F'd Companies
by Philip J. Kaplan · first published 2002
7mentions
3recommended by
7HN commenters
2007–2025first – last mentioned
43% recommend43% neutral14% critical
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…venture-backed internet startups that failed in the late 90's. Many of them had significant users and revenue, but were mismanaged and failed. I've often thought many of them could be successful today. "F'd Companies: Spectacular Dot-com Startups" http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0743228626
on “Ask HN: Is there a repository of failed startups (re-usable startups idea)?” ↗…To be honest you can get so much just from reading Hacker News. Books: Founders at Work The Lean Startup The Four Hour Work Week Hackers & Painters Getting Real - 37 Signals/Jason Fried F'd Companies (Maybe not crucial but helped me think about startups needing to fulfill a need/fix a problem). Articles: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html http://thestartupfoundry.com/ http://avc.com…
on “Ask HN: Reading materials for someone looking to get into the startup world” ↗Pud's book, "F'd Companies: spectacular dot-com flameouts", was a good laugh. It's just a simplistic piss-take, but even all these years later, it shows up the sheer ridiculousness of what those dotcoms were trying to do and were…
on “When the Dotcom Bubble Burst” ↗…Goes even in some technical details. 4. "Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies". Very good and thorough book about bitcoins, the author implements most import concept in the book. 5. "F'D Companies: Spectacular Dot-com Flameouts". I seldom don't recommend a book, but this one is hard to tell. It is interesting read about a lot of failed dot-com era companies. But the layout and writing style looks…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?” ↗…that's what I meant. It was done for fun, and so that Pud could make a name for himself. And later write a book! My username: thanks. I was a great fan of Pud. I even wrote the Italian 'version' of F'd Companies https://www.dotcoma.it/book
on “Ask HN: Glassdoor is unbelievably bad, why no one disrupting it” ↗FuckedCompany.com (http://www.fuckedcompany.com/index.html), though it isn't posting new companies anymore. The author wrote a book called "F'd Companies" that chronicled some of the worst dot-bomb era flameouts.
on “Failed startups” ↗…starting a successful company, but the ideas are NOT all equivalent and don't have equal probability of success. One thing that may be easier than picking winners is avoiding losers. Ever read the book F'd Companies? Most of those are absurd on their face, yet people invested a lot of time and money into them.
on “The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday” ↗