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FAILRADAR

Parakey

Parakey was founded in early 2006 by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt of Mozilla/Firefox fame. Little has been revealed about what Parakey will actually do, but it has been touted as both a platform and set of applications that will merge the desktop environment with the Web. It has also been described as a Web-based operating system. Great emphasis has been placed on Parakey's potential to make tasks on the computer more intuitive for the average Joe.\n\nParakey was acquired by Facebook on July 19, 2007.\n\nSequoia Capital seeded Parakey's operations in early 2005.

AcquiredSummer 2005Other

About Parakey

Parakey was founded in early 2006 by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt of Mozilla/Firefox fame. Little has been revealed about what Parakey will actually do, but it has been touted as both a platform and set of applications that will merge the desktop environment with the Web. It has also been described as a Web-based operating system. Great emphasis has been placed on Parakey's potential to make tasks on the computer more intuitive for the average Joe. Parakey was acquired by Facebook on July 19, 2007. Sequoia Capital seeded Parakey's operations in early 2005.

Risk Analysis

Category Risk

22%death rate

Other: 130 of 604 startups failed

MEDIUM

Team Size

2people

Median for failed in Other: 2

Median for active in Other: 4

Founded 2005 — older batches naturally have higher attrition rates. Death rate comparisons should account for age.

External Resources

Post-mortem content hosted on startups.rip — we provide the analytics layer.