> I'd argue the business failing is a strong counterpoint to that assertion.
That statement is pretty naive. There are plenty of things that can kill a startup without them having done anything specifically wrong at any level, let alone at the level of technical team.
While true, most of these startups that have already found product/market fit and go bust are operating off of unrealistically rosy projections.
Did this company need to burn their entire round in a single year? Probably not. Could they have established themselves with lower operating expenses and still grown over time? Probably.
I wasn't speaking to that point... excessive operating expenses are clearly a management failure. I was contending that this shutdown is not likely simply "through no fault of their own"
People who can't asses fair value of a business from a discounted cashflow perspective shouldn't be running a company. It's usually financially ignorant people like this that lead the business down a dark path. The prior round valuation, and thus the implicitly underwritten future expectations of growth, is evidence enough that something along these lines happened here.
> Lot of talented folks in Seattle and beyond who'll be looking for new gigs.
Which you took issue with and suggested the failure was counter evidence. That was pretty clearly about the technical team that was just let go, so that idea doesn't hold much water.
Beyond that, the mere existence of failure doesn't mean that the plan wasn't reasonable; you need a lot more data to determine if the mgmt team was functioning well. I have no opinion on the particulars here because I don't know the details. But the contention that the fact of failure alone is clear indication is a bit silly, which is what I was pointing out.
I had addressed the wider point I thought, apologies if not clear enough. The mere existence of a failure, without other data, simply isn't good evidence for anything you have claimed, and any assertion that "it's usually X" needs pretty serious support to be taken seriously. It's a complicated area, and reducing it too much leads to oversimplification at best.
