Some of the key signs customer success is the cause of failure includes: not listening to your customers to garner feedback, not picking the right early customers well, building a product with quality issues, and/or selling to customers who are too small or too big.
After peaking at an $8.5 billion valuation in the public market in 2021, 23andMe is at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq in early 2024 as it’s stock is down 96%. Security breaches impacted 6.9 million users and they have struggled to find
Launched in 2016 and discontinued in 2024, Amazon gave up on the cashier-less “Just Walk Out” technology at its Amazon Fresh grocery stores. New stores will be built without computer-vision-powered surveillance technology, and “the majority” of existing stores will have the tech removed. In the
Released in 1980 and discontinued in 1984, the Apple III was dogged by many design faults, such as chips coming out of sockets, real time clocks not working, and excessive heat problems due to over populated boards.
Released in 1983, “Lisa” stood for “Local Integrated Software Architecture” and was also the name of Steve Jobs’ oldest daughter. Lisa’s user experience was sluggish, while its $9,995 price tag ($27,978 in 2022 dollars) was only affordable for the wealthy. Only 10,000 Apple Lisa’s
In 1997, the high price and early problems with its handwriting recognition feature limited Apple Newton’s sales.
Launched in 2000, Apple’s Power Mac G4 Cube was conceived by Steve Jobs as a powerful, miniaturized desktop computer. It was discontinued a year later due to the high cost of the machine compared to its power, its limited expandability, and cosmetic defects.
In 1983, market saturation, high number of poor quality games, and growing interest in personal computers killed Atari.
Atari’s game, Extra-Terrestrial, was designed in a record five weeks by a single programmer in 1982. The game was a commercial failure due to its poor quality and difficult gameplay. Atari struggled to recover from the poor sales of E.T. and never recovered its
Excessive greed infected the parent company Ty, who tried to manipulate the market. The company’s efforts eventually contributed to the implosion of the 1990s’ fad. At the peak, more than 60% of American households owned at least one of these babies. Ty created a
