Sometimes a startup has to be slow.

I post the translation of an article about startups that turned out to be too ... fast and ahead of their time. On the other hand, each idea brought success, but a little later.

Entrepreneurs must be terribly bitter to see how others earn billions through the idea or product they had. But such is life.

So, before you are a few failure stories, in each you will easily notice what has turned it into.
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SixDegrees.com was the forerunner of the social network on the Internet, which was based on the game “Six Steps to Kevin Bacon” and the idea that we are all six steps from any person on Earth. It has quickly gained popularity since its introduction in 1997, but people were probably not ready for a full-fledged social network.

Remember AskJeeves ?
It, in fact, included many tricks that later went on to Google, for example, semantic search (understanding of natural query languages) and even ranking web pages by hyperlinks, which is the secret highlight of Google. What is the only problem? It’s just that in those days technology didn’t have a particularly good quality.

Believe it or not, Webvan was NOT doomed.
The name of the Webvan home grocery delivery service has now become a household name for many doomed stataps. Perhaps you are doomed to fail if you spend $ 1 billion on SUN warehouses and servers prior to launching a project directly. But the delivery of groceries via the Internet is a big business for “latecomers”, for example, FreshDirect .

Pets.com could be great.
Another startup that failed the lag than a weak concept. Today, the pet market is a multi-billion dollar market and is well suited for online trading. Pets.com has failed since it began work at the height of the Internet boom and entered the game with all the excesses of the era.

Mobile social network Dodgeball appeared even before people began to be interested in it.
Geographically tied social network Denis Crowley was doomed to fail for two reasons: the lack of an iPhone and the absence of Facebook. The lack of an iPhone meant that everything happened through text messages, which is not very convenient. The absence of Facebook meant that people did not quite understand why they wanted constant updates on what their friends were doing.

GO Corporation was preceded by Palm and even the iPhone and iPad.
GO Corporation was one of the most well-funded startups of its time with a mobile operating system and surprisingly good mobile pen computers. It was preceded by a successful Palm Pilot and, in many respects, later touchscreen computing devices, such as an iPhone or iPad. It was just too early.

LetsBuyIt.com is the same Groupon, but without all the things that brought Groupon success
LetsBuyIt.com was the first group online shopping service. He never gained success, as he focused on packaged goods of large companies, rather than on local small business services, and there were no social networks to distribute offers. It turns out that several things are necessary for the functioning of group purchases on the Internet: a critical mass of people on the Internet, a critical mass of small companies on the Internet, a critical mass of those who want to pay. At the time, all this was not.
Therefore, nobody heard about LetsBuyIt. Groupon is the fastest growing company in history.

LoudCloud did cloud computing when people thought that clouds were such things in the sky.
LoudCloud was the second start-up of the strategically-minded founder Mark Andriessen, who was a bit overdone with strategy. The startup did what Amazon and other companies are doing now: it provided cloud computing services to startups and large companies. He appeared too early, and he had to change activities and become an Opsware data center.

WebTV is just the first to fail in serving the Internet via TV.
WebTV had good financial results when Microsoft bought it, but failed with the great idea of ​​bringing the Internet to TV. The reason is ahead of time or because customers simply did not want the Internet in their TVs? Most likely, both. But maybe someday Internet TV will appear.

NextNewNetworks tried to become an MTV network.
Next New Networks was purchased by Google for a small amount to alert the authors of popular videos on YouTube. The sad end for a company that wanted to become MTV Internet and create their own original content and make money on it. But the economics of Internet content, especially videos, can be cruel. But MTV Internet someday will definitely appear.

PS If there are more examples, then share. Interestingly, it is now untimely, and it will shoot tomorrow.