On November 8th, 2009 I participated in the closing panel at Hackers 25.

<info> Spectacular Failures and What We Learned - Brad Templeton Step up to the mic and let us know what You learned. Participants: Randy Farmer, Karl Auerbach Mother hen: Chip Morningstar</info>

These are my quick quotes on my “failures” and what I learned…

• Yahoo
  • Fumbling the Future - 100M dollar business in virtual currency derailed by lawyers.
  • Mixd [twitter 12 months earlier.]
  • Yahoo! 360 Degrees [Social Network]
• The Sims Online - You can'just add a network to a single player game and expect it to work.
• State Software
  • Invented JSON, Co-invented AJAX, but couldn't sell a new paradigm (again.) Getting tired of inventing the future and the IP ending up in a file cabinet.
  • Lesson: Open the good stuff as you go!
• Communities.com
  • Lesson: Three dead dot-coms do not make a healthy company.
  • Lesson: There *IS* a toxic Hacker's Co-efficient. Smart People Can Talk themselves into anything. Upside - solved very herd problems - downside - software that was too big, too slow, and too complicated.
  • Lesson: The Palace - Unmoderated User Generated Content == No advertising revenue
• AMiX - Too soon - eBay before the web. Carol Bartz cut the business free at the front edge of the web - WITH A DEVELOPMENT DEBT of 7M!
• Habitat/Club Caribe - The Paper that started it all for us (Chip and Randy)