We can learn a lot from successful entrepreneurs, but arguably we can learn even more from those that fail.
Collapsed can be a great resource for anyone working at a startup to study things that lead previous companies to struggle and perhaps change their own journey.
@mubashariqbal I'm a huge fan of "startup graveyard" projects for the same reason. It's so important to celebrate failure, understanding and growth as a tool for improving our future.
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Hunter
@katesegrin I remember when F*ckedCompany (by @pud) first launched, loved to read the amazing tales of crazy things startups used to do, that lead a lot to fail!
@mubashariqbal one of my favorites is when they have insane burn rates-- you can see it coming a mile away, but you know they're having a blast on the way out 😂🙈
@aaronkazah Sounds great! I shall subscribe to your newsletter. You could literally turn this to a user-generated directory like Crunchbase may be, by gamifying or some kind of incentive. Just an idea though.
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Very nice.
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I proly could've used a smaller image. Sorry'bout that.
@aaronkazah Congrats on the launch Aaron. Totally get it! Good luck! re: your question - yes, links. context, story, post mortem - these are super useful for the community.
Glad this exists! I started something similar ages ago that I never published or continued to develop, mainly because after I completed the timeline for homejoy, I became too depressed.
https://unicornsrip.herokuapp.com
Hope you're able to keep cataloging the skeletons. :)
@aaronkazah Glad you like the timeline! If I remember correctly, it's just timeline.js from Knightlab. Easy set up and it looks like it's still working after a year or so, so it's reliable. 😄
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Love the idea and this source—failures should definitely be discussed more often (there's little sense in repeating others' mistakes).
I wish the "Causes of Failure" section pulled in more direct info from the sources; maybe in a timeline (like Crunchbase) to help users trace a more accurate picture of failure over time.
@stedman_rh Hey! To add to this - I was really interested in Circa (same industry to the one I operate in) - however description etc on Crunchbase was different to the one on Collapsed. Just something to bear in mind - please make sure the info is accurate - especially in this day and age!
@aaronkazah Great site and well curated. My suggestion would be to add a section to the post-mortem article and curate interesting quotes from it. Right now clicking "Sources" to go read the post-mortem isn't super obvious.
@aaronkazah Thanks for the reply and looking forward to seeing the updates. Really great work so far 👏🏾
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In (possibly) related news, Beepi seems to have shut down today.
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@aaronkazah last month they did, but this week their app stopped working and the website is now just a landing page: http://beepi.com
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How're you defining a "failure"? Reading Gowalla's post, it says "Gowalla was a thriving app, however growing competition from Foursquare and Burbn (later Instagram) led to them shutting down and being acquired by Facebook". Isn't the acquisition a "successful" exit?
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@aaronkazah sounds like an interesting feature! I'm excited to see how it all works out. 😄 definitely think there's something to this idea of "how you define failure" and ensuring that all the context is gathered for folks to make informed conclusions and takeaways/learnings.
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