company failure survivors are not automatically the most reliable and neutral witnesses, of course. I was just reading the self evaluation reports of some top traders at Goldman Sachs in 2007. I am not disparaging individuals, merely to assess failure you need proximity and neutrality. I filled that gap with research and technical writing staff on rotation and with management prospects. Co appointments of sales and research worked out well because the research co manager's experience interested them around the company resulting in a lookout and balance to customer focus partners, no inherent conflict of interest or territory, and the value of watching out for one another was the payoff. I pulled a similar arrangement together between program managers and lead developers, to get a short path between realism for delivery and the product performance. Someone narrowly focused on sequential tasks with someone who multi tasks and I guess this was somewhat inspired by Isiah Berlin's​Hedgehog and the Fox.

has there ever been any earnest blog or reporting in failed startups?

because I was driven to start my own company by a formative experience of being day by day taught whst was falling apart by my new friend who had started a year before me, coming from a major accountancy to switch to a sales role where he certainly made the best financial decision of his lice about then... I was gifted​blow by blow analyses of the way rumours and signs would work their way through the quarterly public filibfs until the final audit couldn't be fiddled, but conveniently ibtra company trabsfer pricing eas holding up the booked revenue, but given away by a miscrepancy in Advance Corporation Tax the subsidiary had negoriated downwards in anticipation and need to preserve cash. (ACT in the UK was 35% iirc payable in advance on the Inland Revenue estimated income for your following year. This was a major reason why so many new companies failed at 18 months, when new registrations had to file. Naturally much more involved than that but that's a reasonable actual narrative that was in force into 1984, when our company shares first caught the shirt selling attention.)

No surprise that I started out heavy on finance brainpower. And sold to the private sale limit, short dated high yield puttable (by us) convertible notes against a collateral pool of sales revenues. Crude engineering, but it prevented wild guesswork to value equity we badly needed to not be all over the chart and troubling a knowledgeable staff who were deferring commissions for equity that we could afford because of the larger debt financing and the fact we had tgat secured only on buv corporate receivables and not the company itself, and we had no problems servicing the notes because we weren't paying sales at high gross commissions, a major cashflow enhancement and the equity compensation for sales worked out a ib dbyive nearly yoo successful.

but really while reverse engineering of opaque balance sheets is interesting, I find more ready clues in the organisation behaviour,if i can get a close feel of a company. I really must dug out my old notes, we applied the similar analysis for evaluating the strength of the sakes for competing but indirect rivals we could do business for where we had clients or domain knowledge advantage. Understanding the coherency of a small company is essential to make a credit assessment. I was raised by a great depression era banker father, who, decades before credit scoring, cyt mortgages to families by beubg a kind of nisey home inspector, attuned to a myruad vkues to the steadiness of the their home life. I can never forget his telling me how he ratted out a nasty wife beater, the pantry and stoop was just too scrubbed. He figured she was under pressure to make sure that house looked good to get the deal. Pop was having nibe of that ruse. He guessed right tvat the husband was deadbeat putting on his wife every last chore a man would normally do, chopping firewood even. Turned out the husband was in debt from gambling. This was enough to force him to agree a divorce, back when a husband could put up some nasty fight against almost any reason why he was no good. This was a company town and my pop got the house re let to the wife and sent her her husband's alimony, who they put on some truck crew to get him gone. I wish I had recorded his stories, he was 94 in 2001 when he passed, and had seen i still reckon all the most significant economic mobes in the century. I tried out telesales to see if you can find clues like pop did. Thrbs out you can. I don't mean high pressure tricks. I mean the proportion of business lost by reps not tuning in to the customer and heeding buying signals​, is the difference between living and thriving without any kind of pressure that could pass on to aby customer.

Biggest mistake I see almost every time?

Not bringing enough strength to sales. Hire more don't arm twist more. Call back more. Get dedicated researchers for customer leads and customer needs. Get a Bloomberg terminal, the news and business research is indispensable and ridiculous value everything's included you can think of. (plus being reachable at Bloomberg's domain doesn't harm your impression to investors and banks. I used to have to buy annual Gales Information b directories at five thousand dollars a copy.. the Bloomberg is stacks of those... Oh, hire a female sales manager. And get her a really good secretary. Ask any woman to report what she sees amiss on any sales floor and you are about to learn a lot. She needs a secretary to help process all that I don't mean any condescension whatsoever, this is a critical role, few women like confrontation, so give her a assistant able to write up her analyses. Make this open save clearly sensitive to employment statue stuff. I tracked who read what abd correlated with sales figures and got a targeted research team under our manager. Nobody even thought about why their lead folders just kept up delivering the prospects ready to buy. Come bonus time our manager could point to directly knowing how much each rep sold more with her oversight and support, before handing out the biggest checks yet. From concern if she might be losing authority to being worshipped by men she enriched, never a question she was a sales Goddess and without lifting a phone or making a pitch, but she had every little detail and everyone's back. Just like the programmer who needs a bigger workstation to be in his zone more, leading by providing is the easiest and most enduring way I know. When i was just me instead of selling solo I advertised for a salesman offering guaranteed full time research assistant. me. Cost less salary because more sales done.

if course, once you get serious about learning from failure, you aqui hire failing companies. You claim it's for some IP and goodwill but really your just want all the internal emails to study. This is a great pity for the academic learning of business, but I know no better advice to pursue if you can. Having tax loss offsets to protect your own revenue, is the financial engineering side this is active trading. There's a assortment of ways to make swaps of shares held in the bust company by departed or departing staff, which can make you a gift of a golden hello incentive to get the people you want to return. I feel like I'm giving my life secrets aeay because i had to learn for myself, but this is routine stuff in bigger companies. In my domain, acting like a multinational was just the prerequisite for being able to offer a competitive price. It's not insanely expensive. A confident young qualified accountant given a research assistant and a private library budget is as good as the most prestigious consultants, in my experience. Consider the ages of Investment banking teams and top accounting firms consultants and compare the backup they get. Just as it costs, well in the early nineties a bond salesman cost about half a million dollars to support, the support is all important. If you can get to your destination with the right information, buy it for whose career will be transformed by the opportunity to use their equally capable minds. I am always despite having long experience to the contrary, surprised how little"information age" firms spend on information. The first information i purchase is up to date tax manuals. Find out what you don't need to pay or can reclaim as first duty of every monthly rules release.

I hope this wasn't too off the wall but I have been able to trap myself in a horrible mess before, by only thinking about how software production management needs to work, and neglecting the corporate stuff. Frankly, sakes and tax run as tight as is possible is a frighteningly sharp edge to carry to the marketplace. I hope I have been helpful somehow in my ramblings.