These post mortems articles are really enlightening. Not so much because they serve as templates for what a start-up shouldn't do, but because they balance the scales for the typical media bias that only talk about the winners. Whenever I read about the new up-and-coming startup in the media, they make it seem like it's so easy. Typically, it's a variation on a twenty-something working in a small room who churns out an app that gets millions of downloads in the first 2 months.

In contrast to this, you never read about the 99 percent of apps that flop. And, in most of these, the creator has probably put in a lot of effort (sometimes even more effort than the winners). Out of 1.3 million apps in the App Store, I'm guessing well over 70 percent are just dead in the water. Effort expended that failed.