Worst business decisions ever. Business failures: real stories of failure and what they taught Failed business ideas and stories

If we are guided by the Pareto law, then out of 10 launched in real life 8 ideas will fail and only two will survive. We all love to read, but we often don't think about the fact that a huge percentage of projects fail and people lose money. Sometimes these are amounts in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

We will talk about such projects today.

It is impossible to run a business without risk. Where does it all begin? Well, initially appears promising idea in which there is a desire to invest money. Moreover, it should be noted that I want to invest not only the previously estimated amount, but also everything that is on the “balance sheet”, if only it works out! After that, all that remains is to wait ... maybe you'll be lucky.

Let's look at top 6 business projects, which did not justify either the investment or the hopes of investors

Average car price vehicle of this type, depending on the type of equipment, ranged from 450,000 to 490,000 rubles. The release of this hybrid model was planned for early 2015.

The amount of financial investment amounted to approximately 250 million euros. During the entire development phase, only four working copies were created. Moreover, one of them was presented as an advertisement to the most famous and provocative Russian politician- Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky.

The body of the produced Yo-Crossback EV hybrid had only three doors. Unfortunately, it was not possible to make a hybrid installation, for this reason only electricity is used to operate the machine. The project was closed last spring.

Business project number 2. Satellite is a search engine.

May 22, 2014 developers Russian company Rostelecom created a search engine and a whole Internet portal, which was called Sputnik.

The development price is 60 million US dollars. In the first few days, the number of transitions to other Internet resources amounted to more than five million. But already at the beginning of September 2014, the same figure dropped to 16,600 visitors. On the this moment, according to LiveIntrnet statistics, at least 1,000 people visit this Internet portal every month.

Business project number 3. Transport on two wheels Segway.

The amount of financial investment is 125,000,000 US dollars. The innovative vehicle was designed specifically to become a replacement for familiar cars and change the usual transport system basically. Despite the use of advanced technology, this tool has become an alternative to the "hybrid" of walking and driving. But after all, a replacement has long been found for this - a bicycle, and its cost is several tens of times more affordable.

Today, the Segway has not become a replacement for the car. It has become something of an attraction that you can ride in the nearest amusement park.

In addition, already in the first couple of years, the invention received a bad reputation. In 2010, millionaire Jimi Heselden, who owns the Segway company, died at the age of 62 while walking on an innovative two-wheeler. By an absurd accident, he could not cope with the management and fell into a river in the UK.

Business project No. 4. Yotaphone.

This development was released to the public at the end of 2013. The domestic production organization YotaDevices worked on the project together with others. This lte phone is equipped with two active independent screens - a liquid crystal display and a display that works using the "electronic ink" technology.

Last year, a new model came out - Yotaphone 2.

The size of the investment fund is about 50 million US dollars. In the first thirty days, about 600 copies were sold at retail. Today, this kind of "smart phone" can be purchased on the market, but, unfortunately, investors do not feel much profit from this.

Business project No. 5. Bippy service.

The Bippy service is designed to allow network users to share with friends news about their latest purchases made using the card.

The amount of investment capital is 13,000,000 US dollars.

The idea did not work, because few Internet users wanted to provide the developer company with data on the passwords of their bank cards. And to everything else, online shopping is not so interesting for the average man in the street.

Business project No. 6. Auto from the manufacturer "Marussia Motors".

In 2007, the famous race car driver and showman Nikolai Fomenko, with the support of businessman Yefim Ostrovsky, founded one of the largest domestic automotive companies. It was this organization that was engaged in the production of "sports cars" "Marusya".

Already 7 years later, this company was declared bankrupt, and all its property was sold at auction.

The total contribution to the project was 100,000,000 euros. But, unfortunately, the concept of the new car turned out to be incapable of life and, as a result, the serial production of the “sports car” did not happen.

The Marusya project was not the only one.

At the beginning of 2014, 3,600,000,000 rubles were allocated at the state level for the development of a vehicle intended for the country's ruling people. The working name of the development is "Tuple". The budget was planned to be used over the next two years.

They were engaged in the development of FSUE NAMI and the MarussiaMotors concern.

