We hear plenty about the businesses that succeed, but little about the businesses that fail. This can lead to a very skewed perspective on what works and what doesn’t. But I think failure can often teach us as much as success. So I am interested in trying to put together an article on my blog about commercial software products that have not been successful. If you have been involved in a failed product, or at least one that hasn’t been successful so far, I would love to hear from you. I need to know:
- A brief description of the product – (URL and/or product name optional, you can be deliberately vague if you want to stay anonymous).
- Why you consider it to have failed commercially. Did you sell any?
- What you did wrong (ideally 3-5 bullet points) or would do differently if you could do it again.
- How much time/money you invested in it and what impact that had on your personal finances and circumstances.
- What happened? Are you still trying to make it succeed? Have you given up? Did you succeed with another product?
- Do you regret doing it?
- Anything else you think might be useful to others thinking of creating their own commercial software product.
Maybe you can save someone from making the same mistakes you made? Please email me at andy {at} oryxdigital.com. Hopefully I can get enough contributions to make a viable article. Links to articles about failed products would also be great.
Like this:
One blogger likes this post.
Not quite the same target market as your mISV focus but this book gives quite a good treatment of some of the more spectacular failures
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Stupidity.html
I’ve read “In search of stupidity” (see http://successfulsoftware.net/reading-list/ ). It is a great book.