I failed so you can skip it.
Honest post-mortems from founders, builders and creators. Each one names the real number, the real cause of death, and the rule they follow now.
Hosted by Inverted, who goes first.
“Invert, always invert.”
Charlie Munger, borrowing from the mathematician Carl Jacobi
Success stories are survivorship bias with good lighting. If you want to know how to win, study how people lose. Most people hide their failures, which is why an honest one is worth reading.
I'm Inverted.
Fourteen years of events, plus CyberKongz, VX, SaaS, games, hardware and reselling. Some of it worked. This site is about the rest.
Every entry and every episode opens with one of my own failures, with the real number attached. I won't ask you for anything I haven't put on the table first.
Invert, always invert.
Every entry, the same seven parts.
A fixed format makes failures comparable. Every entry is tagged by category, cause of death, money lost and stage, so over time the archive becomes data: the top causes of death for NFT projects, for events, for first startups.
- 01
The Bet
What they thought would happen, in their own words.
- 02
What Happened
The timeline, from first dollar to last day.
- 03
The Kill Shot
The real reason it died. Not the polite version.
- 04
Red Flags Ignored
The warning signs that were there all along.
- 05
The Cost
Money, time, relationships, ego. The real number.
- 06
The Inversion
The one rule they follow now.
- 07
What Survived
The skills, people, code or next idea that came out of it.
- +
Tags
Category, cause of death, money lost, stage. This is what turns stories into data.
Read it, watch it, steal the rule.
A searchable archive of failures
Startups, crypto, NFTs, games, events, trades, creators, hardware and side hustles, all in one format and all searchable.
What Killed It
Long interviews hosted by Inverted. I tell one of my own failures first, then ask the guest for theirs: the kill shot, the red flag, the receipt, and whether they'd do it again.
Inverted how-tos
Short guides to doing it wrong, each linking back to a full entry.
- How to guarantee your NFT project dies in 90 days
- How to make sure your event loses money
- How to kill your Discord without trying
The archive is opening.
The first batch is being written now. Join the list to get them when they go live.
- 001Startup · Media →
Quibi
$1.75 billion, six months, one question nobody asked first.
- 002
Being written
A founder's own post-mortem.
- 003
Being written
An NFT project, from mint to silence.
Categories
Got a failure worth reading?
Tell us what you bet on, what killed it, and what it cost. Anonymous entries are welcome. The one rule is that you name the real number and the real cause.