in an odd reversal from a lot of start ups it was only the technology that could let us down Happens all the time. At my last startup we added a new product l

in an odd reversal from a lot of start ups it was only the technology that could let us down Happens all the time. At my last startup we added a new product line based on work by this super-smart PhD who had been in the business since he worked at ThinkingMachines. His product worked great -- for one really narrow use case for a single customer. His claims to the contrary, it ended up being so brittle, so poorly coded, and so ungeneralizable we had to pull the whole product. Luckily it wasn't material to our eventual acquisition :)