FuckUp Nights – Hva skjedde?
On 19 October 2016, during Oslo Innovation Week, I stood on stage at MESH and told the story of how Supportia failed. This is the short version of the talk — and why I still believe founders should speak openly about failure.
Why I gave the talk
Before this, I had spoken about the startup “valley of death”. At Fuckup Nights I tried to explain what happened when the journey actually ended: the decisions, the pressure and the mistakes behind Supportia’s bankruptcy.
What went wrong
- The wrong CEO for that phase — me. The company needed disciplined operations, not only vision.
- Wrong hires and a team structure that did not match the situation.
- Growth came too quickly.
- Too many owners, while operating employees owned less than ten per cent.
- Weak liquidity from the beginning.
- Small funding rounds instead of sufficiently long-term financing.
- A service scope that was too broad.
What I take with me
The point is not to celebrate bankruptcy. It is to make the learning useful. Failure becomes valuable only when we are precise about the choices behind it and change what we do next.
Supportia later returned with a different concept. The experience also became part of the thinking behind later projects and my writing about founder responsibility, financing and second chances.
External coverage
Svea later covered the event and the discussion about what founders can learn from failure. In 2022, I returned to the subject in a Shifter opinion article about the personal risk founders can face.