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Information about the industries, countries, and cities they generally invest in.
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Information about their valuation, HQ's location, founded year, name of founders, funding amount and number of employees.
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List of startup investors in the FinTech industry, along with their Twitter, LinkedIn, and email addresses.
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Admazely offered retargeting tools for businesses. They shut down in 2013 when they ran short on financing and didn't figure out how to secure more cash.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
David Björklund, Peter Vilsholm Therkildsen, Sylwia Erhardt-Bednarska, Søren Holbech Nielsen
Country:
Denmark
Industry:
Marketing
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2013
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
< $1M
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
Alikolo was an eMarketplace company. The founder didn't have a clear vision and didn't know the reasons why customers purchased at his rivals.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Danny Taniwan
Country:
Indonesia
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
< $1M
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Experience
You can read more about their failure here.
Appiterate was a mobile marketing company that was acquired by Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce company. It was closed 2 years after launching.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Anuj Bhargava, Mayank Kumar, Tanuj Mendiratta, Varun Sharma
Country:
United States
Industry:
Marketing
Started in:
2013
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
< $1M
Specific cause of failure:
Acquisition Flu
You can read more about their failure here.
Auctionata was an online auction platform for art and luxury. Their issues originated from unethical behavior, lack of transparency, and lies by the CEO.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Alexander Gilkes, Alexander Zacke, Georg Untersalmberger, Susanne Zacke
Country:
Germany
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2012
Closed in:
2017
Nº of employees:
250-500
Funding Amount:
> $50M
Specific cause of failure:
Legal Challenges
You can read more about their failure here.
Brisk was a sales and marketing platform founded in 2012. They started to offer customization to paying customers, but this became costly in the long term.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Alfred Beckman, Andreas Pålsson, Hampus Jakobsson, Mikael Tellhed
Country:
Sweden
Industry:
Marketing
Started in:
2012
Closed in:
2016
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
< $1M
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
ChaCha was a search engine where you interacted with a human being. However, the startup got stiff competition when Google released its Panda algorithm.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Brad Bostic & Scott Jones
Country:
United States
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2005
Closed in:
2016
Nº of employees:
50-100
Funding Amount:
> $50M
Specific cause of failure:
Competition
You can read more about their failure here.
Crowdmix was a music streaming platform where people could listen and talk about their favorite bands. They spent £14M before having a working product.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Gareth Ingham, Ian Roberts
Country:
United Kingdom
Industry:
Music
Started in:
2013
Closed in:
2016
Nº of employees:
100-250
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Mismanagement of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
Digg had the mission of "democratizing" the content and news that people saw. However, it missed lots of opportunities to become a thriving social network.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Kevin Rose
Country:
United States
Industry:
Social Media
Started in:
2004
Closed in:
Active
Nº of employees:
50-100
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Competition
You can read more about their failure here.
Dopplr was a social travel network service. In 2009, Nokia acquired it for $20 million and the number of Dopplr users fell since then until shutting down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Dan Gillmor, Lisa Sounio, Marko Ahtisaari, Matt Jones, Taneli Tikka
Country:
United States
Industry:
Travel
Started in:
2007
Closed in:
Active
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
No Data
Specific cause of failure:
Acquisition Flu
You can read more about their failure here.
Fab was an e-commerce company focused on daily design inspiration. Its success resulted in companies launching their same exact replicas of Fab’s platform.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Bradford Shane Shellhammer, Deepa Shah, Jason Goldberg, Nishith Shah, Sunil Khedar
Country:
United States
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2009
Closed in:
2013
Nº of employees:
500-1,000
Funding Amount:
> $50M
Specific cause of failure:
Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
FoundationDB is a NoSQL scalable layered database that worked faster and needed less hardware than other services of its kind. Apple acquired it in 2015.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Dave Rosenthal, Dave Scherer, Nick Lavezzo
Country:
United States
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2009
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Acquisition Flu
You can read more about their failure here.
