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Ask HN: Ever started a project with only a name?
8 points by andrey-p on June 24, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments
Plenty of times I've come up with a name for a project and thought, "this is a thing that needs to exist". I assume this happens to a lot of people.

Has anyone actually followed through with something like this? As in, came up with a name, developed a suitable concept afterwards, and actually went ahead and did it?

How did that turn out?



Not exactly and not a programming project.

I kind of flippantly said (something along the lines of) "I should do a comic about living with my medical condition. No, it should really be just a comic about my life with a main character kind of like Mae West, only opposite. Say, Mae East." And my son rebutted "November West."

I did an initial drawing of a comic that weekend. I bought the domain name six months later. I then spent a few years trying to flesh out what to put into the comic. (I was working for BigCo and it took up most of my mental landscape, so all my initial comic ideas sounded like Dilbert meets The Nightmare Before Christmas or something really macabre like that. I was afraid I would get fired if my employer discovered it and then I would lose my audience for no longer having a job to bitch about acridly.)

I eventually did get it off to a very rocky start. It's stalled currently. So not exactly a wild success story at the moment but I have gotten better feedback on it than other projects I launched in the past. I don't think it's dead yet but I don't yet have much to show.


Libre.fm

I knew I wanted to make a free last.fm but with no code and a name I started it, crowdfunded the domain and began code a few fays later.

5 years in, still going, lots of users, well supported by the apps that might support it.


I have about 10 domain names where I came up with an idea, came up with an ok name. not much after that. 1 I built a page advertised it not much in lead gen. gave up. another built a site got trademark no sales gave up. for 30 bucks a month I have several domains hosted. in various degrees of development. mostly around skills or hobbies. www.post2zip.com similar to hacker news but with hash tags and local slant.


Built an app called "Hipstar". We find new restaurants and bars on yelp that have few reviews, and gamify being the first to review them. You know, for hipsters, so they have proof they were there first.

We built it at a 48 hour hackathon and won some kind of prize, so overall it worked pretty well, but we weren't all that invested in the concept.


Octopus (theoctopusapp.com)

An app to sell anything. Inspired by the Octopus payment system in Hong Kong, I've reasoned that technically, why can you buy or sell anything with your mobile device.




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