I did a Show HN eleven years ago for something called Dropmocks, which was an early use of the HTML5 drag and drop API to make image sharing convenient - it sat at the top of HN for that weekend, got Techcrunch coverage[0] etc, which made me feel nice.
A few things happened after that:
- A startup took the open source code and put it up a day or so later and got a few million dollars in funding to do image sharing, which made me feel bad at the time, but they later disappeared so it's fine
- Larry Page got a bit annoyed that I didn't do it as a Google project, and Sundar/my boss had to explain that I was just a Chrome staff member who got a bit excited about a new API - both of them were correct
- I had to panic-build a content moderation system from the airport on my honeymoon in response to some unsavory content
- It eventually got to 3TB of stored data, which was fine until billing policy changes at my storage provider meant that my monthly costs would've gone from tens of dollars to hundreds or thousands of dollars
- My day job was more fulfilling, so after a few years I shut it down
A few things happened after that:
- A startup took the open source code and put it up a day or so later and got a few million dollars in funding to do image sharing, which made me feel bad at the time, but they later disappeared so it's fine
- Larry Page got a bit annoyed that I didn't do it as a Google project, and Sundar/my boss had to explain that I was just a Chrome staff member who got a bit excited about a new API - both of them were correct
- I had to panic-build a content moderation system from the airport on my honeymoon in response to some unsavory content
- It eventually got to 3TB of stored data, which was fine until billing policy changes at my storage provider meant that my monthly costs would've gone from tens of dollars to hundreds or thousands of dollars
- My day job was more fulfilling, so after a few years I shut it down
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/22/dropmocks-chrome-designer/