This page is part of the MAQTOOB Heritage archive. The essay described here appeared on MAQTOOB for Entrepreneurs, the Medium publication run by this domain’s original team between 2015 and 2018. The current site is under new, independent ownership and is not affiliated with the original company or the essay’s author. We keep this record because other sites still link to the essay at this address.
What the Essay Said
Alex Fishman published this postmortem on June 16, 2016. He and his cofounders had raised $2.8 million for Dishero, a startup that wanted to replace paper menus and give restaurants control of their online presence. The company had 17 people in six cities, revenue that grew for 11 straight months, and 18 months of runway in the bank. It was also burning $100,000 a month against $9,000 in revenue.
The essay turns on one lunch conversation. When his cofounder, a friend of 20 years, said he loved what they were doing, Fishman realized that neither of them believed the business would ever be big. His sharpest line became the piece’s calling card: mediocre success is worse than failure, because when things clearly work or clearly fail you know what to do, and in the middle you don’t. They laid everyone off within 72 hours of that lunch.
Inc.com, Mattermark, and startup media in several countries picked the story up and it remains a reference point in conversations about knowing when to quit.
Read the Original
The author keeps the essay on Medium: read it here. An archived copy of the MAQTOOB version is on the Wayback Machine. His follow-up on the mechanics of winding down is archived at How to Shut Down a Startup in 36 Hours.