Friendster was a social gaming site widely popular in Asia. It never put emphasis on the social news feed feature, leading to poor usage and registrations.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Jonathan Abrams
Country:
Philippines
Industry:
Social Media
Started in:
2001
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of PMF
You can read more about their failure here.
Hubhaus offered an online platform to rent a house and find people willing to live with you. They even achieved PMF, but COVID came and they shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Kerry Jones, Shruti Merchant, Sloane Yu
Country:
United States
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2016
Closed in:
2020
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Timing
You can read more about their failure here.
Karhoo was a cab aggregator. It was out of business after 6 months of operation. Poor management and bad execution of a good concept were the main causes.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Daniel Ishag
Country:
United Kingdom
Industry:
Transportation
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
2016
Nº of employees:
50-100
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Poor Product
You can read more about their failure here.
Kiko was a calendar app offering API integrations with other tools. The team worked on various ideas and plans at the same time, which led to its failure.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Emmett Shear, Justin Kan
Country:
United States
Industry:
Productivity
Started in:
2003
Closed in:
2008
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
< $1M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
Laurel & Wolf was a marketplace for interior design solutions. They shut down due to large spendings on marketing and a bad reputation among customers.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Brandon Kleinman, Leura Fine
Country:
United States
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
Active
Nº of employees:
50-100
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
Lumos provided the ultimate smart switching tech. After the shutdown, the founders recognized they were not the right team to build a hardware company.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Pritesh Sankhe, Tarkeshwar Singh, Yash Kotak
Country:
India
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
No Data
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Experience
You can read more about their failure here.
Monitor110 offered real-time monitoring services for Wall Street. They lost the edge they had by not validating the product and shut down in 2008.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Roger Ehrenberg
Country:
United States
Industry:
Analytics
Started in:
2003
Closed in:
2008
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
MySpace became the most popular social networking site before Facebook. After competing with them, they decided to repurpose it as a platform for artists.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Aber Whitcomb, Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolfe, Colin Digiaro, Josh Berman, Michael Addicott, Tom Anderson
Country:
United States
Industry:
Social Media
Started in:
2003
Closed in:
Active
Nº of employees:
250-500
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
Pixate wanted to make prototyping and designing apps more accessible and effortless. It was acquired by Google in 2015, and after a year, it was shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Kevin Lindsey, Paul Colton
Country:
United States
Industry:
Design
Started in:
2012
Closed in:
2016
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$1M-$10M
Specific cause of failure:
Acquisition Flu
You can read more about their failure here.
Rdio, a music streaming platform, failed due to poor marketing and distribution, ultimately folding to competition from Spotify and closing down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Carter Adamson, Janus Friis, Niklas Zennström
Country:
United States
Industry:
Music
Started in:
2008
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
50-100
Funding Amount:
> $50M
Specific cause of failure:
Competition
You can read more about their failure here.
Reach.ly was an analytics tool for e-commerce sites providing customer behavior patterns. Lack of proper market feedback made the company shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Ernests Štāls
Country:
Latvia
Industry:
Analytics
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
< $1M
Specific cause of failure:
Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
RewardMe was a real-time intelligent CRM Platform for Local Commerce. They wanted to scale up the company prematurely, which lead to their shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Jun Loayza, Stephen Johnson, Yu-kai Chou
Country:
United States
Industry:
Marketing
Started in:
2010
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$1M-$10M
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
Salorix offered an engagement platform for brands. It closed down because of its inability to raise money after its investors stopped supporting it.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Santanu Bhattacharya
Country:
United States
Industry:
Analytics
Started in:
2009
Closed in:
2014
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$1M-$10M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
ScaleFactor was a tech startup that claimed to automate SME bookkeeping and payroll thanks to an AI they were developing in-house, which wasn't the case.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Kurt Rathmann
Country:
United States
Industry:
Finances
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
2020
Nº of employees:
100-250
Funding Amount:
> $50M
Specific cause of failure:
Poor Product
You can read more about their failure here.
