Tech Product Failure

Comments analyze why a specific tech product or startup failed to succeed commercially, debating factors like poor execution, insufficient market demand, premature abandonment, funding shortages, and comparisons to past flops such as Fire Phone, Juicero, and Segway.

📉 Falling 0.5x Startups & Business
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Keywords

e.g US rottentomatoes.com MSN wikipedia.org OpenDoc OS VC PR SharePoint failed product failure market launch success successful funding parents mediocre

Sample Comments

radium3d • Jan 20, 2018 • View on HN

Sounds like failed experiment. It's not too late to give it up. They should stick to making exciting hardware.

tschellenbach • Dec 24, 2016 • View on HN

Looks like they were going after a solid market but failed to execute. This happens all the time. Pity though, could have been a great company and product.

jaymcnuggets • May 8, 2019 • View on HN

Would you mind sharing some of the reasons why it didn't end up taking off?

geerlingguy • Aug 3, 2021 • View on HN

Judging by the fact the thing never made it into any other devices, I'd posit it's no runaway success.

msort • Jul 26, 2009 • View on HN

Maybe it is because they failed to make something people want badly enough.

unleaded • Sep 14, 2025 • View on HN

people also said the juicero and the smart condom would never take off. this isnt a very useful gotcha

johncalvinyoung • May 14, 2020 • View on HN

I wouldn't say they failed. I'd say they gave up on it before product maturity.

anigbrowl • Apr 16, 2014 • View on HN

Hasn't this been tried multiple times already by other vendors? It's a cool idea, but I'm not sure why this will succeed where other attempts failed.

satya71 • Aug 19, 2020 • View on HN

They did and failed spectacularly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Phone

mpg33 • Feb 10, 2017 • View on HN

I don't even think the product is bad...they just haven't been able to discover a successful business model.