On the pages of our magazine, we often talk about successful business ideas and somehow forget to highlight the mistakes of a business, especially a large one. Let's correct the situation, besides it is very interesting to think about the reasons for such failures. because big business there is everything - a day, entire departments of analytics and marketing.

The ONEXIM investment company has announced the start of a project to create a national, environmentally friendly car. Its budget was about 150 million euros. The developers said that the production of machines at an industrial pace will begin in 2012. Not far from St. Petersburg, a presentation of the price of a new car of about 360 thousand rubles was held. Then the launch date had to be postponed to 2013. And at the beginning of this year, it became known that the firstborn would roll off the assembly line by March 2015. The approximate cost also increased to 500 thousand rubles.

Experts believe that the release of e-mobiles will remain a dream, since the team is not very experienced, and the project itself is underfunded. ONEXIM admitted in 2011 that it was looking for co-investors. Sources have estimated that EUR 115 million in investment is still needed to sustain the project.

Solar panels

An unsuccessful example of Russian big business is the project of Rosnano and the Nitol group for the production of polycrystalline silicon, which is used in solar panels"Usolye-Siberian silicone". Since the beginning of 2009, the company has invested 9.4 billion rubles in the new project.

But this area has become unprofitable. Processing exceeded market prices by seven times. Now Nitol is asking the state for a subsidy equal to 4.7 billion rubles for the development of production. The opinion of experts is that such production has no future, since Russia is not the country where solar energy will be in the first place, as, for example, in Spain. In it, solar energy has led to higher electricity prices.

Sweet crucifixion.

In 2004, the American Russel Stover confectionery company released New Product. It was a chocolate bar in the shape of a crucifix fifteen centimeters. The believing population was outraged by the novelty. He was joined by high-ranking clerics, who also felt that a chocolate crucifix was not the best The best way convey religious feelings.

Ford tradition.

Henry Ford, for the first time in 1908, released his Model T to the automobile market. In those years, it was a first-class car. Time does not stand still and the automotive market has developed rapidly. In addition, other companies appeared, and with them latest models and types of machines. But Henry Ford, the head of Ford Motor, did not want to start producing new models, and the company produced the same T. As a result, Henry Ford lost 45 percent of the market.

Business failures: why 90% of people are not successful?

It is probably no longer a secret that according to statistics:

For 98% of people, the first year in business is not successful.

90% of people quit what they started because they did not understand the main principles of success.

And only 5-8% of people understand that success does not come immediately. It is these 5-8% of people that my article is intended for.

Why is this happening? Why is the failure rate so high? Of course, only a person who practically knows what is standing in this way can answer this question, since own experience experienced creative moments of joy, but even more multiple moments of failure.

Business failures: why 90% of people are not successful

First What I want to note is that the concept of failure is subjective. Just like any other concept. For some, failure is a few unsuccessful attempts. And for others, failure is a path of inaction.

Second What I want to point out is that we cannot solve problems at the same level of consciousness at which they arise. Therefore, in order to solve any problem, you need to concentrate on changing your consciousness, which means, first of all, changing your thinking and your attitude to the world around you and to yourself. This is the only way to solve any problem.

How long do you think it takes to change your mind? Interesting question, right? Has anyone tried doing this? For example, how much time do I need to put my son to bed, I know approximately. How much I will travel in Europe, I can also plan and I will know for sure.

But how long it will take me to change my consciousness, here I will not be able to answer this question. At least until my mind changes. Then I'll know for sure what happened. It can be either 1 year, or 10 years, and possibly the whole life. But one thing I know for sure. If I don't do anything about it, it will never happen.

Third What I want to note is the way people think. Most people live by the formula income, health, happiness. But true prosperity comes to people who live by the formula happiness, health, income.

I don’t know about you, but I have long understood that happiness does not depend on external circumstances. No wonder there is an expression: "The rich also cry." And if we do not have health, then money will not be a joy to us.

Thus, we again return to the most important thing in our life - to the level of our consciousness. Surely, for many, these are meaningless words. But fortunately or, unfortunately, I don’t know, it is here that lies the problem of our successes or failures in the realization of our desires and intentions.

Now I will give you 2 of my favorite examples, which are a typical demonstration of the level of consciousness in most people.

The first example is a shark.

