The DeadPool Could Help Others Live
Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes
Fred Wilson wrote a post the other day where he talked about the TechCrunch DeadPool and FuckedCompany that came before it. He points out that people like to build things up, companies in this case, more than they should and relish in their demise when they fail. I agree with Fred that this isn’t healthy behavior and doesn’t do anyone any good but it does generate pageviews which is why sites like TechCrunch do it.
However, all of these companies could do more than simply generate pageviews for media companies. How you ask? Well, we could all stand to learn a lot from what they did wrong and what ultimately caused the demise of their companies.
Was it too much funding too soon? Or was their a key hire that didn’t work out? Was the board not helpful enough? Or overly helpful to the point it hindered growth?
Imagine if there were a place where entrepreneurs could go and learn from companies who haven’t made it. I, for one, would be happy to talk to these companies and do the write-ups here on Olson’s Oberservations. Hopefully someone will see this post and take me up on the offer. I think it would benefit the entrepreneurial community immensely and would make good use of things like the DeadPool. What do you think?
Eric, good post. Check out
http://www.businessplanarchive.org/
It is part of the Univ. of Maryland and contains business plans for companies during the Dot Com era. There is probably some great stuff in here from companies who either failed or became fucked!
Kevin
15 Jan 07 at 9:41 am
Eric, the idea of a place to learn from these companies sounds excellent, I suggested such a website in my comments to Fred Wilson’s post. How to implement such a site has been rolling around in the back of my mind… so far I’ve just managed to consider and rule out existing solutions such as a heavily moderated blog, Digg-type up-down moderation points, slash moderation mechanisms, etc.
Noel McKinney
15 Jan 07 at 4:38 pm
That sounds like a great idea. I’d love to read post-mortems if you can get them. There are certainly a lot of good ideas that didn’t work out. Maybe they were too early? Wrong team? In another situation the same idea could turn into something huge.
Ed Kohler
21 Jan 07 at 12:48 am