It looks like TheMelt is down to 7 grilled cheese stores. https://www.themelt.com/locations
Did they go through YC? I can't find anything online about that, but I had no clue they raised $10M from Sequoia. Surprising.
Y Combinator Failed Startups
51–60 of 197 posts
Re: Y Combinator Failed Startups
#52Re: Y Combinator Failed Startups
#53I don't get the last section, where you just name 4-5 small "failed" startups. For most of them, you don't even have any real insights! Why pick on them, for no reason? They didn't do anything unethical, and most didn't seem to even raise a Series A. You have no clue why they failed; you just speculate... and you don't just name the companies, you call out random founders by name. These people put themselves out ther…
I think Failory is meant to be an educational tool for founders. I suppose there's lessons to be learned at any scale.
Re: Y Combinator Failed Startups
#54This article says Atrium ran out of money, but I feel like Justin Kan’s blog post said they gave tens of millions back to investors when they shut down.
Yeah, I commented that the list is incomplete and at times straight up wrong. This is one example. Atrium absolutely did not run out of money.
Re: Y Combinator Failed Startups
#55How's Y Combinator doing these days?
Many smaller base hits, a few home runs, or striking out? I don't follow the VC world much.
Re: Y Combinator Failed Startups
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
After stealing HomeJoy's customer DB for another start-up, she is now a YC partner... Move fast and break things?
The person who was accused of "stealing customer data" was the other co-founder - not Adora (CEO & now YC partner). If you actually look into the details of the matter, what happened was that the co-founder acquired the failed company as it was put through a bankruptcy process. People who weren't privy to the process thought it was stealing when it really wasn't different from any other acquisition.
You're right that it may not have been "stealing" in the strict legal sense, but it was unethical and deceptive. More details here:
Re: Y Combinator Failed Startups
#57How can you make a list of failed yc companies and not mention homejoy? $66m raised, bad operations, bas unit economics, lawsuits and an abrupt shutdown. All of that after being the calley darling for so long.
After stealing HomeJoy's customer DB for another start-up, she is now a YC partner... Move fast and break things?
Ok, the situation seems to be: brother and sister cofounded startup; startup failed; brother acquired failed startup’s assets via legal proceedings.
Which part of this is illegal, or — I’ll meet you halfway — unethical? It seems like a straightforward business transaction.
If I’m missing something nefarious, I’d like to educate myself to avoid it. What do you see as the problem?
(Apologies if my facts are incorrect; this is info from elsewhere in the thread, so maybe you know something that hasn’t been said yet.)
Re: Y Combinator Failed Startups
#58How can you make a list of failed yc companies and not mention homejoy? $66m raised, bad operations, bas unit economics, lawsuits and an abrupt shutdown. All of that after being the calley darling for so long.
After stealing HomeJoy's customer DB for another start-up, she is now a YC partner... Move fast and break things?
I used to work alongside Adora at YC and she works super hard for the startups she is working with and is very helpful — totally justified for her to be there.
Re: Y Combinator Failed Startups
#59How can you make a list of failed yc companies and not mention homejoy? $66m raised, bad operations, bas unit economics, lawsuits and an abrupt shutdown. All of that after being the calley darling for so long.
It's clearly not a very complete list. I wish they had presented a more complete list, filterable by funding round, amount raised, year founded, year shut down, and maybe one or 2 other things.
Maybe something like this (https://www.failory.com/cemetery), but only for YC startups?
Re: Y Combinator Failed Startups
#60I don't get the last section, where you just name 4-5 small "failed" startups. For most of them, you don't even have any real insights! Why pick on them, for no reason? They didn't do anything unethical, and most didn't seem to even raise a Series A. You have no clue why they failed; you just speculate... and you don't just name the companies, you call out random founders by name. These people put themselves out ther…
I had the same reaction, but then I was delighted they included these smaller examples. It was especially interesting to hear about the desktop search startup from the summer founder’s program.
There’s an inclination to view this sort of thing as adversarial / picking on the founders, especially because there are a lot of haters for successful people in general. But this piece seemed clinical, not critical.