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Failed Startup Post-Mortems

3things.gitbooks.io

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Re: Failed Startup Post-Mortems

#21

Post by jacquesm »

asanwal wrote: post #14
nostrademons wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They 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 ove…

Hey Jonathan - Anand from CB Insights here. Thx for the comment and for writing a great post-mortem. One distinction - we didn't republish your post. We linked out to the original post you'd written and quoted a few lines from it which we thought were particularly telling about the reasons behind & process of shutting down. That was the format we took throughout the post. Original link and a few line excerpt. Hope th…

I'm not sure I'm following you. When I look for instance at:

http://3things.gitbooks.io/77-failed-startup-post-mortems/wi...

And compare that with the linked article:

http://blog.wishberg.com/post/92014031388/the-final-note-tha...

It looks as if the whole post was copied without any commentary at all.

The diffle one is exactly like that, not quite a 'few sentences'.

Re: Failed Startup Post-Mortems

#22

Post by asanwal »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
asanwal wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Jonathan - Anand from CB Insights here. Thx for the comment and for writing a great post-mortem. One distinction - we didn't republish your post. We linked out to the original post you'd written and quoted a few lines from it which we thought were particularly telling about the reasons behind & process of shutting down. That was the format we took throughout the post. Original link and a few line excerpt. Hope th…

I'm not sure I'm following you. When I look for instance at: http://3things.gitbooks.io/77-failed-startup-post-mortems/wi... And compare that with the linked article: http://blog.wishberg.com/post/92014031388/the-final-note-tha... It looks as if the whole post was copied without any commentary at all. The diffle one is exactly like that, not quite a 'few sentences'.

I'm commenting about post we did here - https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/

We're not affiliated with the book.

Re: Failed Startup Post-Mortems

#23

Post by jacquesm »

asanwal wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'm following you. When I look for instance at: http://3things.gitbooks.io/77-failed-startup-post-mortems/wi... And compare that with the linked article: http://blog.wishberg.com/post/92014031388/the-final-note-tha... It looks as if the whole post was copied without any commentary at all. The diffle one is exactly like that, not quite a 'few sentences'.

I'm commenting about post we did here - https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/ We're not affiliated with the book.

Ah ok, sorry I see how it goes together now. That was a reference to a partial bit in the original comment.

Re: Failed Startup Post-Mortems

#24

Post by [deleted] »

asanwal wrote: post #14
nostrademons wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They 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 ove…

Hey Jonathan - Anand from CB Insights here. Thx for the comment and for writing a great post-mortem. One distinction - we didn't republish your post. We linked out to the original post you'd written and quoted a few lines from it which we thought were particularly telling about the reasons behind & process of shutting down. That was the format we took throughout the post. Original link and a few line excerpt. Hope th…

[deleted]

Re: Failed Startup Post-Mortems

#25

Post by jacquesm »

pud wrote: post #19

Here'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... I think many of them could be successful if relaunched today.

The '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.

Re: Failed Startup Post-Mortems

#27

Post by nostrademons »

asanwal wrote: post #14
nostrademons wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They 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 ove…

Hey Jonathan - Anand from CB Insights here. Thx for the comment and for writing a great post-mortem. One distinction - we didn't republish your post. We linked out to the original post you'd written and quoted a few lines from it which we thought were particularly telling about the reasons behind & process of shutting down. That was the format we took throughout the post. Original link and a few line excerpt. Hope th…

The interesting thing, for me, is that you didn't actually link to the postmortem, you linked to the addendum to the postmortem published 6 months later. The actual postmortem was here:

http://diffle-history.blogspot.com/2008/06/postmortem.html

I wrote the aftermath because I felt that there were a few other things that should be said with the benefit of hindsight, and I'm actually thinking of writing a second aftermath, 6 years later, but want to see how events unfold first. Most of the actual lessons are in the postmortem.

(I'm not miffed - I think one of the great strengths of the web is the ease of linking to and republishing content. But I do think it's worth pointing out that one of the pitfalls of aggregators is that you lose the original context of the post - in my case, there was a whole blog that tracked the startup journey, day by day, and not just a single post.)

Re: Failed Startup Post-Mortems

#30

Post by asanwal »

pud wrote: post #19

Here'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... I think many of them could be successful if relaunched today.

Pud - bring back FuckedCompany. Based on all of our data, it's about that time.
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