"They called the company Boso ("Buy Online Sell Online"), unaware of the clownish connotations that word would have in the States."
It wouldn't be Levy if it didn't have a grating line like this. Of course nobody could have a successful Internet presence with a name that connoted stupidity or ignorance -- what kind of yahoo would think otherwise?
Yes! I thought about this while reading Founders at Work. Beyond just the success/failure ratio, there's all the other details we don't get about failed startups. Can you identify what went wrong by reading their story? Can you learn from their mistakes, or at least temper what you think you've learned from the successes with examples of how it doesn't always work out?
I'd love to read another book like Founders at Work, but all about failed startups.
That sounds like an interesting idea, but I'm thinking that the line between success and failure is composed of luck and interpersonal relationships.
Most of the stories in FaW involve meeting a key person, an important external event or being in the right place at the right time. It's very hard for someone to say "Well if we had talked more with this one person, I think that we would have stumbled into a great situation a few years later"
Likewise I've seen a lot of situations where personal relationships make the difference. Two founders disagree and one of them just has to be "right", even if there is evidence that their plan isn't best for the company.
So maybe you can work out the characteristics of failed startups by looking at the inverse of the characteristics of successful startups. I'm thinking that they would be: don't be committed to the product, don't explore every relationship and don't have an open mind about new opportunities.
I would postulate that a funding or acquisition event depends on meeting a key person or having a key external event happen. Making something people want, however, is not dependant on any external event.
It's really not just luck. If you get a lot of traction, the chance of those fortuitous things occurring simply increases.
I think 'all failures' would be... kind of a downer, and wouldn't sell well either. I'd be very interested in reading interviews with people that succeeded after several failures, though.
It wouldn't be Levy if it didn't have a grating line like this. Of course nobody could have a successful Internet presence with a name that connoted stupidity or ignorance -- what kind of yahoo would think otherwise?