SchoolGennie provided solutions that saved time, reduced costs, and helped make better decisions on schools. But they didn’t test their product-market fit.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Amit Gupta, Pardeep Goyal
Country:
India
Industry:
Education
Started in:
2013
Closed in:
2014
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Experience
You can read more about their failure here.
SellanApp connected people who had an idea for an app with app developers that could materialize it. It failed due to an unhealthy co-founder partnership.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Aernoud Dekker, Milan van den Bovenkamp
Country:
The Netherlands
Industry:
Finances
Started in:
2012
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
< $1M
Specific cause of failure:
Failure to Pivot
You can read more about their failure here.
Theranos was a way to predict diseases with small blood samples. They raised $1.4B but legal investigations pointed out it was a fraud and shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Elizabeth Holmes
Country:
United States
Industry:
Health
Started in:
2003
Closed in:
2018
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
> $50M
Specific cause of failure:
Legal Challenges
You can read more about their failure here.
What happened to Vine? Why did Vine shut down? When? Does TikTok face the same risk? Here's our detailed analysis.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Colin Kroll, Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov
Country:
United States
Industry:
Social Media
Started in:
2012
Closed in:
2017
Nº of employees:
50-100
Funding Amount:
No Data
Specific cause of failure:
Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
Wesabe is a former Personal Finance Management system that helped clients make better financial decisions. Having better competitors made Wesabe fail.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Jason Knight, Marc Hedlund
Country:
United States
Industry:
Finances
Started in:
2005
Closed in:
2010
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$1M-$10M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
WOW Air was the Icelandic answer to RyanAir for low-cost air travel in Europe. The cause of failure was that they wanted to become too big too fast.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Skuli Mogensen
Country:
Iceland
Industry:
Transportation
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2019
Nº of employees:
50-100
Funding Amount:
No Data
Specific cause of failure:
Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
While in university, Kaito started Community Coders, a business that connected companies looking for web development and digital marketing services with high school students. However, as the months went over, it became difficult to close deals and the startup began to lose its course until they shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Kaito Cunningham
Country:
Canada
Industry:
Education
Started in:
2018
Closed in:
2020
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
Flux was a modular multi messaging client. They raised a small angel round of 70K € and invested another 15K €. A combination of many issues led to their failure.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Jan Johannes
Country:
Germany
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
< $100K
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
Tarun co-founded Freshconnect, an online B2B marketplace for fresh agricultural produce like fruits & vegetables. After making mistakes like lack of focus and bad hiring, they couldn't secure a funding round and eventually got acqui-hired by another company.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Tarun Gupta
Country:
India
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2018
Closed in:
2020
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
Michael Hawthorne Jr. was the founder of Atlanta-based consulting agency Hawthorne Strategies LLC. The agency worked with NFL Players to develop their philanthropic foundations and awareness campaigns to address community issues that they cared about. Read on to know how overwhelm, overwork, and failing to scale led the potentially-profitable business to the ground.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Michael Hawthorne
Country:
United States
Industry:
Entertainment
Started in:
2013
Closed in:
2013
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
Howell Market was an online store where individual sellers could go to sell their products. Cody, the founder, partnered with his family and friends, but things didn’t work out as his partners weren’t passionate about the vision of the company.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Cody Howell
Country:
United States
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2017
Closed in:
2017
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
Tobi Ogunwande is a Nigerian filmmaker who tried to build the Netflix for African short films as a result of his frustration to find great African movies. He partnered with a technical co-founder and soon after launching, they were seeing an average of 1,000 views on their films. However, they soon realized the market niche was too small and there wasn’t a clear business model. Eventually, they run out of money and shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Tobi Ogunwande
Country:
Nigeria
Industry:
Entertainment
Started in:
2015
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
< $100K
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
Jordi Miró has been building products and companies since 2007. After a successful CTO experience in Wuaki TV, he founded Lernin Games, an EdTech startup focused on toddlers. He raised €1.5M and built a team of 10, but Lernin ran out of cash and the project couldn’t succeed.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Jordi Miró
Country:
Spain
Industry:
Education
Started in:
2017
Closed in:
2019
Funding Amount:
$1M-$5M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
In 2014, Aazar, a Pakistani entrepreneur, decided to create an Uber for logistics and awkward items trying to solve a problem he and many other people were having: Bringing items from Pakistan to Germany. He soon validated the idea and built the product. But a combination of bad marketing and bad team fit led to their failure.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Aazar Shad
Country:
Germany
Industry:
Transportation
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
Kevin was the founder of Melon, a food delivery startup aimed at being more cost-effective. Melon’s unique approach was quickly validated through an MVP and in just two months, the business grew to $10k/mo and 500 users. However, they realized becoming profitable would be hard and decided to discontinue the service.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Kevin Wang
Country:
United States
Industry:
Food & Beverage
Started in:
2019
Closed in:
2020
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Experience
You can read more about their failure here.
