Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly?

#51

Post by snom320 » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 12:24 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #18

SatvikBeri wrote: post #4

According to Joel Spolsky, Ingres lost to Oracle due to slow growth: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/does-slow-growth-equal-... Discussion on a previous thread also suggests that Fogbugz suffered the same fate due to growing slower than Atlassian: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=920668

My take-away from that was that Atlassian had a proposition that made companies customers before those companies could afford Fogbugz. ($10 for 10)

Yep. That's my personal experience as well. Looked at FogBugz several times, but the pricing always put us off. Eventually Atlassian came around and made a good enough product.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly?

#52

Post by Grue3 » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 12:52 PM UTC

joeax wrote: post #24

Digg, Delicious, Mixx - lost to reddit Plaxo - lost to LinkedIn Bebo - social media space became too crowded Geocities - died of natural causes Netscape - slow to adopt after v3

Digg lost because it moved too suddenly. I was bigger than Reddit, but Digg v4 pissed off all the users due to massive changes in site's operation.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly?

#53

Post by Grue3 » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 1:01 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #41

Linode? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9852245

Since when is Linode a failed startup? Last time I checked they're doing well and expanding.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly?

#54

Post by rubiquity » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 1:58 PM UTC

seivan wrote: post #43

vuyani wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly believe Slack got big so fast because of their awesome awesome campaign advert. Just like the dollar shave club ad too. Some startups forget that the first impression and cool factor still play a big role in creating a huge buzz about your app.

I can't speak for the other applications, but have you used Hipchat? It's really poor in comparison to Slack. I preferred Skype instead of using Hipchat, that's how bad it was.

> I can't speak for the other applications, but have you used Hipchat? It's really poor in comparison to Slack.

You're splitting hairs. They are both chat apps for crying out loud.

Slack grew as fast as it did because it got pimped to us by VCs and thought leaders and then wannabe thought leaders and down all the way to the bottom rung of the societal ladder. Great strategy by Slack but there is nothing special about it (the product).

Re: Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly?

#55

Post by unfunco » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 6:53 PM UTC

acomjean wrote: post #12

Osborne computer? Either they were moving too slow or announced new product too early (killing demand for the model they were actually selling). They went bankrupt before new model came out... Apparently not entirely true, but that was the takeaway. it got a name: the "Osborne Effect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

I'd argue that Osborne moved too quickly, he was announcing the future (and they didn't deliver it too slowly, they just announced it too quickly) and subsequently committed suicide (figuratively, of-course.)

Re: Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly?

#56

Post by hasenj » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 8:20 PM UTC

mijustin wrote: post #28

I'd argue that HipChat, Campfire and Yammer all "lost" to Slack because they weren't moving fast enough. This Google trends line is interesting: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=slack%2C%20hipchat%2...

HipChat came years before Slack.

Slack came very late and yet still managed to eat the others.

That seems like an argument against the idea that "being slow will kill you".

Re: Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly?

#57

Post by omouse » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 9:19 PM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #6

There are lots of examples of startups that failed due to moving too slowly. The problem is that you probably won't know about them because they often don't get multiple rounds of financing (and hence don't make the news). Uncountable numbers of startups fail all the time in relative obscurity. Your question is hard to answer, though, because it depends on where your funding is coming from. Part of your pitch for you…

This is something I'm seeing too; having a committee design a product has resulted in feature after feature being put together in an incoherent way. Pump out features can't work for long.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly?

#58

Post by nstart » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 2:31 AM UTC

Wife pointed out one. Hotmail. The glory days of internet. Sat on its ass. It's actually great now (outlook.com) and I prefer it over gmail now (bring out the flame throwers). But it took a long long time to get there.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of startups that failed due to moving slowly?

#59

Post by mianos » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 5:21 AM UTC

jonathanmarcus wrote: post #27

AWS launched in 2006, while Google App Engine launched in 2008 and Google Compute Engine launched in 2012. But Amazon has always moved significantly faster than Google in the IaaS market, introducing the most comprehensive suite of infrastructure services and relentlessly undercutting on price. AWS has been consistently innovative while Google has long played catch-up at far too slow a pace.

App engine is largely useless. People wanted virtual machines. Google only just worked that out last year. Useless POS could not even allow TCP connections. No long running processes. Dog slow io. So many limitations. Sure it is a different product so I am not comparing apples to apples but Google said 'you want this' and amazon gave us what we wanted.