How my startup failed (1999) | Hacker News Reader

How my startup failed (1999)

alumni.stanford.edu

141 pointsvivekd21 comments

I'm pretty surprised he had trouble getting 10,000 condoms.

I once helped organize a student conference and asked a manufacturer to donate 5,000 condoms, about one per day per participant. Yes, we were aiming high.

I noticed something was wrong when the truck driver started unloaded three pallets worth of condoms. They had sent us 5,000 boxes with 25 condoms each = 125,000.

During the next two years, we did manage to find a few events that gratefully took most of the load of our hands. But a few thousand remained in my basement and I learnt: there's nothing sadder than a thousand expired condoms.

When was this? It might have been harder to find and contact a manufacturer in the mid-nineties.

Perhaps the era of a condom keychain in every pocket has finally come.

(probably not)

2006 or so. Maybe we just git "lucky".

probably could have donated them e.g. to a homeless shelter.

The Olympics uses 150k in a week.

> But a few thousand remained in my basement and I learnt: there's nothing sadder than a thousand expired condoms.

So you had several thousand at first and are sad that only 1000 is left when they expired? Sounds like you got laid a lot and I would not be sad about that ;)

> But a few thousand remained in my basement and I learnt: there's nothing sadder than a thousand expired condoms.

I was once given a few thousand spare condoms after the G&L Mardi Gras in Sydney. By given, I mean they suddenly appeared in my house. Many were used in ways other than intended, like being filled with nitrous oxide :)

> took most of the load of our hands

Hehehehe, that's what condoms are for right?

Funniest piece I've read in a long time. And there are many lessons in there, too.

Surely today you would get them made in China at the same kind of total cost. No more lacerated fingers putting them together yourself. There are fulfillment companies that take your stock and then send them out to customers as orders come in. Setup a website that hooks into the fulfillment company process and you have a virtually no touch process.

The article was written in 1999, before the advent of internet-based commerce. Maybe that could have made things turn out differently for him? Interesting post!

Maybe. But likely the pitfalls would simply look different.

Amazon and eBay launched in 1995. There were many examples by 1999.

Well, you're being pedantic. In '99 the great mouthbreathing horde were not buying things online.

Not sure why you're being downvoted.

eBay revenue, 1999: $224.7 million

eBay revenue, 2015: $8,590 million

Edit: That's 38x

Amazon revenue was already $1.6B in 1999. Clearly out of startup phase by then.

So it depends on your measure. eCommerce is still a relatively small percentage of GDP, 5.4% of US according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/250703/forecast-of-inter...

eCommerce as a percentage of all retail sales is a decent measure.

1999: 0.2%

2015: 8.4%

42x

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMPCTSA

1999 is definitely Beanie Baby Bubble timing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/books/review/the-great-bea...

It is actually pretty refreshing to read a "startup failure" story for a change. IMO, HN should have these more often!

That. is. hilarious.

(Business is like life, love and war: difficult)

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