204 Startup Failure Post-Mortems

If you’re starting up a new company or product, it wouldn’t hurt to scan these 204 Startup Failure Post-Mortems to learn what not to do from startups who fizzled.

One in particular, struck me in a twisted sort of way: this postmortem of SunEdison’s backruptcy:

SunEdison at its core is a boring construction company, that earns the trust of its institutional investors by being boring and managing risks … [but the company’s senior executives] didn’t want to be boring, they wanted to be a technology company.

Victor Lombardi is the design director at CapitalOne, and the author of Why We Fail: Real Stories and Practical Lessons from Experience Design Failures. He helped turn around a failing media business at Fox Mobile Group through the development of a new web platform and mobile apps. He walks the walk by developing his own product, Nickel, with the goal of making personal financial planning accessible to everyone. Follow him on Twitter or buy his book.