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Failed Startup Post-Mortems
- badusername 12y agoThis is an amazing resource. I just read a couple of them, it is gut-wrenching to read the founders' stories, but a reminder to everyone else to learn and not repeat them.
- swartkrans 12y agoExec is in that list but it is still going strong. It's not a failure post mortem, but a pivot.
- minimaxir 12y agoThey were acquired for a low amount: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/15/handybook-sweeps-up-exec-for-under-10m-to-expand-west-coast-footprint/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/15/handybook-sweeps-up-exec-fo...
- oldspiceman 12y agoGreat idea. Would be useful to have a summary of the business model at the top of each article. For example #68 Overto I've got no idea what they did and I want to know before reading about why they failed.
- yesimahuman 12y agoAmazing idea! Is it possible to export this to a PDF or Kindle format?
- kumarm 12y agoDownloadable format seem to be available here: https://www.gitbook.io/book/3things/77-failed-startup-post-mortems https://www.gitbook.io/book/3things/77-failed-startup-post-m... (including Kindle & PDF)
- lockhart 12y ago@kumarm - any chance you could put the PDF somewhere? The link has been taken down. I was really looking forward to combing through that.
- FiatLuxDave 12y agoThere are some interesting stories in here (check out the condom key-chain one), but it would be nice if they were broken down by industry, or at least didn't have quite so many service-offered-over-web/new-blogging-service stories. Maybe its just that there are so many of those these days? It makes me wonder if anyone reading this has some information breaking down startup failure rates by industry or sector... perhaps with average capitalization and length of operation before failure. It would make sense to me that the typical cat-video-sharing startup might have a much higher failure rate, but lower capital cost and years invested, than say, genomics startups or solar power startups. It might be good to see how gift stores, enterprise software or financial services fit in between those extremes. Thanks for posting them here. This is great HN content.
- trhway 12y agothe key-chain one is hilarious. That sets the tone from the start: "Though I had a Stanford MBA and regularly consulted on multimillion-dollar projects, I didn't know the first thing about starting a business. When I asked a successful classmate how to invoice a customer, he suggested I go to one of the large business-supply warehouses. "They sell 'Business in a Box,' " he told me. "It's got everything you need." I didn't realize he was joking until I asked a clerk for one at Office Depot."
- thmorton 12y agoLink: http://3things.gitbooks.io/77-failed-startup-post-mortems/condom_key_chains/README.html http://3things.gitbooks.io/77-failed-startup-post-mortems/co...
- jacquesm 12y agoDid you obtain the permission of the authors to republish their content like this? And if so, did you leave out stories that may be of interest? Then I'd suggest you link those on a separate list. And if you did not obtain permission then you probably should!
- nostrademons 12y agoThey didn't - my previous startup (Diffle) is on the list, and I was never notified. Nor did cbinsights.com, which has a comment here complaining about how this post ripped off their original compilation of stories. I'm not all that ruffled - I figure that once you put something on the web it will take on a life of its own regardless of what you want - but it would've been a nice courtesy to the folks who sweated over those startups.
- jacquesm 12y agoLet's hope everybody whose story got lifted is as laid back about it as you are. The obvious solution would be to simply publish a list of links and to then approach the authors to ask for permission for the sake of consistency in the presentation.
- dublinben 12y ago>The obvious solution It would be even better if authors who are going to say yes to a request like that would make it clear, by using a Creative Commons license in the first place.
- nostrademons 12y agoThat eliminates the possibility of saying yes on a case-by-case basis, though. I'm generally okay with stuff I write on the Internet appearing in compilations, reblogs, commentary, articles, etc. - but I have declined if, for example, the journalist seems to be writing a piece with a particular slant that I feel misrepresents what I was trying to say.
- United857 12y agoI'd also add Everpix as well: http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life-and-death-inside-the-worlds-best-photo-startup http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life-and-d...
- asanwal 12y agoMost of these, given the order, look to be from our original compilation of startup failure post-mortems. We've compiled 101 to date which you can see here. https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/ https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/ Perhaps more useful, we also sifted through and analyzed each post-mortem to identify the top 20 reasons for startup failure. The biggest reasons founders have cited has not been running out of money or the economy but building a solution looking for a problem.
- tieTYT 12y ago> Perhaps more useful, we also sifted through and analyzed each post-mortem to identify the top 20 reasons for startup failure. "But you must provide an email to get access to that."
- hywel 12y ago"And our email validator is totally broken"
- asanwal 12y agoWe use an ESP to send the emails and sometimes, the PDF goes instantly and sometimes upto an hour. If you didn't receive for some reason, feel free to ping me directly. Email in profile.
- hywel 12y agoIt doesn't get that far. I type in my email, press the button and "Please enter a valid email address." appears. Not sure why I've been downvoted for the previous comment, your validator really is broken. 6 alpha chars @ gmail.com, on Firefox and Chrome on OS X 10.9.5. Really should work; doesn't. Console shows that you're passing an empty string to getElementById at some point.
