Comments on: 25 Internet Startups That Bombed Miserably

By: Christian

Christian — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:25:23 +0000

The old ones like boo and webvan are wellknown but what about some more recent epic startup fails? It’s a dilemma that we won’t hear about any big fails unless the big next bubble explodes. Until that happens, the small fails won’t seem big and relevant enough to talk about.

As Nassim Taleb puts it right in his book “The Black Swan”, people tend to look on the big and colorful successes (twitter, Facebook) but are ignorant when it comes to all the small failures that happen silently and alone.

By: Cal

Cal — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:21:09 +0000

Interesting Read, jogging my memory to many, thinking “failed miserably” is in the amount of revenue lost. Ordering kitty litter, waiting for 2-3 days stinks to high heavens.

OMG, Owners of company must not have ever owned a stinking Cat.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:32:19 +0000

Same comment with Todd. I don’t recall seeing what Kibu was about in the article. Also, IMHO, some of the companies don’t deserve to be in the “failed miserably” list. Other than that, it was a good read.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:44:28 +0000

I’d have added DEN to this, for sure…

By: Saad

Saad — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:10:19 +0000

great read

By: Vince Talerico

Vince Talerico — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:47:47 +0000

I wish there were 100 failures on this list. That was a great read.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:01:34 +0000

So, with all of these out of the way, where might someone get advice on starting yet another one? Maybe one with a useful purpose, cash flow, wide market, ect., ect.. I have an idea that I want to get off the ground, but don’t know where to go to get good advice before the “beenz” are spilled.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:29:24 +0000

I worked for an online publisher during the 15 minutes that Beenz was alive.

Beenz were desperate for us to jump on board. I remember one of their reps trying to convince me that eventually, currencies would be replaced by ‘Beenz’. I laughed so hard I almost wet myself.

As laughable as their distorted ‘vision’ was, they somehow managed to convince some moron in our marketing dept that it was viable. We rolled it out across several million pages, only to roll back 4 weeks later when Beenz announced they’d pulled the pin.

Beenz was yet another hair-brain idea sold by enthusiastic 20 somethings to greedy investors and marketing managers so wet behind the ears and desperate to make a buck, they couldn’t spot a stupid idea if it smacked them in the face!

But having said that, if someone told me back in 2000, a site like Facebook would be worth billions, I’d have told them to get off the crack-pipe.

Maybe they are the visionaries – maybe they know the odds are slim, but, if it works, then the sky is the limit. I guess it’s easy to take a chance when you’re using someone else’s money.

By: joe gelb

joe gelb — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:32:51 +0000

i still use and love friendster!

By: David King

David King — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:16:55 +0000

Wow…

I guess they did bomb… because I haven’t heard of any of them!