Bonus Digest: When Good Businesses Go Bad

In a BoS forum thread the other day [Failure of a Micro ISV], Joshua Volz asked for more stories about failure, more opportunities to learn from our mistakes. So I got to thinking, I've built up about 9 months worth of Micro ISV Digest posts, there has to be a few good links in there about failure and mistakes.

Micro ISVs throwing in the towel

• In April we had Cade Fassett calling time on his Micro ISV and ISV Diaries blog. The blog is no longer available, but luckily I save fragments from many of the pages that go into the digest posts... nothing too exciting here though, Cade decided he liked dealing with clients and producing bespoke solutions.
• In February, Mike [no last name, sorry] abandoned his Haja project. Again the blog is no longer available, but the main reason quoted for the decision was simply not having enough time to do justice to the concept.
• Matt Breckon decided to cancel his first Micro ISV attempt in May. Good old Matt has kept the blog up and running for the benefit of future generations: Cancelling PageTrack.
• Finally, Micro ISV coiner Eric Sink wrote about the end of his Winnable Solitaire Micro ISV experiment.

Articles on Failure & Mistakes

• What Not to Do, from Entrepreneur magazine.
• Why I quit entrepreneurship and got a real job, from Businesspundit.
• Bitter Brew... okay, it's about a coffee shop, but it's a great read.
• Why most businesses fail, from MarkTAW.
• Why Pyrogon failed, from A Shareware Life.
• Talking about failure, from Brad Feld.
• Even VCs make mistakes, the anti-portfolio.
• My own contribution, the Micro ISV Mistakes series 1-5, and mistake 6 on Codesnipers.
• Dharmesh, just this week, asks Are you making enough mistakes?

Almost relevant

• Michael Zammuto gave up his ISV to go and work for Microsoft.
• Who could forget the Titanic blogger.

Tags: failure microisv startup