Largest database on failed startups globally.
We have gathered and analysed over 2000 failed startups, which are not all listed on our website.
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| A | B | C | D | E | F | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Date of Failure | Startup | Idea | Reason for Failure | Full Story | Founder |
2 | 31 July 2018 | Savizy | Crowdequity platform allowing non-professional investors to invest in Private Equity funds | Failed to commit developers on the MVP so VC dropped the case | FinTech is hard to fund without solid prior experience in Finance | @Devinologue |
3 | 12 April 2018 | Poppy | Provides on-demand childcare | Could not figure out economies of scale | On-demand childcare startup Poppy shuts down despite building ‘rave-worthy’ service for parents | @APatelThompson |
4 | 21 November 2018 | Maza Health | Transportation solutions for urgent health care in rural Ghana | No sustainable business model and lack of infrastructure | ||
5 | 30 September 2018 | GetBadges | Software development gamification tool | Lack of market fit and funding for a pivot | https://getbadges.io/blog/ | @khasinski |
6 | 16 September 2018 | Path | Social Network | Competing with the Facebooks, Twitters and Instagrams of the world is no easy task, however. In 2015, Path was sold to South Korean Internet company Kakao for an undisclosed sum. Kakao wasn’t able to do much with the acquisition and, well, here we are. | Mobile social network Path, once a challenger to Facebook, is closing down | @path |
7 | July 2018 | Oratio | Oratio helps businesses to connect with their customers on messengers like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and others through personal conversations and chatbots | Too much dependency on other platforms | From hero to zero — closing my 3rd startup | @pichsenmeister |
8 | May 2018 | Knowmads.capetown | Leadership programmes | Legal and Financial constraints | Thanks for being my first | |
9 | March 2018 | Shyp | Provides shipping services that ranges from picking-up the package to delivering it to the destination. | Wrong target audience | I Can’t Wait for You to See What We Do Next by Founder | @kevingibbon |
10 | January 2018 | Kaitek | Kaitek developed bacterial sensors for food safety. The first product: a rapid detection kit for shellfish toxicity, based on synthetic biology. | Technology couldn't scale properly | An autopsy for my first startup | @emiliadiazCL |
11 | January 2018 | Pepup World | Connecting local retail shops with nearby customers, later on pivoted on niche segment, then closed | Market in India was not ready | Case study on Pepupworld.com | |
12 | January 2018 | Hubrif | Hubrif was an online distributor of African short films and a one-stop film festival submission gateway platform for African filmmakers | Founders constant disagreement over management duties, small market size and users as well as failure to find ways to monetize. | ... And finally, its time to go home. | @hubrif |
13 | December 2017 | Vidme | Video sharing platform | Couldn’t find a path to sustainability | Goodbye for now | @wwshaef |
14 | November 2017 | Sharkius | Sharkius Games was an internet games company based in London UK, which aimed to create engaging and meaningful social experiences. | Some fatal mistakes when hiring employees and managing the team, as well as lack of marketing experience, were the causes of its failure. | From $80k/month to failure: How Sharkius bit off more than it could chew | @simplydt |
15 | October 2017 | Walnut | A better moving company | Great user experience came at the cost of poor unit economics | Why we're closing Walnut | @nickbkim |
16 | September 2017 | Juicero | Inventor of the first home cold-pressed juicing system | No Sustainable Business Model | Silicon Valley’s $400 Juicer May Be Feeling the Squeeze | @iamdougevans |
17 | September 2017 | ReadByHumans | Converted articles, in to human-read audio on demand. | Economics of the business did not work. | How I in-validated a business idea in 3 months with little code, while traveling the world | @ksaitor |
18 | July 2017 | Washio | Washio was an on-demand laundry service | Thin margins, quality service issues, and fierce competition from similar startups. | Why did Washio fail? | @mrjmetz |
19 | July 2017 | Yik Yak | Yik Yak is a location-based social network that helps you connect with the people around you. | struggled to keep users on its platform | The Yik Yak App is Officially Dead | |
20 | May 2017 | Sprig | Sprig is an online app provides healthy organic meals delivered in 15 minutes. | the complexity of owning meal production through delivery at scale was a challenge. | 7 startups that were massively funded that died in 2017 | |
21 | March 2016 | Quanttus | Not the founder. Looks like blood pressure on the wrist. | Product failure | Health-Tracking Startup Fails to Deliver on Its Ambitions | @Shahid_Azim |
22 | February 2017 | Echelon Exchange | algorithmic online stock exchange | Lack of passion, no SWOT analysis, regulatory concerns, overly complex, revolutionary doesn't equal value | why my startup failed | |
23 | January 2017 | RethinkDB | NoSQL database | Picked a terrible market and optimized the product for the wrong metrics of goodness. | RethinkDB: why we failed | @spakhm |
