Ask HN: Which YC companies failed badly?

Failing fast and cheaply (e.g. below $5 mln) is good and essential for innovation. You can still learn a lot, test some concept and next time be more successful.

E.g. Cost of 1000 dead YC style startups is likely still very positive, while BetterPlace from $850mln to zero is just a drag for the economy. Most likely those $850mln could be deployed more efficiently.

This was largely discussed on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=homejoy&sort=byPopularity&pref...

I'd guess that pretty much every batch has startups that implode very quickly due to disagreements within the team. The company is dissolved and the founders end up disliking each other. This is pretty bad but nobody has heard of these companies and it's clear the team was just bad. A decent team is able to persevere for some time.

The more interesting examples are companies that had traction, were growing, raised lots of money, but some aspect of the business didn't work out or they got beaten by competitors, and ended up shutting down. Homejoy is one example. The problem is many other companies like this end up getting acquired for some small amount of money instead of shutting down, making it plausible to deny they failed badly.

On the surface I understand why the idea was thought to be a good one. But getting sued by SFO because they didn't have the proper licensing agreements pretty much killed that company. There may have been more, but I remember that particularly.

There was also the personal lingering questions about insurance, questionable whether the customers would be good (one damage incident spoils the well), etc.