I agree. Some of these post mortems are insightful but some are lame like prism. "Welp we built a cool product, learned content distribution is tough, and failed to achieve growth. The end" But why is it tough? What it sounds like was that prism didn't provide a useful enough experience for enough people to change their old habits of consumption.
Also there was a hotel top 10 one that was odd. They couldn't grow because they were priced out by large competitors. But any ranking / aggregator site should crush end providers in seo. I work for a financial services companies and lead aggregators dominate seo because it's inherently more beneficial for a consumer to see a bunch of choices than one provider. I imagine its a similar story for hotels.
There's a lot of competition in SEO as well. Googling "best London hotels" the list is dominated by Tripadvisor, the Telegraph, Time Out, Expedia etc. All long established, well known and in Tripadvisor's case (3 of the top 4) very good in my opinion.
Also there was a hotel top 10 one that was odd. They couldn't grow because they were priced out by large competitors. But any ranking / aggregator site should crush end providers in seo. I work for a financial services companies and lead aggregators dominate seo because it's inherently more beneficial for a consumer to see a bunch of choices than one provider. I imagine its a similar story for hotels.