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My failed ❌ startup ideas and attempts. A thread ⏬ . Maybe you can learn from my mistakes. #fails 1️⃣ ERP (enterprise resource planning) system for small businesses.


👨‍💻 The code and front end was written in Visual Basic as a windows application. The database was a Microsoft SQL one. There I used an ORM for the first time and last time. ❌ I lost interest and the code was really complex and bad to maintain, so I stopped working on it after several months. 📉

2️⃣ EU 🇪🇺 drone pilot license online education platform. 🧑‍🏫 👨‍💻Here I used angular for the frontend and firebase with a firestore for the backend.

❌ Germany 🇩🇪 implemented the EU law differently than expected by us. It became really strict and difficult to setup. Furthermore the other EU countries could also make that platform under their local law with cheaper implementations. So we stopped this and decided to shutdown the company.

3️⃣ Online KiCad viewer and editor. (KiCad is an open source tool to create printed circuit board schematics.) 👨‍💻 First time I used @svelte.dev with SvelteKit and was amazed. PocketBase acted as our backend, for storing data, user auth and images.

❌ Implementing 2d graphics with plain javascript in a canvas was not easy. After I couldn't get it working like I imagined it, I lost interest in the project. 📉

❌ There I was really motivated but I stumbeled over a lot of AI "feeding" problems. How to provide good travel decisions that are accurate and not outdated? The AI itself is always outdated so we need a database. Google maps has a lot of travel info, but is really expensive. ⏩

Other providers like tripadvisor have cheaper APIs but not much information. Maybe using travel books can be a solution? But how to license these? There were so many unsolved questions. IMHO this is not a job for a solo entrepreneur. So I put the project on ice 🧊.