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by danielford 3764 days ago
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.
2 comments
fratlas 3764 days ago
Couldn't they (Stypi) commit all unsaved changes to localStorage (couldn't possibly be more than 5mb) in case of a crash?
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evm9 3764 days ago
They certainly could have.
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tedmiston 3763 days ago
It sounds like Stypi was an acquihire.

Jason Chen, one of the founders wrote a blog post about it: Mechanics of a Small Acquisition (http://www.jasonchen.me/mechanics-of-a-small-acquisition/).

> Fortunately, my cofounder and I were lucky enough to have had access to several other acquired founders who helped us ultimately navigate our first multimillion-dollar exit for a company barely a year old.

> DISCLAIMER: Every startup and founder group is unique so the data provided here may not apply in all cases. In particular, it is skewed towards < $25m acquisitions made by much larger companies.

(Emphasis mine)

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seiji 3763 days ago
access to several other acquired founders who helped us ultimately navigate

That's founder code for "we actually failed, but we know rich people, so our failure is really our success—suck it, everybody else who fails without millionaire friend safety nets."

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