Joel Liu's Library tagged failure → View Popular, Search in Google

Joost failure had nothing to do with technology. Instead they fundamentally misunderstood movie business and had a wrong business model. They did solve half of the problem, cost of bandwidth, but they failed to solve the much harder half -- upfront cost of content.
The story goes is that Joost came to studios with $40 mil to get rights to movies. They were told that that a prime movie rights were $10 mil prepay upfront, so they could choose 4 good movies, or a large library of junk. They chose junk, but neither option was viable.
To do business the way they wanted to, Joost was undercapitalized by a factor of 100.
YouTube and Hulu solved content problem differently. One through copyright infringement, the other though being owned by content owners.

Hacker News | NewsLabs (YC W10) folds months after launch, regrets big promises to journalists

news.ycombinator.com/item

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Startup failure

Jun

2010

What Happened to that Fail? – The Point · The Daily Bones

jason.deroner.com/...appened-to-that-fail-the-point

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Startup failure

Feb

2010

Wikipedia creator had lots of earlier failures

www2.tbo.com/...r-had-lots-of-earlier-failures

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failure

This leads to Wales' theories of failure:

•Fail faster. If a project is doomed, shut it down quickly.

•Don't tie your ego to any one project. If it stumbles, you'll be unable to move forward.

•Real entrepreneurs fail.

•Fail a lot. But enjoy yourself along the way.

•If you handle these things well, "you will succeed."

Jan

2010

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination | Harvard Magazine

harvardmagazine.com/...ure-the-importance-imagination

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failure imagination

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
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- I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
- There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
- You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.
- Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.
- So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
- Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.
- You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
- In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
- Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
- And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
- written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
  
  That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
- If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

Sep

2009

10 Google Services That Failed and Why

www.eweek.com/...ces-That-Failed-and-Why-703489

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ideas failure

May

2009

Hacker News | Spolsky: Why Circuit City Failed, and Why B&H Thrives

news.ycombinator.com/item

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startups failure

Why Circuit City Failed, and Why B&H Thrives, Managing Technology Article - Inc. Article

www.inc.com/...nd-why-bh-thrives_pagen_2.html

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startup failure

No, wait: The most amazing thing is that I have often gone into B&H to purchase a specific product, only to be talked into something cheaper. For example, once I went in to buy a field video monitor to use for some interviews I was conducting. I expected to pay $600 until the salesperson said, "Why don't you just get one of these cheap consumer portable DVD players? They have video inputs, they work just as well, and they're under $100." This was no accident. "The entire premise of our store is based upon your ability to come in, touch, feel, experiment, ask, and discuss your needs without sales pressure," B&H's website says.

But wait: The conveyer belts, the prices, the smart salespeople, the fact that they recommend cheaper products almost as a rule -- none of these is actually the most amazing thing about B&H. Really, the most amazing thing is that because the owners of B&H are Orthodox Jews -- Hasidim, in fact -- the store closes every Friday afternoon for the Jewish Sabbath, and on Jewish holidays. Moreover, B&H's website, which reportedly accounts for 70 percent of sales, shuts down, too. Bhphotovideo.com is, to my knowledge, the only major online retailer that closes for 25 hours every weekend.