Personally, I've worked on 5 sites for myself the results have been
1) launched, received little traction, received an acquisition offer (didn't go through)
2) launched, moderate traction, some industry acclaim, one acquisition offer (didn't go through)
3) launched in beta, a few tire kickers, no traction, shut-down after 2 months
4) still in development, lots of interest, great feedback, brutal how long it is taking me to develop
5) getting ready for beta after 3 week of work, so-so response so far, just looking to get it out there and see what happens (and use it myself).
Outside of these, I've also developed tools for other businesses, and some of these tools have been quite successful, resulting in one of the companies being acquired.
Not sure if that gives you the data you're looking for, but if you think about it, if you had asked this question of Odeo, they would have fallen into the "has product struggling to get users", but then they created twitter...
In regards to data. I'm not really looking for anything in particular. More wondering how many HN people have finished products. And then hear their stories.
I do contract work on the side, and I have worked for other start-ups as well.
1) Worked on it for a few months with cofounder, scrapped as we ran into technical issues requiring a complete rewrite. Looking to do the rewrite sometime in the next year.
2) Launched, very slow to gain any traction but starting to get more users. The hardest part is marketing - http://fuelizer.com
I agree with you on the marketing part! Dev seems easy compared to marketing!
