Tag: post-mortems

The fact that you are learning only from success is a deeper problem than you imagine…drawing conclusions only from data that is available or convenient and thus systematically biasing your results.

Luckily, the startup community often courageously shares their stories – even when things don’t end well.  And so below is our list of the 25 “best” startup failure post-mortems of all time.  Three notes before we begin:

After reading these, you realize more than ever that the startup community is really like no other.  We were amazed by the candor and generosity of many of the writers of these post-mortems.  Corporate America could learn from this.

We didn’t find post-mortems by investors (VCs, angels, etc) except for one by Roger Ehrenberg.  We’d love to see these given the number of businesses you see and ultimately invest in.  It would be an admission that you’re not infallible, but we already know that

If we’ve missed a great post-mortem others would benefit from reading, please leave it in the comments, and we’ll add it.  BTW, if you do the count, there are actually 32 post-mortems in this post.  Think of it as 7 bonus post-mortems on the house. Read more at www.chubbybrain.com