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Download The List of the 100 Highest-Valued Unicorns

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The Founder's Handbook

64 Failed Startups with Bad Market Fit

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Countless startups around the world are being launched every week.

Many fail because they did not learn from the success of other companies who've managed to rise above.

We just published this list of 64 startups that failed due to bad market fit, along with analyses on why they shut down and interviews with their founders.


64 Failed Startups with Bad Market Fit

Fundraising OS
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Fundraising OS

Everything you need to raise funding for your startup, including 3,500+ investors, 7 tools, 18 templates and 3 learning resources.

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Sheet
2,189 Accelerators & Incubators

Information about the industries, countries, and cities they generally invest in.

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Complete Unicorns List
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1,016 Unicorns

Information about their valuation, HQ's location, founded year, name of founders, funding amount and number of employees.

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Complete Unicorns List
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1,190 Unicorns

Information about their valuation, HQ's location, founded year, name of founders, funding amount and number of employees.

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FinTech Investors
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250 FinTech Investors

List of startup investors in the FinTech industry, along with their Twitter, LinkedIn, and email addresses.

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BioTech & Health Investors
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250 BioTech & Health Investors

List of startup investors in the BioTech, Health, and Medicine industries, along with their Twitter, LinkedIn, and email addresses.

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AI Investors
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250 AI Investors

List of 250 startup investors in the AI and Machine Learning industries, along with their Twitter, LinkedIn, and email addresses.

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Brisk

Brisk

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.

Dinnr

Dinnr

Dinnr allowed to select a recipe and order pre-measured ingredients accompanied with instructions. However, there wasn’t a market need for the business.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Adil Mohammed, Michal Bohanes

  • Country:

    United Kingdom

  • Industry:

    Food & Beverage

  • Started in:

    2012

  • Closed in:

    2014

  • Nº of employees:

    1-10

  • Funding Amount:

    < $1M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

EventVue

EventVue

EventVue helped to improve the conference networking experience. They lacked product-market fit and failed to test early the usefulness of the product.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Josh Fraser, Rob Johnson

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Finances

  • Started in:

    2007

  • Closed in:

    2010

  • Nº of employees:

    1-10

  • Funding Amount:

    < $1M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Lack of PMF

You can read more about their failure here.

Flud

Flud

Flud was a social news reader platform. They were unable to raise additional funding for their operations and eventually ran out of cash.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Bobby Ghoshal, Matthew Ausonio

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Productivity

  • Started in:

    2010

  • Closed in:

    2013

  • Nº of employees:

    10-50

  • Funding Amount:

    $1M-$10M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Multiple Reasons

You can read more about their failure here.

Frankly

Frankly

Frankly.me was a Q&A social platform that wasn’t able to raise the necessary round of funding. That is why the CEO of Frankly decided to shut it down.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Abhishek Gupta, Nikunj Jain

  • Country:

    India

  • Industry:

    Social Media

  • Started in:

    2014

  • Closed in:

    2016

  • Nº of employees:

    50-100

  • Funding Amount:

    < $1M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Lack of PMF

You can read more about their failure here.

Friendster

Friendster

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.

Lumos

Lumos

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

Monitor110

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.

Moped

Moped

Moped was a free social app. It had not enough entertaining and fast-growing content that could attract a broad mass of users. It closed after 16 years.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Schuyler Deerman

  • Country:

    Germany

  • Industry:

    Social Media

  • Started in:

    1998

  • Closed in:

    2014

  • Nº of employees:

    10-50

  • Funding Amount:

    $1M-$10M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Navdy

Navdy

Navdy provided a display that projected GPS in the cars' front. They failed due to a saturated market and a device that didn't satisfy customer needs.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Doug Simpson, Karl Guttag

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Transportation

  • Started in:

    2013

  • Closed in:

    2018

  • Nº of employees:

    50-100

  • Funding Amount:

    $10M-$50M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Multiple Reasons

You can read more about their failure here.

OpTier

OpTier

OpTier provided customers with a business transaction monitoring platform. Little market share, revenue, and investment led to OpTier's failure.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Amir Alon, Motti Tal

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Analytics

  • Started in:

    2002

  • Closed in:

    2014

  • Nº of employees:

    50-100

  • Funding Amount:

    > $50M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Lack of PMF

You can read more about their failure here.

