A project post-mortem (interesting)

**tke71709** · October 27th, 2011, 8:01 AM

I was just reading this posting and thought it might be of interest to some of our users here.

http://links.net/vita/gamelayers/

Between 2007 and 2009 GameLayers made a multiplayer game across all the content of the internet. I was the CEO of GameLayers and one of the co-founders. Here I'll share stories and data from this online social game startup. This story covers prototyping, fund raising, company building, strategic shifting, winding down and moving on.

I'm always amazed by people who are willing to take big chances in the minuscule hope of making it big. We constantly hear about the successes but rarely about the failures so to have people lay it all out for us is a great gift.

//I suppose part of why this train of thought interests me at the moment is that a friend of mine is jumping two feet into building a datacentre, I'm not sure how well it's going to turn out but I give him a ton of credit for putting his life and money on the line to do something that he believes in.

I'm also a little peeved that I was watching Dragon's Den last night and saw three university students come in and pitch a concept that I had worked out and rejected 3 years ago (EXACTLY the same web service) and get $200k in funding for it and EVERY dragon invested.\\

**Kay** · October 27th, 2011, 10:26 AM

The Dragons sometimes invest in some weird stuff and let the good stuff go. Deborah Meaden invested heaps into a food site (MyDish co uk) and I thought, "Ow, wow! Just think what I could have done with that money for my food site".

And then there was Trunki (travel products for kids), which I thought was a great thing but none of the Dragons were interested. Theo deliberately broke the buckle on the strap of the little suitcase and slagged off the product as being no good. That was a pointless thing to do. The concept of the product was great - all that was needed was to get them to fit a better buckle to the strap.

But, yes, it's refreshing to read about the failures as well as all the hyped-up success stories.

**rob** · October 27th, 2011, 4:24 PM

Great read - but it makes me cringe.

http://links.net/vita/gamelayers/dox...-22-Shasta.pdf !

$20k pm hosting locked in via a contract and it didnt do the job.

Paying $100k to hire a new CEO , and not hiring one?!

Wow.