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Startup Graveyard – History Shouldn't Have to Repeat Itself
- jorgeer 9y agoSeems like front page HN is too much for this website. Only getting 500s and error pages.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoIndividual pages still seem to load: http://startupgraveyard.io/company/selltag/ http://startupgraveyard.io/company/selltag/
- Animats 9y agoEven that's now returning a 508 error.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- z3ugma 9y agoLooks like we hugged it to death: "Error 508. Resource Limit Is Reached"
- pavel_lishin 9y agoNot a bad thing to put on a gravestone.
- robotnoises 9y agoThat or 410 "Gone" https://httpstatuses.com/410 https://httpstatuses.com/410
- neuromantik8086 9y agoIt's the Slashdot effect reborn!
- Jean-Philipe 9y agoHonestly, I don't even get why nowadays this still happens for mostly static websites. I'm never going to go with namecheap.
- ryanx435 9y agoits because web hosting companies offer tiered services, and often the lower tiers have limited bandwidth. When that limited bandwidth is reached, the web hosting company cuts off access to the site.
- justizin 9y agothere's no excuse for not putting a CDN upfront, several have free tiers that would easily satisfy the needs of a site like this.
- jermaustin1 9y agoWho still uses traditional shared hosting for a tech related project when there are dozens of alternatives with either dedicated or semi-dedicated hardware without the overly intrusive bandwidth caps. I front paged on HN 3 times with a blog running on a $5/mo dropplet and out of the box wordpress without any CDN. I only had to give up one cheeseburger per month to cover that cost! Digital Ocean: Switch today, your doctor will thank you!
- Jean-Philipe 9y ago> its because web hosting companies offer tiered services, and often the lower tiers have limited bandwidth. Thanks for explaining the obvious. I get the logic behind it. Still, I think bandwidth is cheap nowadays and a website should never have to go offline in case of an unexpected traffic spike. Other hosters reach out to the owner before shutting it down.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- robotnoises 9y agoWow, rdio.com redirects to pandora...
- funnyfacts365 9y agoWow? Why wouldn't it? Pandora bought them after all.
- robotnoises 9y agoAh, didn't realize that.
- dtien 9y agowhy is that surprising? Pandora bought them out.
- proaralyst 9y agoWayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20170511100358/startupgraveyard.io https://web.archive.org/web/20170511100358/startupgraveyard.... Not much got archived though.
- vivekd 9y agoLots of startups fail for timing reasons. There seem to be alot of startups that maybe just started at the wrong time. One example is QBotix that provided robotics for the solar industry, probably not much of a market a few years ago, but in the coming few years that should explode.
- gumby 9y agoActually for QBotix it was the other way around: the robot was designed to reduce the cost of solar trackers (instead of a motor on each tracker you had one robot that moved around to adjust each tracker). The problem was that the cost of PV fell so far that it was cheaper just to deploy more, use a fixed frame, and not worry that your panels were never really pointed directly at the sun. I had hoped to read the QBotix page to see what they said but like others I got a 503.
- gumby 9y agoSO I read the QBotix page and the "comparison companies" are absurd.
- blakesterz 9y agoAnyone else reminded of Fucked Company? The website or the book :-)
- fourstar 9y agoOf course. Those of us who are actually old enough to remember it, do.
- Finnucane 9y agoBut in those days the reasons usually boiled down to "this was a stupid idea with no way to actually produce revenue after the VC money ran out." Totally different from now.
- __jal 9y agoI still have the T-Shirt.
- inputcoffee 9y agoPotentially a great idea. I have wanted to see data on the reasons startups failed. One of the problems with this sort of thing is that it is not clear what the category of the failure should be. In a sense, the vast majority of failures is: no sales. But is this because of "product-market fit" (they just didn't want it), or "customer acquisition costs" (couldn't get the word out), or "lack of runway" (can't get the word out fast enough). That's why you almost need some hybrid of story telling and data so you can compare what Balaji Srinivasan calls "the idea maze." I wish I could compare the series of decisions in some manner, and not just read it as a story.
- pg_is_a_butt 9y agoyou mean the history where people make services that don't scale? your site sucks. slowwwwwwwww
- sillysaurus3 9y agoIt'd be nice if there were a summary of each company without clicking through.
