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Ask HN: Are there any books about failure (with no later success)?
3 points by mvkel on April 17, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment
I feel like the world of entrepreneurship, especially tech entrepreneurship, is suffering from history being written by the victor.

Everyone has a story about overcoming adversity and succeeding. It's the expectation. It's the hero's journey. But how do we know the failures weren't just red herrings -- that success was inevitable for these companies?

Are there any books that are post-mortems? Stories about companies who had every indication that they would succeed, but ultimately failed? I'd love to read about them.

Ones that come to mind that are out there: - Kozmo.com - The Hard Thing About Hard Things (sorta)

I'd love to read the history of MySpace, Wang computers, Atari, etc.



Every successful endeavor involves luck. A corollary to that is that no successful endeavor is inevitable.

Anyone who claims their startup's success was "inevitable" is just trying to stroke their own ego or make some money from unsuccessful entrepreneurs.




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