[Jugurtha]

Can someone "fork", branch, and merge startups?

Several teams could work on different forks that would represent different hypotheses, for example. The fork that works is pulled into master.

You often find that idea X didn't work in the past for different reasons. Maybe the technology wasn't there yet and the timing was bad. Sometimes though, a startup is born because they chose a different distribution model.

[kosmischemusik]

It would be very hard to do something like that to startups that aren't 'structured', unlike code.

But there would definitely be a lot of value in having a wiki if dead startups with detailed analyses of what worked and what didn't.