#flowtab

Product Hunt is a celebration of products but the reality is, most will fail. Lately there appears to be several public postmortems of founders sharing their failures.

I have tremendous respect for those that vulnerably share their mistakes and lessons learned. Although people, technologies, and markets change, we can learn from these stories.

Here is a collection of fantastic postmortems I've saved over the past several months:

Everpix - Out of the picture: why the world's best photo startup is going out of business

Flud - Why Startups Fail: A Postmortem For Flud, The Social Newsreader

Sonar - Postmortem of a Venture-backed Startup

Plancast - The Uphill Battle Of Social Event Sharing: A Post-Mortem for Plancast

Flowtab - The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

Formspring - Formspring - A Postmortem

Wesabe - Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

Gowalla - Play by your own rules

EventVue - EventVue post-mortem

PlayCafe - 10 lessons from a failed startup

Untitled Partners - Lessons from a startup failure

Teamometer - Startup lessons learned from my failed startup

Outbox - Outbox is Shutting Down—A Note of Gratitude

Drawquest - Today my startup failed

Young companies die by the hundreds in Silicon Valley, but you would hardly know it by reading your local blog. 

Tech blogs don't publish stories like this enough. Too often they give publicity to product launches and funding rounds without ever really following up and tracking the aftermath on the large majority of startups that fail. The money runs out, the product never catches on with a large audience, and no pivot can save them from their inevitable fate. Entrepreneurs, both present and future, need to understand just how slim the odds are of ever making it to a major acquisition deal or IPOing.

It’s a running joke (I use the term lightly since some people are more offended than amused) amongst my LA crowd that I possess the uncanny ability to get a preposterous amount of attention and, more importantly, free alcohol whenever I go out on the town. Some of those people who are not under the trance of my bewitchery & charm are probably my friend, Nancy.

 Nancy is the type of gal who makes it her second career to find a husband, and therefore goes out every single night in search of Mr. Right. I believe her intense search has been underway for 2 years now and has yielded some fair results. Unfortunately, all the really good ones already had girlfriends or wives…except that one porn star guy…no, not Ron Jeremy…the other one.

 Anyway, Nancy isn’t a huge fan of yours truly, and this is the best explanation I can surmise as to why. Immediately upon hearing that one night I got 1. Free flowing specialty drinks from a bartender (which equated to about five), 2. Convinced said bartended to supply a handful of other individuals at the bar with the same free alcohol parks, 3. Got a ride home via a driving service in exchange for a hug, 4. Got the exact same driver to pick up my roommate and me from our apartment at 3am for a ride to the Roosevelt Hotel for some high quality burgers….also gratis, and 5. Then hailed a cab back home in exchange for absolutely nothing, Nancy exploded, “There are times when I go out looking like a movie star….people would seriously think Why is that celebrity sitting at the bar all alone? Those nights I may get one drink from a guy. If I’m really lucky sometimes a bartender will feel bad and comp a drink. NEVER is anyone in Los Angeles EVER allowed free cab rides! I’ll even tell them “I have $15 please take me as far as that will go,” and they speed off leaving me on the corner. THEN Allison shows up looking like a lumberjack and gets EVERYTHING. Free drinks, free rides, free anything she wants! Life is so unfair!!!” I would normally take great offense at that statement, but I will give Nancy a little credit because I was looking rather butchy that night in a dirty & paint splattered men’s flannel shirt with wooly boots…but I made sure ample cleavage was still visible (my not-so-secret trick to seduction). However, after learning that free drinks are her Achilles’ heel, I now make it my mission to excessively flaunt complimentary alcohol whenever I go out with Nancy (surprisingly…not all that often).

 Let’s face it though. This is Hollywood and some nights only the Hollyweird freak shows performers surface. How’s a girl to get free whiskey then? Answer:  Flowtab

 Flowtab? Wut dat? is what you all are probably thinking (or my more eloquent readers anyway), so I will simply state that it is my new favorite app on the iPhone.

 iPhone? Wut dat? is what you all are….never mind (I sometimes forget that my target audience is no longer all the cows I had to befriend growing up on the farm).

 Flowtab is insanely simple. You just download the free app, pretend you’re texting a plethora of stunning male models while you are really putting in a drink order for yourself at the bar, and then you may sit back and relax while you wait for the concoction to be delivered to your table. That’s how I do it anyway. The server will then bring the drink over and say, “Which one of you fine ladies is Allison?” I usually then raise my hand, act really surprised, maybe even blush a little, and look around to see if I can catch a glimpse of my secret admirer. All my friends totally love playing the Guess which guy sent over this drink game too! The server knows fully well what tricks I have up my sleeve, but the app also allows me to tip them generously when I place the order and home gurl bar maids ain’t gonna ruin dat dolla-dolla-tip-flowtab!