Nico Serdeir
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Hey The Fastlane Forum! I'm Rich, maker of Failory.
Today I launched a cool project that I think it perfectly fits this forum of lessons from failed/successful startups.
After 6 months of research, data collection, writing, designing and development, I've finally launched Startup Cemetery, a BIG resources in which I've analyzed why +100 startups have failed!
The last 3 months of building this side-project have been quite difficult. The truth is that I had fear of launch and I was always postponing the launch day. I always felt as if there were features missing and wanted to add new information to each business page.
The strategy I found to avoid putting off the launch day was to contact Kevin William David (a Product Hunt community member) and scheduled a PH launch day with him. I can now proudly say Startup Cemetery is featured in Product Hunt! ☺️
Over 35,000 words of content on how companies like Vine, Yik Yak and Netscape have failed. Use the filters if you want to search for a specific industry, country or cause of failure, or just click the "Surprise Me!" button if you want to be redirected to a random startup!
But if you don't know where to start with, there are three startup case studies which particularly caught my attention.
Beepi
It went out of cash to operate and tried to sell itself to two potential buyers, but the potential sales were not successful and Beepi had to close operation.
The company had an incredibly high burn rate, spending about $7 million per month. The reasons for cash shortage were attributed mismanagement of funds to support expenditures unrelated to business such as covering the bills for the founders' partners and spendings unnecessary sums of money on expensive furnitures. At the same time, Beepi was also reported as giving disproportionately high salary and overtimes to its top management.
Besides having failed to manage the financial aspects of the startup, also Beepi’s logistics in buying and selling cars came short. Originally planning to complete an acquisition deal with Fair.com, one of its main competitors, that never happened and the company tried to negotiate with DGDG, but also this deal fell through. The company shut down in December 2016.
Juicero
Juicero failed to build a profitable business after raising a substantial amount of funds under the claim of innovation and disruption. The company received funding from high profile firms before users realized that the machines were useless.
The high initial price of $699 was already a barrier for many of its potential customers and the fact that the machine only worked with Wi-Fi was an additional inconvenience. To add to that, the company put a scannable QR code on each packet serving and the machine would not function unless it detected the presence of said code. In other words, people could not press home-made packets but had to order them from Juicero, each packet costed between $5 and $7. After months of slow sales, the company tried to sell its product at $400 and planned to offer a cheaper version in the months to come.
The company received one last blow when Bloomberg News published a video proving that simply by hand squeezing the packets you could obtain a full glass of juice and that the $700 machine was really useless. Few months after that Juicero went bankrupt and has since been classified as another absurd Silicon Valley startup product that raised huge funds but didn’t really solve any real problem.
Fab
Fab’s success echoed around the world, resulting in companies launching their own same exact replicas of Fab’s platform, including the Samwer brothers, who are known for launching replicas of thriving American businesses abroad like ebay, Amazon, etc. This news troubled Fab’s CEO. Jason Goldberg. To secure sales in the European region, Fab’s CEO insisted on acquiring three new startups in the region. The move to prematurely expand to Europe ultimately costed Fab over $60-$100 million dollars in capital.
A former Fab employee said that the decision to move towards Europe would’ve been fantastic if it had been done in a subsequent period, after the company became fully established in the U.S. The expansion led to serious funding issues inside the board.
Furthermore, in an attempt to solve the slow delivery rate to their customers, Fab decided to buy their own warehouse in New Jersey. This solution was initially successful as the delivery time went down from 16.5 days to only 5.5 days. This became the perfect opportunity for Fab to exponentially grow their product inventory. Sales rose up rapidly but what the company didn’t immediately seem to realize was that by scaling up their inventory, they would lose their competitive edge for which they were known for, “providing personal and intimate designs”. The company focused too much of the funds on several initial marketing campaigns which led people into buying an initial product but didn’t help in developing customer purchase patterns they could rely on. The plan on expanding their product inventory backfired as customers realized that they could find the same products for a cheaper price and a faster delivery on Amazon. Customers left Fab in exchange for a better service from Amazon.
In the middle of 2014, CEO Jason Goldberg concluded that it was better to sell the remaining parts of Fab to a prospective company. In the end, the $1-billion-dollar worth company was sold to PCH Innovations for only $15 million dollars.
