.

lock-free• 6 years ago

Smell-o-vision: a device that can be programmed to release smells.

Here's the pitch:

Art has the power to move minds, and a startup that expands the creative power of artists by letting them paint with smells could change the world.

There's a ___ billion dollar market for smells. Theme parks, film and streaming, extended reality, and commercial retail. It's our most powerful tool to trigger recognition. Today we use primitive devices with fixed scents, but there's no search engine for smells there's no reprogrammable scratch and sniff - we're using analog smells in a digital world.

We want to revolutionize the way we smell by democratizing scent. Provide new technologies to discover and recreate smells in any environment, at home or on location.

The applications are endless. We can train medical professionals and industrial workers to recognize dangerous scents without putting them in harms way. We can create the next generation of virtual experience, expanding art into new dimensions.

---

This has been done before, going back to the 60s. It's kind of niche but the practical issues of building a device that can do it and one that people will buy have been insurmountable.

Ask HN: Do you know of startup ideas that have failed multiple times?

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