- asanwal 12y ago
- bruceb 12y agoTwitpic is actually not dead http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/18/6445597/twitpic-says-it-wont-be-shutting-down-after-all http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/18/6445597/twitpic-says-it-wo...
- state 12y agoCould someone use this as training data to just generate them automatically?
- arenaninja 12y agoThis comment is comedy gold, assuming you're saying to automate failed startups
- state 12y agoIt would be so great!
- pud 12y agoHere's a book I wrote that covers 150 failed internet startups from the late 90's. http://amazon.com/FD-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-com-Flameouts-ebook/dp/B000FC0OCW/ http://amazon.com/FD-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-com-Flameouts... I think many of them could be successful if relaunched today.
- jacquesm 12y agoThe 'timing' thing is a huge factor in start-up failure. Plenty of things that went bad in the past could very well succeed today. The problem is to overcome the resistance that says 'it didn't work before, why should it work now' and then to repeat that process externally with every other party you interact with other than the customers. It would be great to bolster that case with success stories of repeat-entrants into the race.
- asanwal 12y agoPud - bring back FuckedCompany. Based on all of our data, it's about that time.
- jonkelly 12y agoPlease don't. Lots of horrible things were said there behind a wall of anonymity. Think Secret + 4chan for failed startups. For those of us that tried to do the right thing by our employees, it was very hurtful.
- jacquesm 12y agoThe commentors on fuckedcompany were the kind of people that like to rubberneck around accidents and disasters. Some people get off on other people's misery. That doesn't mean that the site itself served a purpose, and a FC sans comments would already be plenty useful.
- pud 12y agoPeople ask me all the time to bring it back. Was fun when it was happening and I tried to be funny and good-spirited, but now I have more of an appreciation for entrepreneurs and how hard it is to build a business... so I won't bring it back. Also won't bring it back because of onwards and upwards.. and so on. Thanks for asking though :) Still makes me happy when people tell me they like my work.
- andrewdon 12y agosome companies on the list actually got acquired (FormSpring, Decide.com, etc.). I'm not sure if they fall into this 'failed' category of startup world.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- torbit 12y agoa while back I asked for something like this except for current startups, successfull or not, and what they have learned. currently I'm following Mediums startup section
- stephengoodwin 12y agoI applaud any startup founder who has the courage to do a write up post-mortem. It's a hard thing to talk about the failure of your baby.
- menriquez 12y agoas someone who had a failed startup back in 1988 (we wrote multi-user BBS software pre-mosaic/www days) in straight C and btree tables (REAL no-sql), what I would find more interesting in this collection is a "what-am-I-doing-now" section, where the individuals who wrote these essays now talk about their lives. trust me...failure bites but often you come back much better, wiser, and stronger than before, and those stories are often more interesting than the failure ones.
- morgante 12y agoMaybe I'm in the minority here, but it's really not cool to copy people's writing wholesale into a book. It's really a terrible way to pay back people who were willing to publicly share their startup failures (in a format they controlled). Also, the "I'm not profiting, looking to profit from these collected works" disclaimer is almost as bad as "no copyright infringement intended" on YouTube videos. Regardless of your profit, it is still copyright infringement to copy people's content without their consent. It's especially egregious that the original source is only listed at the end of articles, where there's no reason to bother clicking through (since you've already read it). Plus, in many cases the original sources had relevant and interesting images which are omitted here.
- mts_ 12y agoIt seems the book has been taken down now, returns a 404.
- kqland 12y agoYeah, there are some suckers in this post who do nothing better than complain. Author did not copy anyone's content rather simply linked and compiled the list. By that logic you should also complain about Google because all they do is show results for query and link to other people's content. Does anyone have link to cached version ?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 12y agoPresumably I'm one of the 'suckers' you refer to. Author copied everybody's content verbatim without obtaining permission first, what you are saying is simply not true. I think this is a very worthwhile project but that doesn't mean the author should trample over other people's rights. So no, your 'logic' does not hold up for google because they LINK to the content rather than that they copy it and display it in their own environment (incidentally, google images does do that and I think they ought to be slapped for that).
- kqland 12y agoSorry .. I should not have phrased it that way. I apologize. I will try to be more constructive in my comments.
- timfletcher 12y agoI grabbed the epub — http://d.pr/f/pJqJ http://d.pr/f/pJqJ
- sleepycal 12y agoYou sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. Good reading!
- ilamont 12y agoI'm getting a 404, and the domain home says the user hasn't published a book yet. Has it been taken down for good?
- xrjn 12y agoIt appears that the link is dead, giving a 404. Anyone have a copy up somewhere (or that they can send me privately)?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
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- sogen 12y agoPDF here: https://db.tt/Ag5evB1x https://db.tt/Ag5evB1x (converted from the epub)