
Show HN: Dead Yet? – Keep an eye on dying startups - shopkins
http://deadyet.lol/
======
jgrahamc
Has none of the charm of FuckedCompany. That was a great web site and really
captured the mood back then.

Thanks
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pud](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pud)

~~~
pud
Fuckedcompany founder here.

:)

~~~
anon4this1
I wasted about 10 years of my life on fc related forums. They were great to
begin with, and then gradually just became utterly terrible.

------
Smudge
Seems useful (albeit tongue-in-cheek), but will have to keep my eye on this
just in case:

[http://isdeadyet.deadyet.lol/](http://isdeadyet.deadyet.lol/)

;-)

~~~
golergka
502\. Well, that didn't take long.

~~~
shopkins
Really need to host isdeadyet.deadyet.lol on another page so it's accurate
next time. Try again now.

~~~
verelo
[http://isisdeadyetdeadyetcheck.deadyet.lol/](http://isisdeadyetdeadyetcheck.deadyet.lol/)

~~~
OJFord
It's dead-yet checks all the way down.

[http://isisisdeadyetdeadyetcheckyetdead.deadyet.lol/](http://isisisdeadyetdeadyetcheckyetdead.deadyet.lol/)

------
aaronwidd
I liked this one: [http://autopsy.io/](http://autopsy.io/) And this:
[http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-
mortem/](http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/)

Personally I'd like to see a post mortem for companies that collapsed.
Sometimes they are the only historical record we have of these businesses.

So frequently founders and investors rush to burn the evidence of their
failures before the lessons they learned are ever taught, and the business
completely vanishes into the ether as if it never existed.

There's a lot of value in documenting and aggregating data in companies that
failed for whatever reason. Not only to apply the lessons of failing but it
does a great job of logging the industry zeitgeist, seeing what trends in
ideas we thought were worth investing in that turned out to be duds, what
flamed out and then sprung back years later. Too much of that data has been
lost over time, it's a real shame.

------
dmschulman
This Twitter bot (Deathwatch) kind of has the right idea, nice way to pseudo-
automate the process at least. The downside though is that it can throw a lot
of false positives, just because a startup stops tweeting from a particular
account doesn't mean they've perished:

[http://deathwatch.io/](http://deathwatch.io/)

~~~
caspii
Creator of the bot here. Thanks for the shoutout!

~~~
LionessLover
I predict that within 10-20 years we will have AI bots that automatically come
up with ideas for bots (trivial versions of this surely are already possible)
- and that also have an add-on that lets them monitor forums and post
"thanks!" notes to any comments mentioning them. I'm curious what people like
you, or your descendants, will be doing by then :-)

~~~
caspii
Psst, that's actually already happened

------
abarringer
Anyone remember deathwatch[0] from the first dot com bubble?

It was based on actual financial statements "based on their reported liquid
assets and loss rate. When the cash runs out, something bad for stockholders
has to happen."

The weird thing is, at the time that statement was controversial. "We'll make
it up in volume!"

[http://downside.com/deathwatch.html[0]](http://downside.com/deathwatch.html\[0\])

------
pauly
pretty negative, reminds me of fuckedcompany.com back in about 2000 - that
made it into a game, you could bet on which dotcom bubble companies were going
to fail.

~~~
shopkins
It's definitely meant to be taken lightly. If you added your own startup, a
big "no" just shows how non-failey you are -- it goes both ways.

------
ikeboy
[http://isgod.deadyet.lol](http://isgod.deadyet.lol)

~~~
leni536
Damn it Nietzsche, stop playing with the computer!

------
catwell
Some living startups are listed dead (Pinboard, bad URL), but some dead
startups are listed alive as well.

For instance, L'Usine à Design is dead since 2013. They were a French company
that made furniture, I bought a couch from them. Their office was on the same
floor as Moodstocks, where I was working at the time, and after it closed a
few angry customers came banging at our door to complain.

(The reason why the website thinks they are not dead is that the URL they used
for the check is the URL of a news article announcing that they were dying!)

~~~
shopkins
Thanks, I fixed the URLs and data on those.

------
TDL
Good to know Keith Richards isn't dead yet, didn't realize he was a startup.

[http://iskeithrichards.deadyet.lol/](http://iskeithrichards.deadyet.lol/)

------
colevscode
Who is asking "Is that company dead yet? It should've never been created in
the first place."

If you want to check a company's status, just go to the website. This seems
like a cynical tool.

~~~
emodendroket
You think the site hosted at "deadyet.lol" might be cynical?

------
arenaninja
Wasn't there one of these that turned into a service that then failed itself
some time ago? I don't keep track but I seem to remember it from the past two
years.

In any case, great domain name, haha.

~~~
sleepychu
Yeah I think it was a service for closing up your startup, emailing your
customers and displaying a nice "we're gone now" message.

~~~
CiPHPerCoder
[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)
?

------
dharmon
I was doing an analysis a while back to figure out YC's IRR, and the problem
wasn't outright dead startups, but the walking dead.

Silicon Valley (YC included) has a large number of these. I remember one that
is not "dead" by any public measure (live site accepting new customers), but
upon digging I found that the two co-founders now work at Facebook!

~~~
shopkins
I worked at one of these startups whose product kept running for months, even
after firing all of its developers. That's the main reason for this and the
"dead _yet_ " name -- the "walking dead" state definitely seems like a common
occurrence.

