Dijiwan
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Dijiwan was a Bordeaux, France digital marketing startup initiated in September 2010 and incorporated in September 2011. It aimed to map and mine networks of web content for digital marketing purposes. The company raised 0.5 million euros in January 2012 from French public investors to develop its business within a year.
02 / Dijiwan FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Dijiwan's post-mortem, written by CTO and co-founder Thomas Parisot, points to a set of classic failures. The technical team ignored the business process - a good product idea and a strong technical team did not guarantee a sustainable business. Management hired too many people (the marketing team took a week to create six pages of website), and reckless spending burned cash fast: expensive business trips to Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona and Lisbon yielded no contracts or customers. The company gave out heavy discounts hoping to sign cyclical contracts that never materialized, and the CEO was unsure about the product he was selling. Cash ran out and the CEO hid the situation from the other co-founders until a rejected check exposed it. The company struggled to pay salaries in July 2012 and requested bankruptcy protection in September 2012, six months after raising its funding.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Bankruptcy
CTO/cofounder Thomas Parisot's May 2014 postmortem (opened): Bordeaux digital-marketing startup Dijiwan requested bankruptcy protection in September 2012 after paycheck trouble from July 2012; he describes writing a year after the bankruptcy.
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
In September 2010, the Dijiwan project was initiated in Bordeaux, France - a digital marketing startup aiming to map and mine networks of web content; the startup was incorporated in September 2011.
- 02
In January 2012, Dijiwan raised 0.5 million euros from French public investors to develop the business within a year. Money was spent fast: a bloated team, expensive trips to Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona and Lisbon that produced no contracts, and heavy discounts that never converted into cyclical contracts.
- 03
In July 2012, the company struggled to clear paychecks; the CEO had hidden the cash crisis from the other co-founders until it was exposed.
- 04
In September 2012, Dijiwan requested bankruptcy protection, six months after its fundraising. No reliable loss figure was disclosed, so no loss amount is recorded.