Written for the AppSumo Lean Startup Challenge. Vote for us HERE!
If launching a startup is like jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down, then lean startup principles are the kiddie parachutes you deploy to buy yourself time before you hit the ground. While they’re no guarantee that you’ll land safely, they do minimize your chances of a spectacular crash and burn.
To the uninitiated, the lean startup movement advocates maximizing learning and minimizing cash burn during your search for a sustainable and scalable business model. If …

The guys at Chubby Brain have graciously allowed Founder’s Block to repost this compendium, originally published October 3rd, of some of the best startup post-mortems from the web.
We love a good entrepreneurial success story – entrepreneur as protagonist overcomes obstacles and builds a thriving, successful company (and become wealthy while doing so). We want to hear about, learn from and even replicate what they’ve done. However, this survivorship bias is problematic. Jason Cohen of Smart Bear Software does a nice job articulating this issue stating:
The fact …

Taking a look is the newest segment of Bob’s Founder’s Block posts.  Each month, I will take a look at a web company.  If you want to be considered for a future post, please email bob@foundersblock.com.

Lostlettermen.com is the largest “where are they now” online sports database.  With a player database of over 150,000 former college basketball and college football players, lostlettermen.com is where you find what former stars have been doing since their playing days ended.

You may be surprised to find that less than two years ago, Lostlettermen.com only …

I met Keith Nowak at the recent VC Demo Day event and he was kind enough to share the story and lessons of how his  startup, imercive, ran out of funding mid-pivot and  had to shut down. Learning from failure is in many ways more more effective than learning from success, and Keith’s story may just give you the pointers to avoid dead ends in your own ventures.

imercive postmortem

Keith Nowak
In December 2009, I made the incredibly difficult decision to shut down imercive. Three years, a lot of money, and …