------
cpdz
[http://islocalhost.deadyet.lol/](http://islocalhost.deadyet.lol/)

~~~
dkns
Whew, thank god! What a relief, I use that website all the time to do all of
my development on there.

------
octagonal
This reminds me of an idea I had in mind a while ago.

It would've been similar to this (like some kind of "Startup Graveyard") but
slightly more extensive: interviews with the founders and the lessons they
learned from it, what "type" of failure they suffered from (misinterpreting
the market, lack of skills, etc).

I ultimately gave up on the idea because none of the founders I contacted
wanted to truly spill the beans on what went wrong (the best I tended to get
was some vague PR mumbling).

~~~
logicallee
sorry this is like an olympic sports reporter tracking down whoever came last
in each event to ask, "what happened?"

Meh. I'll stick to reading what the winners have to say - or those still
actively competing with them.

~~~
walterbell
There is economic value in risk management.

------
sarreph
Interesting idea. However, I'm not a fan of the overwhelmingly negative vibe
this gives off. By this I mean there seems to be no effort made about any kind
of constructive criticism or help, e.g. a way to offer feedback on the listed
startups so that they could actually use it as a platform to learn from.

So far it seems to me that it's more of a "Haha, you didn't make it" page
creator when it could actually become a force for good.

~~~
akerro
I don't like the negative vibes I get from
[http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/)
instead giving tip how to stay up it's purposed to say if website is down.

It's normal that companies die. What advice would you give them?

~~~
xorlord
Don't die.

~~~
akerro
Thanks! This advice helped my company survive bad times!

------
nix0n
This is the best use of the new .lol TLD I've seen yet.

------
fredrivett
Reminds me of a small project I hacked on through the night once:

[https://www.producthaunt.com](https://www.producthaunt.com)

------
cmrdporcupine
I sure do miss FuckedCompany

------
jackgavigan
[http://istheranos.deadyet.lol](http://istheranos.deadyet.lol)

------
brador
An Assassins market for startups with a cryptocurrency backend would be a cool
way to semi-automate this.

------
fanvadmeck
Sad moment indeed.

[http://ishodor.deadyet.lol](http://ishodor.deadyet.lol)

------
an4rchy
If it's a list of startups, not sure why any of the big companies (i.e. Apple,
Microsoft etc) are on there.

Also, I'm curious about what the refresh rate is to check HTTP status. I'm
sure some sites on that list may have been down for more than a day or two.

~~~
shopkins
It checks the site immediately when it's added, then once a day afterwards.

The sentiment of
[http://issnapchat.deadyet.lol/](http://issnapchat.deadyet.lol/) is amusing,
but I agree it shouldn't be with the dead-product-walking list. Will add
something that can filter or move these.

------
unknownzero
Er, I don't think 9front is dead yet, fairly certain there was a release a few
weeks ago :)

[http://9front.org/releases/](http://9front.org/releases/)

~~~
shopkins
That was a bug from fetching the wrong URL. It's fixed now.

------
JoeAltmaier
No way to discuss the starts in question? I'd love a comment board under each
name. I tried one or two; their websites were awful. Virtually unusable.
Feedback might help them.

------
crgt
Did CoTap really die? This site says yes, but their site is up, their app is
available in the App Store and their Twitter account is still active..walking
dead or not dead yet?

~~~
sb8244
I think the URL is not right. I noticed the same thing.

~~~
shopkins
Right, this is fixed now. New entries shouldn't have this problem.

------
ajmarsh
It appears The Iron Isles is finally dead. Undoubtedly it was a great product
with so much promise. Alas, even dreams as lofty as The Iron Isles must one
day die. LOL

~~~
stoic
What is dead may never die

------
MattyRad
There's a company that was called "God" and it appears it's dead. Ha!
Nietzsche was right. Who has the audacity to name their startup God?

------
conjectures
[http://isskyscanner.deadyet.lol/](http://isskyscanner.deadyet.lol/)
apparently yes? Hmm....

------
quinndupont
This seems to be transforming into a link spam source awfully quickly. Too
bad, because it has a certain kind of appeal.

~~~
shopkins
Any examples? I'm cleaning up bad data now.

------
chejazi
Easy to spoof. Pinboard is listed as dead, though the healthcheck url on their
site is Pinboard.im, not Pinboard.in

------
mapleoin
Would be great to have a "half of fame" for this to see what startups people
are expecting to die.

~~~
shopkins
Products marked _public_ show up here now:
[http://deadyet.lol/browse](http://deadyet.lol/browse)

------
lambdacomplete
The `this page` links are relative so you get 404 (e.g.
is9front.deadyet.lol/9front.org).

------
Jabbles
What happened to color.xxx ?

------
xivzgrev
What is dead may never die!

------
Immortalin
Would be great if you can sign up for email alerts when a company dies

~~~
shopkins
Great idea, I'll look into it.

------
cyogee
How much does it cost to keep this small site up and running?

~~~
shopkins
About $5 / month.

~~~
DonHopkins
Or nothing except yearly domain name registration, if you already have another
non-trivially-small site up and running.

------
bbcbasic
Still waiting for Alphabet to die. When will it die!

------
edoceo
Browse link throwing server error :(

~~~
shopkins
Fixed -- try it now.

------
PeterBarrett
[http://isdeadyet.deadyet.lol/](http://isdeadyet.deadyet.lol/)

