Ask HN: Learning From Failure and Iterating on Defunct Companies

1 points by tommusic 16 years ago | 2 comments

Clear (http://flyclear.com) recently (and suddenly) announced the end of service, as they weren't able to reach an agreement with their creditors. Which I would expect means that they weren't paying debt on schedule, and that the creditors felt the outlook wasn't positive.

Reactions to the closing appear to indicate a positive view of the service, and a predictably negative view of the sudden closure.

This leads me to the following questions:

- What would you want to know about how Clear's business worked, or about the environment they were within, if you were going to try to move into this space and do it better?

- Are there symptoms of Clear's demise that signal another attempt to be unwise?

- More generally, how do you feel about the idea of iterating on a model that has previously failed for someone else?

Tangurena 16 years ago |

>Are there symptoms of Clear's demise that signal another attempt to be unwise?

Their primarly failed assumption is that DHS would trust them to clear their customers. There is no possible way that DHS would trust some outsourced security to do their job. This means that every "pre screen" supplier is doomed to fail.

>More generally, how do you feel about the idea of iterating on a model that has previously failed for someone else?

In general, if I think I can prove to myself that I could do a better job (execute it better, if you will), then I would not have a problem with it. I'm more concerned that I'm using intuition instead of real numbers.

tommusic 16 years ago | |

According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_Traveler the TSA allows these companies to collect and submit user information. The TSA then does the screening, and returns approval or condemnation.

It sounds like there were around 165,000 members. At $200 per person per year, that's $33M in revenue.

Apparently they raised somewhere near $100M in funding.

I wonder what their costs looked like.