- jstandard 9y agoAn interesting idea. The trouble here is that analysis like this tends to document the symptoms of failure as if they were the causes. The actual causes are more likely to be very complex, based on circumstances unique to the startup/people running it, require deep insider knowledge of the company, and in some cases be things people aren't willing to admit or recognize. It's the flipside of a similar problem in analyzing why companies are successful. [1] The little disclaimer at the bottom really says it all. The attempt is a noble one, marred by data and insight quality issues. I think it could be useful if the site can source insightful analysis from founders/insiders and make it easy to search by market/product category. Perhaps even adding a badge to information which came from a founder. [1] http://www.tomorrowtodayglobal.com/2011/12/09/good-to-great-to-gone-2/ http://www.tomorrowtodayglobal.com/2011/12/09/good-to-great-...
- ma2rten 9y agoI feel like former employees sometimes know better why a company failed than founders. If the founder knew exactly what is/was "wrong" they probably had been able to turn it around.
- jstandard 9y agoI agree in part. The real trick of it here is that those former employees will also be wearing their own lenses of bias. There's a good chance they don't have full information on the company. Then the challenge becomes a game of synthesizing contradicting perspectives. That's what makes this exercise of distilling causes into "bitesized pieces" so difficult.
- cookiecaper 9y agoThere is a lot that goes into running companies that ordinary employees take for granted. I don't think there's any reason the perspective of the average employee will be more accurate than the perspective of the average founder. Both will have strong biases coloring the perception of events in their own favor, and in some cases, problem employees and problem founders may blame each other instead of admitting their own faults. In most cases, there is, of course, no simple way to pinpoint a particular place where everything ran amok. That's to be expected. The analyst needs to listen to everyone with credible knowledge of the company and use their own judgment to come to an opinion on the biggest issue. This is a subjective analysis, and not something that can be authoritatively established.
- Animats 9y agoI used to do something like this on Downside.com, but only for public companies where you could get the financials from the SEC. Then you have some hard data. Startup Graveyard seems to be listing companies that failed before they even launched. There needs to be some minimum qualification, such as "actually had at least one paying customer".
- restalis 9y agoI'm actually interested in all commercial ideas that got funded. That means there was enough things in place to generate confidence from someone else other than the (possibly deluded) founder(s). Once customer cashflow appears, the business recipe gets a partial validation and the entire context changes. In my view the part before that bears a higher risk and that makes it more important.
- abetusk 9y agoIt's sad that all the content, source code and other intellectual property is just lost. Does anyone know of a resource that has or lets companies open source their code instead of locking it away forever? Like a farm sanctuary but for failed startups?
- inetknght 9y agoGithub?
- chrshawkes 9y agoI've not heard of this GitHub you speak of.
- pascalxus 9y agoWell Patent trolls prey on all those dieing startups, researching the patents they hold to find ones they can buy up and use to sue as many others as they can.
- beat 9y agoKind of sad to see a product you liked on this list. RIP Grooveshark.
- ythn 9y agoI knew it was too good to be true when I first started using it. Same with VidAngel (basically streaming version of Redbox). Any product that bypasses the bureaucracy/legal requirements of the MPAA/RIAA to give consumers exactly what they want is doomed to failure.
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoEvery year the idea of a startup post mortem site or study comes up and as always goes nowhere because they can't actually draw a causal relationship and tell the story of why the company in question rolled up. Besides the fact that there is no incentive, in fact there is negative incentive, for key players to contribute to the study of failure, it also requires insane amount of depth in the very specific field which the company was operating in. It's the same problem as failed replicated studies not getting documented, it's easier and higher incentive to just try again than to study the issue. Really just needs to be a non profit that would run the studies and maybe turn it into a consultancy or something.
- neilk 9y agoWhen outages happen, there are companies that do blameless postmortems, and they do get good data. I think it's a matter of creating the right incentives. Possibly an organization like YC or a VC that's existed for a long time does. Although they tend to regard such knowledge as proprietary, so, no luck for us. > Really just needs to be a non profit that would run the studies and maybe turn it into a consultancy or something. Now you're on the right track. Many non-profits like this already exist: universities, and sometimes, governments. There are lots of papers out there about why businesses fail, and governments are strongly incentivized to fund this kind of research. I don't know for sure though, but there is probably a paucity of data about why wacky tech startups fail. - At least until recently, it hasn't mattered very much. Actually, I would argue it still doesn't matter. - Startups are bespoke and weird by definition, so analysis is hard. But possibly an academic could maybe test theories of exactly how much risk you should take on (I'm thinking of mcfunley's insights on "innovation tokens"; maybe that can be formalized somehow. http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology)
- sh87 9y agoCan someone build an AI out of this to predict success / failure factors ? For the record : I'm being sarcastic :/
- kevinmannix 9y agoHow does one submit?
