Essentially a vast catalog of information about startups that did not work out. Both high profile ones, and low profile ones. The entries in this catalog would be well tagged (with things like “industry”, “size”, “stage at which it failed”, “years active”, “key reasons for failure” etc). There would further be space for detailed unstructured description – about startup, journey, whatever. Emphasis can be on getting founders to tell their story (they are usually very happy to - lots of reddit posts, blogs, podcasts about this); if not, the public can write a draft which can be sent to the founders for verification.
This has 4 key uses:
- If you’re considering starting something, chances are that someone else already tried. It is hugely advantageous to know what mistakes they made and how the thing worked out for them – so you can avoid them.
- A lot of startups fail because of co-founder disputes, poor financial handling, and personal reasons. In such cases, the concept behind the startup and all its progress so far is often still very valuable.
- Great source of data to conduct research on. What kinds of startups are working? What are the most common reasons for failure in X industry? What are industries where lots of startups have appeared? (Sure, there is some idea on these topics right now, but it is not super comprehensive).
- Great learning experience: right now, all the startup hype goes to the big successful startups. This would bring attention to the smaller companies – the 9/10 that failed – and thus offer a more real perspective on how such organisations work.
In the status quo, people already share such information, but it is not organised – forget easily searchable. Ultimate goal is to have a space where you can find info about any failed startup (a little like wikipedia).
How to find people? Reach out to founders from previous batches of famous incubators, second-time founders, etc. Founders who have already put out such content.
How it can be monetized? Premium features (such as data insights), newsletter ads. I’d focus on this only after there are 10,000+ catalog entries.
Existing market research & key comments:
- Failory.com - they do something similar, but they don’t crowdsource content and they are more generalist about helping avoid failure. (
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3438079 - This old HN thread proves interest in this concept, with lots of related ideas.
- https://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-find-a-list-of-startups-that-have-failed - This quora post (and related posts) show interest in the concept and link more related material.
- Autopsy (getautopsy.com) - doing a similar thing, but they just don’t seem to have pursued this aggressively enough to make noteworthy progress. Only ~2000 entries in 8 years.
- Numerous smaller lists (https://compile.blog/failed-startups/, https://www.crunchbase.com/hub/startups-that-failed-in-2023, https://www.petecodes.io/founders-share-their-startup-graveyards/)