After moving to SF, Andrew joined a startup accelerator that included a co-founder dating phase. There, he met some co-founders with whom he built MotionThink, a startup that built productivity tools for freelancers. Some months and +$100,000 after, the startup was shut down. Learn what went wrong!
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Andrew Chen
Country:
United States
Industry:
Productivity
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2012
Funding Amount:
$100K-$500K
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
Sharkius was a social games company. It grew too fast, too quickly. It reached $80k/month revenue within months and wasted it. Learn from their mistakes!
Details of the startup:
Founder:
David Kramaley
Country:
United Kingdom
Industry:
Entertainment
Started in:
2007
Closed in:
2012
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
With 2 partners, Stefan co-founded Swipes, a company that developed productivity tools. The startup went through all stages and experiences, even almost fundraising $1M. However, over the 6 years of running, they weren’t able to really find product-market fit and they eventually ran out of money.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Stefan Vladimirov
Country:
Bulgaria
Industry:
Productivity
Started in:
2013
Closed in:
2019
Funding Amount:
< $100K
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Market Fit
You can read more about their failure here.
Gene founded VacationBird, a marketplace for finding your vacation rental. It was an early version of Airbnb and a VRBO competitor. Having a misalignment of incentives between co-founders and poor planning were the main causes to shut it down in 2012.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Gene Maryushenko
Country:
United States
Industry:
Travel
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2012
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Experience
You can read more about their failure here.
After realizing no triathlon clothing brand was properly catering to the market from a design point of view, Matthew decided to do it himself and started VO2 Sportwear. Through social media, sponsorships, and SEO, the business made £250k its third year, but then failed to manage their cash flow and had to shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Matthew Tomkin
Country:
United Kingdom
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2012
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
< $100K
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
Watu was a temporary staffing app founded by José Pablo Fernández and his business partner. The business was very sticky; once a company started using the app, it was very unlikely for them to leave. So what could have gone wrong!? Read our interview with Pablo below to know more.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Pablo Fernández
Country:
United Kingdom
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2015
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
Tauras is a 30-year old entrepreneur from Lithuania. With the objective of digitizing the wedding planning process, he co-founded WedMap. They launched the tool within some months and carried out a vast number of marketing strategies, which led to a monthly revenue of $2k. However, different problems on team, resources, skills, and product meant WedMap’s failure.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Tauras Sinkus
Country:
Switzerland
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2015
Closed in:
2018
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
Jon was one of the Yottio’s co-founders, a mobile-first tool that enabled video participation on broadcast television. The startup went through all experiences, including making $200k in revenue, spending $150k for operations, a co-founder leaving the business and a $20m acquisition offer. However, Yottio eventually ran out of cash and shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Jon Lawrence
Country:
United States
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2013
Closed in:
2015
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
