I doubt these post-mortems are accurate. If you can't create a successful compan... | Hacker News

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		codex on Jan 21, 2014 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Startup failure post-mortems I doubt these post-mortems are accurate. If you can't create a successful company, what makes you think you know why a company was unsuccessful? It's just more mental masturbation. Even if the failure mode is identified, it doesn't help you with the next startup, as most of the time humans work by trial and error. A failure doesn't teach most how to succeed, just how not to fail in that exact way.

simonjester on Jan 21, 2014 | [–]

Still an outside view is usually quite objective and can pinpoint issues that weren't easily apparent at all to someone inside the project.

bryan_rasmussen on Jan 21, 2014 | [–]

this is the obverse of the idea that just because you succeed does not necessarily know why you succeeded. You do not have the full view in either case.

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