How My Startup Failed

Re:How My Startup Failed by nopassrecover on Monday March 30, 2009 @06:26AM (#538368)

I could swear this has been on here before... In any case an interesting story though perhaps not relevant so much to web startups

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Re:How My Startup Failed by mseebach on Monday March 30, 2009 @06:31AM (#538371)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=303780

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Re:How My Startup Failed by nopassrecover on Monday March 30, 2009 @09:17AM (#538461)

Good find :-)

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Re:How My Startup Failed by mseebach on Monday March 30, 2009 @10:02AM (#538510)

Not really :)

http://searchyc.com/condom

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Re:How My Startup Failed by flooha on Monday March 30, 2009 @09:03AM (#538450)

This would have been a perfect fit for "sell before you build". If he would have secured a large order from a retailer and then put it in production, he would have been successful. Not securing a large order would have told him it just wasn't worth doing. I don't think the "sell before you build" method it is a good fit for all businesses though.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by bemmu on Monday March 30, 2009 @11:14AM (#538605)

Okay, let's think about how this could have been successful. My next suggestion would be to let the people in that Thai factory do all the packing etc. work such that a finished end product could have been shipped. I think a factory worker's salary in Thailand is around $100 / month.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by flooha on Monday March 30, 2009 @11:54AM (#538655)

Originally, the Thai company did do all the packing. The original shipment had seepage of the lubrication, so he sent them back. The reason he had to do a lot of hand work was because, after receiving the new shipment, he realized that: "According to the Food and Drug Administration, I needed to include a "how to use" guide with each key chain.". So, he was stuck doing this work himself.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by edu on Monday March 30, 2009 @06:57AM (#538382)

  There was no doubt about it: I had discovered The Next Big
  Thing. Like Edison and the lightbulb, like Gates and the 
  pc operating system

Ouch.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by gord on Monday March 30, 2009 @08:12AM (#538418)

I'll see your ouch and raise you one Gary Kildall.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by eru on Monday March 30, 2009 @08:30AM (#538430)

Discovered. Not invented.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by eru on Monday March 30, 2009 @11:03AM (#538587)

To clarify: Bill Gates discovered operating systems, and made a lot of money producing and selling them. He did not invent them.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by callmeed on Monday March 30, 2009 @12:27PM (#538701)

"Though I had a Stanford MBA and regularly consulted on multimillion-dollar projects, I didn’t know the first thing about starting a business."

That's a little scary.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by gord on Monday March 30, 2009 @08:11AM (#538416)

Its always nice to read about how startups succeed, but maybe more can be learned from these postmortems.

I was thinking you almost want a dedicated site for these... but could that be achieved by just having tags and filtering by tag on HN ?

Tags would help with a range of scenarios, such as if I'm only interested in Erlang posts by squid-farming bodybuilders, for example.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by rjurney on Monday March 30, 2009 @06:28AM (#538370)

"I was about to become the first person in America to sell condom key chains."

Just in case you didn't rtfa yet, this is how it opens :)

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Re:How My Startup Failed by ktharavaad on Monday March 30, 2009 @08:30AM (#538431)

He has an MBA

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Re:How My Startup Failed by run4yourlives on Monday March 30, 2009 @01:29PM (#538797)

Irrelevant, really. Most startups, by definition, will fail.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by djahng on Monday March 30, 2009 @12:11PM (#538678)

Yeah...MBAs don't really teach you how to be an entrepreneur.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by sown on Monday March 30, 2009 @12:26PM (#538700)

You know? This was one hell of an education, the kind of thing I wish I could read and learn more about.

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Re:How My Startup Failed by jjs on Monday March 30, 2009 @07:42AM (#538402)

I adore that customs clerk!

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Re:How My Startup Failed by mixmax on Monday March 30, 2009 @08:58AM (#538447)

Well I guess that shows which is easier: Investment banking or doing a startup.

;-)

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