An experiment was carried out. The shark was put together with small fish in one aquarium. The shark felt great there, eating fish. Then, glass was placed between the shark and the fish. For a while, the shark hit against this glass because it wanted to eat. After the shark calmed down and lost hope of getting the fish, the glass was removed. What happened next? The fish swam around the shark, but she did not think to eat them. As a result, the shark died of starvation.

The second example is elephants.

Do you know how elephants are trained? A small elephant is tied with a thick rope to a tree. So he grows up and firmly learns the lesson that the rope is too thick to break. As a result, after many attempts, the baby elephant stops trying. And when it grows up, a thin rope is already enough that a large elephant can break with a simple movement. But he does not do this, as he is programmed to fail in this process.

Probably, if the shark had the human ability to expand and change its consciousness, it would have remained alive.

Now we can conclude. Those who intend to succeed no matter what, must change their minds. And only at the moment when awareness comes, the rope or glass in our subconscious prevents us from succeeding, only then the ice will break.

But few people want to go through with it. Because it is usually quite a long and painful process. Only a person who really, really wants to fulfill their potential and gain financial freedom, or a person who needs a constant drive, will be able to keep the tension for a long time and move along this path.

Therefore, it seems to me that people who have concluded that it is impossible to succeed in this or that business are deceiving themselves. They simply did not have enough desire or strength to go through the awareness of their inner limitations.

All we all need is just to get stronger and grow like an elephant. Then we can break the rope without any problems. But only grow not in size, of course, but in the awareness of our limitations and understanding of who we really are. But how to move in this direction and what needs to be done is the topic of another article.

Now I can only say one thing. The best indicator that we are doing something right or wrong is our inner feelings. If there is comfort inside, then we are doing everything right. And if we feel bad, it definitely means that we are doing something wrong.

I would be pleased to know what you think on this matter. Write down what other reasons you think prevent most people from succeeding in business.

Here's What Actor Will Smith Says About Success

Business is a risky business. And even the most successful entrepreneurs are not immune from failure. We will tell you about 4 failed decisions in history largest companies: MySpace, Coca-Cola, Western Union and Kodak.

MySpace

Even before the advent of Facebook and Twitter, MySpace was the most popular social networking site. Just a month after its launch (in 2004), over a million people registered on it. Everyone from rock stars to bored teenagers created pages and began to "friend" each other. A year later MySpace became the most viewed site in the US. In July 2005, Rupert Murdoch bought the social network for $580 million. He tried to quickly return the invested funds. Perhaps this was the main reason for the loss of popularity of the site. An important factor was the emergence of their main competitor - Facebook, which was not cluttered with advertising and offered similar opportunities completely free of charge. MySpace peaked in 2008. At this time, the number of unique visitors reached 75.9 million people. However, Rupert Murdoch was unable to cope with the onslaught of Facebook and in 2011 sold the social network for only $35 million. After that, he admitted: “We screwed up a lot, but I learned a lot of valuable lessons.”

Western Union

Today, Western Union is known to us as one of the fastest ways to send money anywhere in the world. But the company first made a fortune back in the 19th century. Initially, she specialized in providing telegraph services. Sending telegrams in Morse code at that time was the fastest way to send a message to different cities and countries.

When Alexander Bell patented the telephone in 1876, he wanted to cash in and offered to buy his revolutionary invention from Western Union for $100,000. It was a fortune at the time, and they refused. The leadership of Western Union could not imagine a world in which people would trade a convenient telegram for ringing phones. Bell's invention soon became very popular. Western Union hired a team of inventors, including Thomas Edison, to create something similar to the telephone. Bell sued for copyright infringement and won. Telegrams faded into the background, and communications were ruled by the telephone for a long time.

Coca Cola

The taste of Coca-Cola is known to everyone and is already a kind of standard in the world of carbonated drinks. But the original formula, which was invented by John Pemberton in 1886, was almost destroyed with the advent of the main competitor - Pepsi.

The company's management was concerned that consumers were switching to Pepsi. It was decided to experiment with taste.

Within two years, the company created a new recipe. Critics were unanimous: the updated cola is better than the old one.