- bikamonki 9y agoBy plain logic: if there isn't a formula for success, there isn't one for failure either.
- guntars 9y agoThat's just silly. There are guaranteed ways for company to fail and not vice versa.
- unabst 9y agoBut there sort of is. They're all just unique. But formulas are suppose to not be unique, so that's the paradox. I think one way to solve it though is with degrees of detail. At the end of the day most companies that succeed just keep making money, and those that fail just run out of cash. So from there, increase the resolution and see what patterns emerge. There will be formulas.
- pokemongoaway 9y agoStartup Graveyard: A website for cataloging failed startups Reason for failing: "Error 508. Resource Limit Is Reached"
- uptownhr 9y agoI own STARTUPDEADPOOL.COM and would love to contribute the domain and my engineering time. How do I get in touch?
- jermaustin1 9y agoResource Limit Is Reached is typically when a startup does fold up shop.
- wand3r 9y agoThis is cool and it's always smart to check past implementations like this. As long as you learn why the failed not that the idea is impossible. VR is a good example; I didn't see any companies on that list but many gave up on VR because it was too early to be possible until a few years ago. Another good example is digital currency. Also; you can learn from a comp like Clinkle which should def be added to the list
- draw_down 9y agoSometimes ideas don't work but then they do. Or vice-versa, sadly.
- azr79 9y agoThis website should in the list too. Reasons of failure: - Couldn't scale its web servers
- wjcrowcroft 9y agoI believe this is the kind of thing I've heard Seth Godin refer to to as "failure porn". I actually find it rather tasteless and unenlightening.
- bigbossman 9y agoperhaps the domain startupgraveyard.ai would better reflect these times
- traviswingo 9y agoI like this idea; however, this is very subjective. Laying out 6 solid reasons for _why_ a startup failed is a bold statement. In reality, there usually isn't a concrete reason why, but I guess it's a good exercise to at least think about it collectively.
- vtange 9y agoGreat idea. Site is hugged to death at the moment I think A quick issue that arose in my head is what happens if people turn away from ideas because they see it in the graveyard? Some ideas may have seen the light of day too soon...timing for startups is important, as shown in this TED talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNpx7gpSqbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNpx7gpSqbY With this resource at hand, people might mistaken bad timing for bad idea.
- JansjoFromIkea 9y agoNearly every image on the site being a ~600x450px jpeg seems wasteful when almost all of these have easily accessible (or at least easy to recreate) SVGs. Unless wordpress doesn't support SVGs?
- adamzerner 9y agoI know this is very tangential, but I hate the design decision to have the hamburger menu mixed in to the graveyard stuff at the top of the site. It reminds me of those hidden object puzzles. It very much prioritizes aesthetics over usability. With more thought, the aesthetics could be included without having to sacrifice usability.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoIt would be interesting to include (but really hard to do) startups that 'exited' through acquisition that failed to clear the liquidation preferences. This sort of exit could also signal a 'mistake not worth repeating'.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoStartups, by definition, fail. The reasons are endless. Attempting to sum those up in what looks to be too few words is helpful how? Entertaining. But is it useful?
- flor1s 9y agoReminds me of a website focused on failed Kickstarter projects: http://kickended.com http://kickended.com
- simplydt 9y agoIn case this helps, you might want to A/B test your homepage with and without coffins, watch the bounce rate. I bounced, the feelings created by my amygdala were too strong and overruled my curiosity or any desire to learn!
- lightedman 9y agoThis will have been the millionth incarnation of this idea I've seen in 20 years, from books to videos to websites. I'm guessing nobody's actually paying attention to history, otherwise the first book/video/website would've been all that was needed.
- nkkollaw 9y ago> History Shouldn't Have to Repeat Itself I used to follow another startup shutdown site that got shut down, though. :-) Cool idea, I love reading those. I have no clue if reading about failures can make you successful, though.
- chrshawkes 9y agoThis wordpress website is slow as balls.
- jparise 9y agoSeeing this prompted me to revisit http://thecan.org/ http://thecan.org/, "a pet cemetery for dead games."
- magic_beans 9y agoThis looks like a waaaay prettier version of http://autopsy.io http://autopsy.io
- RangerScience 9y agoI think a very useful feature for this site is a "I worked here and want to talk about it" listing. That way, one thing I could do is research my idea / etc for similar startups that failed, call up the people, and ask what went wrong. The goal here, it seems, is to help you not fail at something similar. The best information will come from those that worked there. So, why not index just enough information to find those people, and then help connect you to them?