Poliana

Poliana

Poliana's aim was to bring order to the USA political system. They had low market demand and ran out of funds even after implementing 3 business models.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Grayson Carroll, Patrick Cason, Seth Whiting, Shawn Whiting

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Analytics

  • Started in:

    2013

  • Closed in:

    2015

  • Nº of employees:

    1-10

  • Funding Amount:

    < $1M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Business Model

You can read more about their failure here.

Quibi

Quibi

An analysis on why did Quibi, a short-form video streaming platform, shut down despite raising $1.8 billion from investors and having an experienced team.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Jeffrey Katzenberg

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Entertainment

  • Started in:

    2018

  • Closed in:

    2020

  • Nº of employees:

    250-500

  • Funding Amount:

    > $50M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Multiple Reasons

You can read more about their failure here.

Reach.ly

Reach.ly

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.

RethinkDB

RethinkDB

RethinkDB is a distributed and scalable NoSQL database. Choosing the wrong market was mentioned by the founder as one of their major mistakes.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Michael Glukhovsky, Slava Akhmechet

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2009

  • Closed in:

    2016

  • Nº of employees:

    10-50

  • Funding Amount:

    $10M-$50M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Lack of PMF

You can read more about their failure here.

SchoolGennie

SchoolGennie

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.

Seven Dreamers Laboratories

Seven Dreamers Laboratories

Seven Dreamers Laboratory built a robot that washed, ironed and folded laundry. However, their product was expensive and couldn't match human's dexterity.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Shin Sakane

  • Country:

    Japan

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2014

  • Closed in:

    2019

  • Nº of employees:

    100-250

  • Funding Amount:

    > $50M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Poor Product

You can read more about their failure here.

Sharingear

Sharingear

Sharinger was a marketplace for musicians to rent their instruments. They focused on a market that was too small and the business model was unsustainable.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Mircea Gabriel Eftemie

  • Country:

    Denmark

  • Industry:

    Music

  • Started in:

    2014

  • 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.

Shyp

Shyp

Shyp imitated the Uber model with an on-demand shipping service. However, they were unable to figure out a profitable business model and had to shut down.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Jack Smith, Joshua Scott, Kevin Gibbon

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Transportation

  • Started in:

    2013

  • Closed in:

    2018

  • Nº of employees:

    10-50

  • Funding Amount:

    > $50M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Multiple Reasons

You can read more about their failure here.

Teforia

Teforia

Teforia was a tea brewer that yielded the perfect cup of tea by combining tradition with smart technology. It had an absence of market fit and shut down.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Allen Han, Kris Efland

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Food & Beverage

  • Started in:

    2014

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Nº of employees:

    10-50

  • Funding Amount:

    $10M-$50M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Vine

Vine

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.

Wattage

Wattage

Wattage was a platform with an ambitious goal: to break the entry barrier for hardware design. They weren't able to validate market interest.

Details of the startup:

  • Founders:

    Brett Hagman, Jeremy Bell, Peter Nitsch

  • Country:

    Canada

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2014

  • Closed in:

    2015

  • Nº of employees:

    50-100

  • Funding Amount:

    < $1M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

101 Studios

101 Studios

101 Studios was a producer of video games that taught users things while they played. They went with a “business to professor” business model, but despite professors like the idea, they wouldn’t implement it in their classes. The startup could never reach product-market fit and shut down months later.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Matt “GundayMonday” Sever

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Education

  • Started in:

  • Closed in:

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Ansaro

Ansaro

Sam was one of the co-founders of Ansaro, a SaaS that aimed to revolutionize the recruiting industry through the use of technologies like AI. They raised $2.25M from institutional investors and $750K from friends and family, grew the team to 6 members and earned in total $100k. But with expenses of $70k/month and no product-market fit, they had to shut down 2 years later.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Sam Stone

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2016

  • Closed in:

    2018

  • Funding Amount:

    $1M-$5M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

AskTina

AskTina

AskTina was a live video chat widget for experts to install on their blogs. They did not spend enough time validating the idea through customer interviews before investing in building the MVP.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Tom Hunt

  • Country:

    United Kingdom

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2016

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Boston Apartment Hub

Boston Apartment Hub

Boston Apartment Hub was an apartment listing site for the Boston area. The idea was probably too ahead of its time.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Jon Sherman