24 | November 2016 | Gigger | Online gig booking system for bands, promoters, and venues. | Market resistance and not enough customer development | Post Mortem: Gigger Rocked | @antman261 |
25 | October 2016 | Spinvite | Event invitation and sharing | Spent entire seed fund on fancy development of untested product. | Spinvite - The Party's Over | @ohmygodrey |
26 | September 2016 | Fuhu | Childrens tablets and apps. | Slim profit margins that couldn't cover overhead. | The Swift Rise--and Fall--of America's One-Time Fastest-Growing Company | |
27 | August 2016 | GamersTube.com | First HD cross-compatible video host just for gamers. | lack of investment, heavily competitive environment | The story of a live game streaming network that ran from 2006 but closed in 2013, a year before Twitch, which started in 2011, sold to Amazon for $970 million. "Pioneers get slaughtered and the settlers proper" | @youngbloodjoe |
28 | August 2016 | Shipbeat | A single platform for e-commerce logistics. | We failed in building a logistics setup that we could power up with software | Shipbeat Post-Mortem | @svenningsen |
29 | June 2016 | Brisk.io | Recommend actions to salespeople from their data (CRM, email, etc) | Lack of focus and couldn't e | Turning the page: What we learned at Brisk | @hajak |
30 | June 2016 | sociavstre.am | Aggregate Instagram content by both location and hashtag | Reliance on third party API | Why we killed our latest startup | @bamcreative |
31 | May 2016 | cookisto | Cookisto is an online community marketplace for homemade food. | retention rate wasn’t good enough | Six up-and-coming start-ups on what makes for a successful business | |
32 | May 2016 | Vym | Review GitHub Pull Requests with a slide show without leaving GitHub | It failed to find market fit after launch | What I Learned From an Unsuccessful Launch: Vym | mikeswcho |
33 | March 2016 | SpoonRocket | on-demand food delivery | Lack of sustainable profit margin | What Founders Can Learn From SpoonRocket’s Demise | |
34 | February 2016 | Eulergy | connect university research with businesses | It was extremely difficult to market to students, PHD and Post-doc researchers | Eulergy closes it's digital doors | @benbyford |
35 | January 2016 | Sharingear | A p2p marketplatform for music instruments and backline rental | Market too small, ran out of cash | The entrepreneurial roller coaster ride | @MirceaGEftemie |
36 | Nov 2015 | HouseThis | India's first NRI-focused Real Estate portal | Lost focus on the product | Lessons I learnt from failing at my first startup | |
37 | Oct 2015 | Homejoy | Home cleaning service. | High cost of customer acquisition | Homejoy at the Unicorn Glue Factory | @nolimits |
38 | Oct 2015 | EverythingMe | Adds Contextual capabilities to mobile phones | No business model | Popular Israeli app launcher EverythingMe closes down, most of staff let go | |
39 | Aug 2015 | Zirtual | Unlimited virtual assistant tasks for a monthly price | Burn rate | Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next | @marenkate |
40 | Aug 2015 | PoliMobile | Mobile marketing for political campaigns | Ahead of it's time | Timing is everything--especially in startups. | @curtprins |
41 | Aug 2015 | Last Guide Co. | Apps that encouraged real world interactions | Failure to adhere to the original vision | Gowalla founder Josh Williams shutters Last, a company that made apps to help you go outside | @jw |
42 | Jun 2015 | alikolo | e-Commerce Marketplace | Internal problem & wrong positioning in market | This guy’s story of failing in Indonesia is refreshingly honest. Now he’s getting up and trying again | @dannytaniwan |
43 | Jun 2015 | Circa News | mobile news app | Lack of funding, no buyers | Farewell to Circa News | @mg |
44 | Jun 2015 | Tale of Tales | Create narrative based video games. | Costs were higher than income | And the sun sets... | |
45 | Jun 2015 | Paid for Stripe | Most popular 3rd party app for Stripe for 2 years | Stripe built their own app. | End of Life of an App | @ryanscherf |
46 | Jun 2015 | Lumos | Machine learning enabled smart electrical switches | Overestimated machine learning & underestimated efforts in converting a prototype to fully functional hardware product | 5 Reasons Why My IoT Startup Failed | @yashpkotak |
47 | Jun 2015 | Rate My Speech | Improve people's public speaking skills | Lack of problem-solution fit, no real team, too much ego. | Let it go, let it go… Sunset of my first startup: ratemyspeech.co | @aszig |
48 | Jun 2015 | RewardMe | Loyalty platform for restaurants and retailers | Premature scaling and founder misalignment | Premature scaling killed us | @junloayza |
49 | Jun 2015 | UDesign | Create & buy beautifully patterned women's clothing from your phone. | We didn't stick to our original vision, and let spending get out of control. | We went from fashion-tech prodigies to flaming heap of Jichael Meffries-inspired detritus in 1 short, emotional year. | @econstreams |
50 | Jun 2015 | Fastr | Whatsapp for Customer Service | Wrong approach, wrong target market | Fastr - Pitch | @gregdsouza |
51 | Jun 2015 | GuGo | A group-centric social intelligence platform | Cofounder disagreements, couldn't secure funding | How to Learn From Your Mistakes in a Tech Startup in Order to Succeed | @shermanbiz |
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