Raising €1.5M, building a team of 10 and shutting down

🎉 Hey Failories! It's Nico here.

Two new interviews, Failory's February open report, a recap of Failory 3.0's launch, and lots of articles and resources for startup founders. Let's start!

interview & news 📢

💀 Raising €1.5M, building a team of 10, and shutting down. That was the case of Lernin Games, an ed-tech startup focused on toddlers, started by the Spanish entrepreneur Jordi Miró. The cause of failure? Their business model. Here's the whole story.

📊 Turning a failed blog into a $25k/mo business. With 85% profit margins. Ran by one person. That's the incredible story of Career Sidekick, a job search advice website run by Biron Clark. An inspiring story, with insights and complete transparency. Read it here.

💰 +$3k made and +60k users reached. Those were Failory's numbers in February. More importantly, it was the month in which Dani and Carissa joined the team. I wrote a review about the month, detailing the projects we worked on and all of our numbers. You can find it here.

❤️ Thank you. You're awesome. Seriously, thanks so much for the support on Failory 3.0's launch. Either if you've been a subscriber for a long time, or if you're part of the 300 people that discovered Failory's newsletter last week. In case you missed it, you should check our two new projects: Amazon Cemetery and Tools.

🎙 My first time on a podcast. A Failory subscriber has recently invited me to his podcast to talk about the story behind Failory and the lessons I've got from talking with over 100 failed startup founders. Here's the 15-minute interview.

🚨 Soon: Failory's newsletter referral program. As you have read. We should be launching it next week. Rewards will include access to an exclusive monthly newsletter, our product-market fit eBook, and monthly giveaways. Keep an eye on your inbox ;)


what I'm reading 👀

Zapier acquires Makerpad! Another software company acquiring a community and media business. And a clear example of how you can learn from failures. Prior to Makerpad, Ben Tossell, its founder, built and shut down NewCo, a similar no-code education site.

Okta acquired Auth0 for $6.5B. I couldn't miss this one, as Auth0 is one of the few unicorns in my country, Argentina.

Cohort-based courses. I'm impressed by the business model and the success many creators have had with them. I've particularly been following Wes Kao and Gagan Biyani, as they are building a platform to host these. They are already working with Lenny Rachitsky and Li Jin.

Network effects. Particularly, NFX's bible and manual. I used to believe it was a silly concept, which didn't have a big impact on startups. After reading those posts, I think completely the opposite.

That's all for this week. I hope you found the interviews and articles as useful and entertaining as I did.

Once again, thanks so much for your support last week. Failory was able to reach lots of new users and grow its newsletter significantly. And that wouldn't have been possible without your upvotes, comments, and shares.

If you're new to the newsletter and you didn't reply to my welcoming email, I'd appreciate it if you could take one or two minutes to reply to this email 🥺

Cheers and talk you next week!

- Nico