Is there anyone doing case studies of *unsuccessful* internet startups? The successful ones are helpful, but it's easy to fall prey to survivorship bias, i.e. there's no guarantee that any commonalities have to do with them being *successful* rather than *internet* or *startups*. A group of unsuccessful startups would be a nice control group, and maybe then we could draw some better conclusions about what makes a startup successful.
I second that question.
Sounds like a good plan - putting together a wiki of unsuccessful startups and their lessons. Anyone read Boohoo? the story of Boo.com?
Oh WOW. This is an absolute gold mine. Case studies of dozens of them. They even have the CEOs of Rotten Tomatoes posting there in response. This is great. Thank you so much.
Yeah, also its quite interesting to see the commonalities between the successful startups in different industries - stuff like focusing on cheap distribution first then monetisation, and also seeing how team dynamics and business models evolve. In addition to founders at work - essential reading.