Interesting blog post from Justin Williams on mistakes he made when taking on Glassboard.
He talks about some technical issues, but it seems to me that the mistakes made were essentially business decisions, including quite possibly the decision to take it on in the first place.
I was always a bit dubious about how Glassboard could ever make anyone any money, so I was doubly surprised when, having had the original developers fail to do so, Justin then decided to give it a try.
There are situations where taking over someone else's product is a really good way to hit the ground running - for example if it’s got no monthly overheads and clear potential for new features and/or growth of the user base.
This seemed to be the exact opposite in all regards. It clearly had a big server infrastructure cost, was in a fairly crowded market, and had a USP that seemed dubious to me at the best of times.
Still - we only learn by making mistakes, so fair play to Justin for taking one for the team!