Do you think founders should talk more openly about projects that didn’t work?
We often see launch posts, milestones, and success stories.
What we don’t see as much are honest breakdowns of products that quietly stalled or failed.
I feel there’s a lot of learning hidden there about timing, assumptions, and trade-offs.
Do you think sharing failed projects helps the ecosystem, or does it mostly benefit the person sharing?
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I think it can go two ways and it is all in the recipients mindset at the time.
Fear or failure increases or feels like this might not be good to pursue because person A failed trying to do something similar.
Increased belief in that the ones that succeed are not that different from "stupid me" , the difference is that they have tried, failed, learned and tried again. So i nee to be brqve enough to try, and smart enough to learn a long the way.
I've really benefited from reading entrepreneurs autobiographies and listening to podcasts where failures are discussed, because it takes away the gloria from the "succesful people" and makes them normal, and doing the same thing is possible.
Product Hunt Wrapped 2025
@markus_kask Exactly this. It really depends on where the reader is mentally. For some, failure stories trigger fear and hesitation. For others, they do the opposite. They normalize the journey and make success feel attainable, not reserved for some special group.
That’s why I think they matter. They strip away the myth, reduce the pedestal effect, and show that most “successful” founders are just people who tried, failed, learned, and kept going. For me too, biographies and honest podcasts were huge. They turned success from something distant into something possible.
@alexcloudstar If you havent read richard bransons book, i highly recommend it! Like a virgin i think its called, after reading it i got the courage to start my first company and he's just a cool guy. Got any tips for me?
This is why I love founder post-mortems: they don’t just share what failed — they reveal the human behind the hustle.
Product Hunt Wrapped 2025
@kilpatrick Totally agree. It really is a win-win. For the audience, failure retrospectives are often more practical and grounding than polished success stories. They show the real sequence behind success, including the forgotten attempts that came first.
For the founder, sharing those stories builds relatability and trust. People don’t just follow outcomes, they follow people. And when you’re honest about what didn’t work, many will stick around because they want to see what you build next.
Curatora
@alexcloudstar I think it helps both, but the ecosystem benefits more.
When founders share what didn’t work, it turns vague advice into concrete lessons about timing, assumptions, and trade-offs. It also normalizes the messy middle, which most people are actually in.
Our journey with Curatora has had plenty of quiet dead ends that taught us more than any small win. Those lessons shape better decisions the next time. Sharing them makes the path feel more real and a little less lonely.
Product Hunt Wrapped 2025
@imtiyazmohammed Well said. That’s exactly it. Failure stories turn abstract advice into real lessons about timing, assumptions, and trade-offs. They also reflect where most founders actually are, in the messy middle, not the highlight reel.
Quiet dead ends rarely get shared, yet they shape judgment far more than small wins. Talking about them makes the journey feel grounded and human, and reminds people they’re not alone in it.
yea whenever i try to do something new right , i always see who got success so that i could know what i could do !
but if i can see what's failed , i would have known what to avoid
Product Hunt Wrapped 2025
@mushabuilds That’s such a real point. Looking at success shows what might work, but looking at failures shows what to avoid. Both matter, but failure stories save you from repeating the same mistakes. They give you boundaries, not just inspiration.
For me, some of my failed projects were due to lack of marketing skills. I'm a lousy promoter. If sharing a failed project got someone to perk up and say "whoa, you just need some awareness and I can help." it might save a failed project and create revenue for more people.
Product Hunt Wrapped 2025
@tinyorgtech That’s a great point. A lot of projects don’t fail because the product is bad, but because awareness never catches up. Sharing those failures creates surface area for help. Someone with marketing skills might spot the gap immediately. In that sense, openness can literally turn a dead end into collaboration and revenue, not just learning.
@alexcloudstar exactly. That's why I haven't abandoned my Sapling project. I believe it's a good tool but I have zero marketing skills so my hope is that patience pays off and I keep adding features. And, it's a great project for maximizing my agentic coding shift.
Yes, but it depends on how they frame them. It's actually more important for them to track it themselves vs. publicly posting about it. I did a podcast episode on this in which we delve into how it was just as important if not more important to track your failures vs. successes. The reason being that they can show you what you've been trying to do. And that overnight success that you had? It's the path that you've been on—all the hard work and effort.
People tend to forget once they've had success—they sort of clean things up in their memory.
On the more mundane inside they can see what technologies or methodologies they've used that simply are not a good fit for them.
Vozo AI — Video localization
I think it’s a win-win.
It might even be worth having a dedicated thread to collect projects that didn’t work. Not as a graveyard, but as a shared learning archive.
IXORD
Product creators can make mistakes just like anyone else, and if a creator shares their experience, I believe it will actually increase popularity and interest. I am very interested in hearing people's past experiences, especially when the creator of a successful product shares their failure.
Both, honestly. The person sharing gets clarity (writing it out forces you to process what actually happened vs what you told yourself happened). The ecosystem gets the real lessons, instead of the polished "here's what I learned" but the messy "here's where I was delusional about product-market fit."
I do feel we need more of this. Success stories are inspiring but failure breakdowns are educational.