Tech Crunch has a fascinating story on the journey of failed startup, Los Angeles based Flowtab that hoped to create an bar tab smartphone app.
In many ways Flowtab is a story of our bubble economy times – a cheap, easily built service that addresses what is, at best, a minor first world problem.
Flowtab failed when it turned out solving that problem was a lot harder than just writing an app, which is something often overlooked in the current startup hype.
However had the timing of Flowtab’s founders been a bit luckier they could have hit the jackpot.
Dave Winer describes the herd mentality of venture capital investors and had the hot trend of the time been bar ordering apps then the Flowtab team could have been one of the beneficiaries of the Silicon Valley business model.
Along with being a historical insight into today’s investment mania, Flowtab’s story is an illustration of how a new business needs to pivot when the original idea turns out not to be as compelling as the founders first thought.
Even when a business does a pivot, it’s not guaranteed the company will survive, but that’s part of the risks in starting a new enterprise, particularly when it’s undercapitalised as Flowtab was.
There’s many lessons from Flowtab’s failure, but not all of them apply to every business.