IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Half-Baked Product

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

1. Relatable startup experience

"I read it full and I loved it and bookmarked it." – edu

2. Startup/VC mis‑alignment

"You can't please everyone." – jaapz

3. Story quality & fiction debate

"I loved it. It was cathartic to read, too." – clan

4. Takeaway on promises vs delivery

"The moral of the story is that it's easier to promise things than to deliver them." – ares623

🚀 Project Ideas

FitScope

Summary

  • Solves mis‑aligned feature promises between sales, founders, and engineers by visualizing trade‑offs early.
  • Turns vague “must‑haves” into concrete constraints that can be tracked through the development pipeline.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Early‑stage hardware/software startups and product managers
Core Feature Interactive canvas linking customer requests, technical constraints, and revenue impact; auto‑generated feasibility score
Tech Stack React front‑end, Node.js/Express back‑end, PostgreSQL, D3.js for visualization
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: Tiered subscription ($15/mo per user, $150/mo for team)

Notes

  • Directly addresses commenters who lament founders “over‑promise” to VCs and customers; makes those promises explicit and measurable.
  • Provides built‑in reports for investors, reinforcing disciplined feature planning and reducing the “no constraints” frustration seen in the thread.

AlphaWatch

Summary

  • Tackles the lack of early‑stage metrics to detect when an MVP drifts from market fit.
  • Gives founders a simple dashboard that flags when promised features are not being adopted or when churn spikes.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Seed‑stage startups, founders, engineers
Core Feature Real‑time analytics ingesting sign‑ups, feature usage, support tickets, and sentiment; auto‑alerts on mismatches between sales promises and actual usage
Tech Stack Serverless (AWS Lambda, DynamoDB), GraphQL API, Chart.js, Next.js front‑end
Difficulty Low
Monetization Revenue-ready: Free tier + $30/mo per dashboard

Notes

  • Mirrors the “When Everything Is Urgent, Nothing Is” comment, turning abstract frustration into tangible data.
  • Uses actual usage metrics to surface the same pain points discussed on HN, making the issue actionable for readers.

DealBreaker Board

Summary

  • Aligns incentives between engineering, sales, and investors to prevent over‑promising and under‑delivering.
  • Introduces a transparent scoring system for each commitment (feature, revenue target, investment milestone).

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Startup leadership teams, board members, early‑stage investors
Core Feature Kanban‑style board where each promise gets a score based on feasibility, revenue impact, and risk; scores update automatically as new data arrives
Tech Stack Vue.js, GraphQL, Firebase Firestore, Material Design components
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue-ready: Enterprise licensing $500/mo per board

Notes

  • Directly references the comment about “low salary, lots of freedom, the perfect oven,” giving a tool to enforce accountability.
  • Encourages discussion on HN about governance and incentive misalignment, a recurring theme in the thread.

BuildGuard

Summary

  • Prevents release of features that were never confirmed by customers or engineers, stopping the “feature inflation” cycle.
  • Automates contract testing between sales promises and codebase to catch missing implementations before deployment.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Engineering teams in product‑centric startups, SaaS companies
Core Feature CI pipeline that reads documented sales specs (JSON) and generates tests verifying that corresponding code paths exist; fails the build if any spec is unmet
Tech Stack GitHub Actions, Python/Bash scripts, Jest, Docker
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: Per‑repo $10/mo, with volume discounts

Notes

  • Solves the frustration expressed about engineers being forced to build undocumented features.
  • Provides a concrete tool for HN users to discuss enforcing “no‑feature‑no‑sale” policies, directly addressing the article’s critique of misaligned expectations.

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