I've seen it a number of times. The company would rush to build a prototype, the product would be broken but looked like it's almost ready. Then the cost of engineering would grow and it would become harder to hire people. In some cases, the company had existing customers who were promised new features, so there was no time to fix the underlying issues, and they had to be built on top of. This cycle would repeat.
One might look at these companies and say that they are "successful" because they employ people, and some might even sell in the 7-figure range. But looking closely, each of the employees at the company could be more successful working for another company, where they don't spend their time firefighting, and instead focus on up-leveling their experience.
Having a surfeit of customers clamoring to pay more money for stuff--this doesn't sound like a terrible problem to have as a startup. Sure, spend time to build a reliable core, but gold-plating everything suggests there's been time to burn.
Not quite what I meant. A lot of startups are trying to find market fit and selling customers on a vision that is not yet realized. They will pitch new features and say that they can deliver if there is a contract. However, these features take longer to develop then anticipated, and are rushed on top of bad tech.
Sounds like a Big ball of Mud. If it solves a real problem then it can be re-invented; by the same people or by someone else. Otherwise it will slowly come to a crawl and eventually be forgotten.
They didn’t fail though. All you’ve described is a standard software startup.
If devs are spending time “up-leveling their experience”, that just indicates that it’s a pretty slow-paced field where that time can be traded. It doesn’t mean anything about the business itself.
The version I heard was that Friendster failed to scale not because of low quality code but because the CEO refused to compromise on a feature that was inherently unscalable.
MySpace was sold to News Corporation for millions, it definitely didn't fail as a startup. There's a point where code quality becomes important, I don't think anyone's denying that, but it's after you've got traction and product-market fit.
(That was linked from http://highscalability.com/blog/2007/11/13/friendster-lost-l... but I had to fix the link, since it went to apps.ycombinator.com which must have been the HN URL at the time. Maybe dang can update DNS to make those old links redirect? Everything after the host was still correct.)
One might look at these companies and say that they are "successful" because they employ people, and some might even sell in the 7-figure range. But looking closely, each of the employees at the company could be more successful working for another company, where they don't spend their time firefighting, and instead focus on up-leveling their experience.