[eegilbert]

I loved Founders at Work. However, it suffers from (somewhat severe) survivorship bias [1]. The next time around, it would be great to hear from more companies/founders that were "supposed to make it" but didn't for one reason or another.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[weston]

I thought the best chapter was on Phillip Greenspun of ArsDigita. Phillip was forced out of his own startup by his board and he eventually maneuvered behind the scenes to regain control.

If there's a "Founders At Work 2.0", more stories about failures, mistakes, and how people learned from those failures+mistakes would be super helpful. Most startups aren't an overnight success or a unicorn with "rocketship" style growth. Learning more about the non-sexy, non-linear successes can be just as useful than reading about the unicorns.

[webmaven]

Unfortunately, to the extent that Greenspun regained control at all (which is questionable, given the out of court settlement that gagged him), it was much too late, most of the company's value had been destroyed, and seemingly so had Greenspun's taste for founding/running a company.

In some alternate universe, Philip Greenspun's ArsDigita became the leading platform provider for developing and deploying Application Service Providers (what we would call SaaS today) and their main competitor is Zimki founded by Simon Wardley.

[afarrell]

Failed startup stories are indeed pretty interesting. I went to an Irish Wake for Dead Startups once and it was great. That event was organized as an investment/business promotion by Ireland's government, but someone should organize more of them.

[echan00]

I think the problem with your request is that there are way too many failed startup stories.

[100k]

She could take a look at the most hyped startups of 2008 (when the book was published) and see where they are now. Most will probably have failed by now, and there will be some interesting stories there!

[27182818284]

As I sit here wearing a Pebble watch, I'd certainly like to know more about that collapse.

[weston]

She could also focus specifically on YC companies and their success and/or failure stories.

[eegilbert]

Perhaps. Although you could apply something like matching techniques [1] to find startups comparable to the big successes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_(statistics)