On April 23, 1985, American consumers tasted the new drink for the first time. Within days, the company was inundated with letters and phone calls asking them to go back to the old recipe. It got to the point that people began to sell the "old" Cola on the black market. Apparently, during these two years of testing a new recipe, it never occurred to anyone to ask the question: “Do people really want something else?”. Three months later, the new cola was replaced by Coca-Cola Classic, which we see today on store shelves. As of May 2014, Coca-Cola is valued at over $180 billion.

Kodak

Smile! For over 100 years, Kodak has been synonymous with photography. Founded in 1880 in New York, the company occupied more than 90% of the entire market. It employed about 60,000 people. In 1975, a Kodak engineer invented the world's first digital camera, which could produce a 100,000-pixel image (0.01 megapixels). The company's management recognized the potential of the device, but was afraid to abandon film and paper products, which brought them untold wealth. By the time Kodak realized their mistake, other companies were already well ahead. In 2012, the company filed for bankruptcy. By that time, the company had accumulated $6.8 billion in debt. 50,000 employees were laid off. Now Kodak specializes in the production of cartridges for printers and films for films.

uncommunicative

Anyone who starts a business will have to look for suppliers, clients, investors, contractors and many others. Knocking on the door and offering to collaborate is a great way, but it hardly works. This is understandable: business does not like unnecessary risk, and getting involved with a stranger can be fraught. Darcy Rezak, an ideologue of positive networking, recommends in his book “Connections are everything” not to miss events with useful people, and also not to look down on even the most seemingly uninfluential acquaintances. Another Cutter's commandment is to use good old business cards. They will help people remember the name and company name of a new acquaintance. So that information is not lost, Cutter digitizes every single business card that gets to him. Andrey Romanenko, co-founder of the Qiwi payment service, has a similar approach. He has not been able to cope with this himself for a long time: the contact base, in which there are only 40 thousand suppliers, is helped by the secretary. The approach clearly works: Qiwi has long become the largest payment network in Russia, its capitalization exceeds two billion dollars.

Conservatism

The well-known Californian entrepreneur Raul Varshneya, who created the SMM service for startups Foster.fm, believes that failure is inevitable if one fails to adapt quickly. The market and customer needs change at lightning speed, you have to be ready to drop everything that you have been working on for six months, if necessary. Blindly sticking to a business plan is the path of failure, so be prepared to change course. Dave McClure, founder of venture fund 500 Startups, has a similar approach. He says that nothing will work for those who have worked in the corporation for five or more years. Such people value stability too much.

Narrow thinking

In a discussion of early signs of startup failure on Quora, picking a niche that is too narrow is mentioned. The right niche can help a startup shoot, but if it's too narrow, it's death for the business. When evaluating a startup idea, be sure to test it for scalability or even global expansion. Without this, you can forget about attracting investments.

extravagance

Founders don't need to spend half start-up capital to rent a beautiful office, the company can do without a secretary, and hiring the most expensive specialists is far from always justified. You can talk endlessly about the advantages of bootstrapping (the founders with this approach do not attract external funding and keep control for themselves), but you have to save money by default. But it is important not just to count every penny, but to try to optimize processes. Many books have been written about bootstrapping, but one of the most comprehensive is Seth Godin's The Bootstrapping Bible, which can be downloaded for free.

Blind copy

The success of an idea in the US does not guarantee success in Russia. It's about the size of the market. Let's say you are making an application for an iPhone, the analogue of which has been downloaded by millions of users in the States. But there live, according to ComScore for 2014, 70 million iPhone users, and in Russia - only 6.5 million. The situation is aggravated by the cost of programmers' services, in Moscow it has almost reached the level of the USA. It will take a long time to wait for them to pay off. Against this background, the approach of Russian investors seems inhumane - they still prefer to invest in what has already shot in the West, it is very difficult for original projects to get funding. But this is just another reason to follow the precepts of bootstrapping. See point 4.

Bad team choice

Usually, startups are advised not to start a business with friends or relatives, but there are many exceptions to this rule. For example, the brother of the co-founder of Vkontakte, Nikolai Durov, is a modest genius responsible for the technical part social network. A person's skills are more important than the presence or absence of family ties. And balance is also important. Travel startup Mozio.com co-founder David Litvak believes that if a company has several non-technical founders and only one programmer, then nothing good will come of it. At the same time, investors pay attention not only to the skills of founders, but also to their number. For example, in IIDF there is only one founder - this is