Pollground
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Pollground was a Y Combinator Summer 2006 social polling site from Boston: users could easily create surveys and tap the wisdom of the crowd, with questions and comments posted anonymously.
02 / Pollground FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
In the founders' own retrospective, Pollground died from neglect and circumstance: a hosting transfer caused a technical error that left the site down for weeks, and when they finally found time to fix it, they concluded they could not keep maintaining the project and shut it down in November 2006.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Pollground launches as a Y Combinator Summer 2006 company: a social polling site built on the wisdom of the crowd.
- Closure announced
After a hosting-transfer technical error leaves the site down for weeks, the founders decide they cannot continue maintaining it and shut Pollground down in November 2006.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Social polling: wisdom of the crowd, anonymous posting
- 02
Hosting transfer causes a weeks-long outage
- 03
Founders conclude they cannot keep maintaining it
- 04
Shutdown, November 2006