Requiem for an App Dream

I shut down Hiark officially in May 2020. I’ve reposted here on Medium the content from our site that provided the philosophical foundation for the now-defunct app. It was a good run. I wish I could tell you that I achieved my goal with Hiark. That I knew for certain that the several thousands of hours I spent alone trying to build out my idea with a team of contract devs from Ukraine actually contributed positively to at least one person. But sadly, I don’t think it did (other than the devs getting paid?).

It’s taken me until now to really process the unmitigated failure of my efforts. I went into the project aware that it was ~98% likely to be a total loss, and the odds didn’t lie. So what? If I could do it again, I probably wouldn’t do this again, but hey, live and learn. The grand takeaway is that making something new is hard. Making something you lack the technical abilities to code yourself an order of magnitude harder. And making something (through others overseas) that requires an act of courage on your users’ part with no guarantee of payoff, real potential short-term pain, and no easy analogous habits to build from…well, for me it was impossible. Maybe someday a better solution to the feedback problem, from more capable founders will really manifest the latent potential we have trapped in our social networks to grow as people. I clearly wasn’t the guy to get it done.

I’m no less optimistic that technology will be made to help people get better at getting better. It may be interpersonally, professionally or in a highly domain-specific way. Software will improve relationships and self-awareness. Just not Hiark. For the future founders that want to make this product, a word of advice from a salty, no-exit, non-unicorn, thrice-failed founder: if you can’t get your friends to use it, trust that. But I’ll be rooting for you regardless.