socialmedian: Lookery's Scott Rafer: Advice in the Aftermath

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Lookery's Scott Rafer: Advice in the Aftermath

Source: ReadWriteWeb

Nov 07, 2009

Summary

After successfully selling MyBlogLog to Yahoo, it was surprising to see Lookery founder Scott Rafer write a blog post announcing his company's "orderly shutdown". In heartbreaking detail he took full responsibility for the company's demise saying, "In chronological order, the sins Lookery committed under my leadership were continuing our dependency on a large partner, not knowing when to cut bait on a failing asset, and building ahead of the market." While Rafer is still advising half a dozen startups and his API management company Mashery continues to thrive, the loss of Lookery has taught the entrepreneur some hard lessons.

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"It's important for a company to exist at all," said Rafer, "But once you've gained some traction you should work to reduce your dependencies." With Lookery, Rafer's company was completely dependent on working within the Facebook ecosystem. Said Rafer, "I've ranted for years about how bad an idea it is for startups to be mobile-carrier dependent. In retrospect, there is no difference between Verizon Wireless and Facebook in this c