Since the first internet bubble burst, startups are as synonymous with utter fail as with shiny success stories. Gather ’round and unload your startup burdens.
Maybe you’ve suffered through incompetent management, laughable business models or total system-wide implosion. Some startups are revealed to be no more than scams, trading VC cash for flimsy promises. Others may have been ground-breaking and brilliant, but never got a real chance — or they were beat out by a slick competitor.
Or maybe the place you worked for just got lost to the churning advances of the tech world: our own Annalee Newitz, fresh out of university, worked at a company “whose entire business model was to scrape search results from Google and send them to you in email.” Legalities notwithstanding, this was a service that would have been obliterated by the advent of personalised Google Alerts.
So tell us your worst startup experiences. From business models that still make you flinch to work cultures you still can’t quite exorcise from your brain, we want to hear all about it in the comments.