You can read 97 other failure stories here. I'm so enthusiastic about this project, so I would love to know your opinion about it on the comments
Today I launched a cool project that I think it perfectly fits this forum of lessons from failed/successful startups.
After 6 months of research, data collection, writing, designing and development, I've finally launched Startup Cemetery, a BIG resources in which I've analyzed why +100 startups have failed!
The last 3 months of building this side-project have been quite difficult. The truth is that I had fear of launch and I was always postponing the launch day. I always felt as if there were features missing and wanted to add new information to each business page.
The strategy I found to avoid putting off the launch day was to contact Kevin William David (a Product Hunt community member) and scheduled a PH launch day with him. I can now proudly say Startup Cemetery is featured in Product Hunt! ☺️
Over 35,000 words of content on how companies like Vine, Yik Yak and Netscape have failed. Use the filters if you want to search for a specific industry, country or cause of failure, or just click the "Surprise Me!" button if you want to be redirected to a random startup!
But if you don't know where to start with, there are three startup case studies which particularly caught my attention.
Beepi
It went out of cash to operate and tried to sell itself to two potential buyers, but the potential sales were not successful and Beepi had to close operation.
The company had an incredibly high burn rate, spending about $7 million per month. The reasons for cash shortage were attributed mismanagement of funds to support expenditures unrelated to business such as covering the bills for the founders' partners and spendings unnecessary sums of money on expensive furnitures. At the same time, Beepi was also reported as giving disproportionately high salary and overtimes to its top management.
Besides having failed to manage the financial aspects of the startup, also Beepi’s logistics in buying and selling cars came short. Originally planning to complete an acquisition deal with Fair.com, one of its main competitors, that never happened and the company tried to negotiate with DGDG, but also this deal fell through. The company shut down in December 2016.
Juicero
Juicero failed to build a profitable business after raising a substantial amount of funds under the claim of innovation and disruption. The company received funding from high profile firms before users realized that the machines were useless.
The high initial price of $699 was already a barrier for many of its potential customers and the fact that the machine only worked with Wi-Fi was an additional inconvenience. To add to that, the company put a scannable QR code on each packet serving and the machine would not function unless it detected the presence of said code. In other words, people could not press home-made packets but had to order them from Juicero, each packet costed between $5 and $7. After months of slow sales, the company tried to sell its product at $400 and planned to offer a cheaper version in the months to come.
The company received one last blow when Bloomberg News published a video proving that simply by hand squeezing the packets you could obtain a full glass of juice and that the $700 machine was really useless. Few months after that Juicero went bankrupt and has since been classified as another absurd Silicon Valley startup product that raised huge funds but didn’t really solve any real problem.
Fab
Fab’s success echoed around the world, resulting in companies launching their own same exact replicas of Fab’s platform, including the Samwer brothers, who are known for launching replicas of thriving American businesses abroad like ebay, Amazon, etc. This news troubled Fab’s CEO. Jason Goldberg. To secure sales in the European region, Fab’s CEO insisted on acquiring three new startups in the region. The move to prematurely expand to Europe ultimately costed Fab over $60-$100 million dollars in capital.
A former Fab employee said that the decision to move towards Europe would’ve been fantastic if it had been done in a subsequent period, after the company became fully established in the U.S. The expansion led to serious funding issues inside the board.
Furthermore, in an attempt to solve the slow delivery rate to their customers, Fab decided to buy their own warehouse in New Jersey. This solution was initially successful as the delivery time went down from 16.5 days to only 5.5 days. This became the perfect opportunity for Fab to exponentially grow their product inventory. Sales rose up rapidly but what the company didn’t immediately seem to realize was that by scaling up their inventory, they would lose their competitive edge for which they were known for, “providing personal and intimate designs”. The company focused too much of the funds on several initial marketing campaigns which led people into buying an initial product but didn’t help in developing customer purchase patterns they could rely on. The plan on expanding their product inventory backfired as customers realized that they could find the same products for a cheaper price and a faster delivery on Amazon. Customers left Fab in exchange for a better service from Amazon.
In the middle of 2014, CEO Jason Goldberg concluded that it was better to sell the remaining parts of Fab to a prospective company. In the end, the $1-billion-dollar worth company was sold to PCH Innovations for only $15 million dollars.
You can read 97 other failure stories here. I'm so enthusiastic about this project, so I would love to know your opinion about it on the comments
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