>Start-ups fail I see everyone else disagreeing with your points regarding the use of the word "unicorpse". To me, however, that's not the most interesting par

>Start-ups fail I see everyone else disagreeing with your points regarding the use of the word "unicorpse". To me, however, that's not the most interesting part of your post. The most interesting part of your post is the implication that Living Social is a start-up. According to the article, at its peak, Living Social had 4,500 employees (more than Twitter has right now!). If Living Social is a "start-up", then so are Facebook, Google, and heck, even Microsoft. >The number of things they have to get right is pretty vast and all it takes is for one of those 'and' gates not to fire or to fire at the wrong moment and all that work was for nothing. I find that statement to be disingenuous for this example. Living Social wasn't brought down by "bad luck". They grew too fast without having a clear road to profitability (something that they themselves admit in the article) and now they're paying the price for their poor decisionmaking in the past. The troubles they're running into are of their own making, and the schadenfreude they're getting is reflective of that.