
Ask HN: What were the most promising YC startups that ultimately failed? - jrbapna
And why?
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danielford
The most disappointing YC-backed product I tried was Stypi.

I teach community college and sometimes I wonder about the thought processes
behind some of my students' papers. Paul Graham linked an essay he wrote in
Stypi, where you could watch him write it in real time. This was clearly the
greatest computer-assisted tool for teaching writing ever, and I immediately
incorporated Stypi into one of my writing assignments. I wanted to know how
much my students proofread, how they structured essays, and what they
struggled with as they wrote. I was so excited about it that I wrote the
entire assignment in Stypi and linked my students to the replay in case they
were interested.

It was a disaster. So many students lost essays in browser crashes or were
flat out unable to use the software. I ultimately had to apologize to my
class, give everyone an extension, and cut Stypi out of the project.

Apparently they were acquired though, so I guess they made someone happy.

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fratlas
Couldn't they (Stypi) commit all unsaved changes to localStorage (couldn't
possibly be more than 5mb) in case of a crash?

~~~
evm9
They certainly could have.

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S4M
You should check HomeJoy. They were a cleaning company (they subcontracted
cleaners) that went through YC, had a huge growth and raised about $40M, but
went on to fail. Look for them in HN search, it has been discussed a lot.

~~~
brianwawok
But is it really more than Molly maid + an app? It never struck me as
groundbreaking.

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debacle
Isn't that one of the underlying themes of the last few years? There has been
too much money, so sometimes weaker ideas with good teams get funding.

~~~
brianwawok
Exactly :) But that is why I wouldn't put it on the list of a "Most promising
startup that failed". To me a promising startup that failed would be someone
who invented a nanobot to go scrub cancer from your body that ended up killing
people and going bankrupt. Someone that tried really hard for a really cool
idea that failed.. not an app for house cleaning.

~~~
debacle
I guess you're right.

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kevin_morrill
One simple way to evaluate this would be to look at press attention.

I did a quick check using Mattermark data of which YC companies got the most
news since 2013 that are not still alive. It yielded (num articles / startup):
67 Homejoy 13 Tipjoy 13 Buttercoin 6 Tutorspree

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ivankirigin
Tipjoy shut down in 2009, how could it possibly be 13?

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dangrossman
Tipjoy's founder started another company, got into YC again, got funded again,
and got lots of press again. A lot of that press mentions the founder, and
names his previous startups, including Tipjoy.

~~~
ivankirigin
That makes sense. He's me btw

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dedalus
Buxfer was a very interesting company I loved to use but strangely they didnt
go as far as I thought they would

