Failory

Failory​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ Review: The Brutally Honest Compass for Startup Founders We live in a startup world where "survivorship bias" is everywhere. That 20-year old who raised a Series A on a napkin, or the bootstrapped SaaS that has reached seven figures in six months are the only stories we ever seem to hear about. This is all very inspiring, of course, but you might say that it's like having a map showing only the paved roads and ignoring the cliffs. Recently, I’ve been quite engaged in Failory . A platform with the focus on the 90% of startups that don’t make it, it has impacted me deeply through their post-mortems, interviews, and "Startup Cemetery" collection of shutdown companies. So basically, a founder can hardly get a more practical education than in the place of Failory, in my opinion. Here is my review of why Failory should be the wake-up call every entrepreneur seeks. What is Failory? Failory, simply speaking, is a site with content and a community for founders to learn from mistakes in order to avoid them. The common entrepreneurship mistakes and failure cases are thoroughly dissected by the platform, whereas other sites might merely highlight the success stories." Through their numerous, in-depth, and detailed interviews with (former) founders who have made mistakes in their ventures, Failory allows its readers to learn from the n.a.v.i.g.a.t.e.d mistakes of the founders. Topics discussed range from lack of product-market fit, disagreements among co-founders, high burn rate and marketing failure. The platform currently still offers a variety of content formats and services such as success stories, guides, and even a newsletter which is quite popular especially with the indie hacker community. The Features That Will Save You Thousands of Dollars

1. The Startup Cemetery This section is known as the "Startup Cemetery." It is basically a list of failed ventures which includes a number of famous as well as lesser-known examples. Each of them comes with a 'Post-Mortem' report explaining the respective failure in detail. Watching the same causes being indicated time after time (i.e., "offering a product for which there is no demand") can put you right on track to the reality of it all -in a necessary and urgent way-.
2. Candid Interviews (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) Failory’s interviews are amazingly candid. These founders are not spinning their stories for PR but rather speaking from experience and hindsight having made the mistakes. They talk about real figures, share specifics of their errors, and disclose how it felt emotionally to close the business. One can discover stories of founders who went from a $4k MRR to bankruptcy revealing a kind of openness that we rarely see even on the best blogs in the industry.
3. Deep-Dive Guides and eBooks Failory doesn’t just tell stories, it helps you structure your learning journey. Their educational material on topics like Product-Market Fit and "The Lean Startup" principles is drawn from insights of mistakes documented in their failure database. Consider it a course based on the actions you should avoid if you want to be smart about business. The Pros: Why This Belongs in Your Bookmarks Counter-Intuitive Wisdom: You gain far more insights from a failure than a success one to a success success can be a fluke of luck; failure is practically always due to error resulting from the deep structure and hence failure is almost always structural and avoidable if you know what to look for. Psychological Safety: Entrepreneurship can be a very lonely process especially when you are facing problems. When you read about people who have failed and yet managed to move on to bigger things, it gives perspective and builds resilience which are both very necessary. No-Code Friendly: The site itself manifests the "no-code" revolution as it has been created entirely using tools like Webflow. For founders who are not technically inclined, just knowing how Failory was put together will hardly fail to get you going. Actionable Newsletter: Their weekly emails aren't just links. In fact, they are short lessons in themselves. They take very complicated failures - like an insect factory worth $600M or a failed merger - and extract three things that you can do immediately in your own business.

The Cons: What to Be Aware Of Niche Focus: Don’t get me wrong, if you want the scoop on venture capital or the latest AI trend, Failory will not be your first port of call. Failory is rather about the nuts and bolts of a business. The "Side Project" Feel: Some older interviews might come off as too short. While the quality has been going up and up, some of the legacy content is not as thorough as the newer, data-heavy post-mortems. Can Be Damping: If you are a risk-averse person, reading about 400 different ways to fail may just put you off altogether. We still have to keep in mind that Failory’s caution is only the other side of the coin of courage which is essential to launch.

Failory vs. Indie Hackers and Starter Story Failory vs. Indie Hackers: Indie Hackers is a community for discussion and "raw journeys." Failory, on the other hand, is a library of lessons that has been editorialized. One is a conversation; the other is a textbook. Failory vs. Starter Story: Starter Story is great if you want to know about the beginning and growth of a business. Failory, on the contrary, is the perfect partner that tells you how they finish, thus giving you a complete 360-degree perspective of a company's life cycle.

Final Verdict: The Founder’s Insurance Policy Failory is an insurance on money and time. So to speak, reading for an hour a week the reasons why other people's businesses went bankrupt, you are preparing your own startup for those mistakes with a kind of "vaccine" at hand. The platform is for a humble founder who doesn't pretend to have all the answers and is ready to learn from other people's mistakes. If you want to be among the 10% of successful ones, you must surely know the mistakes that the 90% ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌made.