Ask HN: What happened to Proposition HN? ("$8000 for your side project")
Long ago, an anonymous user offered to pay $8000 to several people to build side projects.[1] The blog for the project hasn't been updated[2] since January, and the names of those selected were never made public.
Is anyone involved able to comment?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694 [2] http://hnproposition.blogspot.com/
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2013 where @technel convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.
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Hey guys
Sorry for the radio silence. I was intending on keeping the blog updated with anecdotes from the experiment, but ended up not doing so. I've received a few emails from people mentioning that I'm throwing away the opportunity of turning the initial spike of interest into a long-standing readership/audience but the truth is that was never what I was after; I was genuinely keen on finding some cool new projects to work on.
The experiment is going so-so. If you remember I green-lighted 5 projects.
- 1 was aborted before start through mutual agreement after further market research
- 2 were aborted because the devs did not manage to complete the MVP. Lack of motivation mainly. If I've learnt anything so far it's that lack of follow-through is still a major issue, and the promise of a little money and a partner to work with does not squash the problem as much as I thought it would. I suspect not being physically in the same space has a lot to do with it.
That leaves 2, one of which is live and the other is about a month away still (slow progress)
So it's unclear whether this structure works. Going to depend on the last 2. Even then, the sample size has been quite small so the results will not be conclusive. Guess will need to try a second round at some point!
hmexx
I threw my idea list at the guy (I think it was only 80-something deep at the time) and were tossed some ideas back and forth. Ultimately, I decided I didn't really think he was the type of partner I was looking for. Absolutely nothing personal against him and I assure you, his offers were legitimate and he very easily had the means to accomplish what he put forth in his original post. It simply can't down to him being a business/sales guy, when I wanted another technical person; and him looking to fund full time development of an idea, whereas I wasn't all too concerned with those financials.
I began a project with this after the pitch/initial selection phase - but due to personal circumstances had to withdraw about 40% of the way in and concentrate on other things.
Due to the specific arrangement we had, I (understandably) didn't get paid anything, although the idea is still on hold to be resurrected when I'm more able - although this may be as a solo project then.
The concept and semi-anonymous funder are certainly legit and I'm interested to see how the other projects from this develop.
I was one of the developers that participated in this project.
The web app launched about a month ago and is currently running with some beta users testing it out.
I got paid for my development work and we are currently working on advertising the app with the advertising budget we set aside.
I'm sure if things go well we will do a write up about the experience and post it at some point.
I am surprised more "seed investors" don't come on here once in a while and say... show me (demo) what you're working on... I have 15-25K to thrown down on something interesting. HN could use a little more personal engagement on here.