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2006

  • Closed in:

    2007

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Botnim

Botnim

Botnim was a web application that provided near dishes and their nutritional values. Read now the story of the 2 co-founders with a failed startup.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Shaked Klein Orbach & Gilad Peled

  • Country:

    Israel

  • Industry:

    Food & Beverage

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Brisk

Brisk

Brisk was a prescriptive intelligence company which suffered from lack of focus. Being dependant on Salesforce was a fatal mistake.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Hampus Jakobsson

  • Country:

    Sweden

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2012

  • Closed in:

    2016

  • Funding Amount:

    $1M-$5M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Lack of Focus

You can read more about their failure here.

Community Coders

Community Coders

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.

Delite

Delite

Delite was a SaaS platform for B2B wholesale orders. It didn’t satisfy any necessity of customers. Just that thing in life you keep putting off.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Patrick Walls

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2016

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

DotaHaven

DotaHaven

Kyril is the founder of DotaHaven, a gaming content site that’s currently passing away. The website had early success, raising $90k, growing from 0 to 500k page views/mo in 6 months and making $3.5/mo at its peak. However, in the last months, the business has struggled to make enough money to keep running; over-investment in a non-validated concept is one of the reasons for their failure.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Kyril Kotashev

  • Country:

    Bulgaria

  • Industry:

    Entertainment

  • Started in:

    2018

  • Closed in:

    2020

  • Funding Amount:

    < $100K

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Eloquis

Eloquis

Eloquis was all about bringing personalization to mobile apps. The problem? Early in the market and targeted the wrong customer segment.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Rohit Nallapeta

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2010

  • Closed in:

    2011

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Eventloot

Eventloot

Justin Anyanwu is a maker who a few years ago built Eventloot, a SaaS platform for wedding planning professionals. He hired some designers and developers and got the SaaS working. But after a few months of running Facebook Ads and sending cold emails, they decided to shut it down. They hadn’t built a platform that solved the problems wedding planners had.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Justin Anyanwu

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2014

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

ExploreVR

ExploreVR

Andrey Norin is a budding entrepreneur, responsible for all the successes and the failures of ExploreVR. This was a directory site focused 100% on virtual reality. He started it in 2017 and shut down a few months later. His lack of experience in creating a business from scratch was the main cause of failure.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Andrey Norin

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Lack of Experience

You can read more about their failure here.

Flux

Flux

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.

Gymlisted

Gymlisted

Gymlisted was a website for finding the right private gym. Every day, Tom would go home from his day job and code up features for Gymlisted until midnight. Once launched, they started with their marketing efforts. But they soon realized there was pretty much no demand for what they were offering.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Tom Zaragoza

  • Country:

    Canada

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2018

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Hello Tyro

Hello Tyro

Pierre co-founded Hello Tyro, a platform matching students with internship opportunities in Belgian startups. They raised €250k and reached €4k MRR at their top but didn't find Product-Market Fit. They ran out of cash and filed for bankruptcy in 2020.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Pierre Tillement

  • Country:

    Belgium

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2020

  • Funding Amount:

    $100K-$500K

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Hubrif

Hubrif

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.

Juice Startup

Juice Startup

Wit Sumathavanit has recently started to pivot from offline to online entrepreneurship. But before that, he tried to build a juice business in Bangkok. He lost around $3,000 but those learnings impacted his process to validate new ideas.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Wit Sumathavanit

  • Country:

    Thailand

  • Industry:

    Food & Beverage

  • Started in:

    2020

  • Closed in:

    2020

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Legaats

Legaats

Legaats was a web app where baby boomers and senior citizens could share their important life lessons. 5 were the causes of its failure.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Deepak Chhugani

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Social Media

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Business Model

You can read more about their failure here.

Lernin Games

Lernin Games

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.

LocalTown

LocalTown

Michael founded LocalTown, an online marketplace built using no-code tools. After noticing a lot of makers needed help with launching their side projects, he started building tools to solve the problems of that niche.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Michael Novotny

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2016

  • Closed in:

    2018

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Lockpick Entertainment

Lockpick Entertainment

Lockpick Entertainment was a small game studio, that created Dreamlords, a famous MMORTS game. They did it well, making thousands per month. But they began to increase the scope, and after 6 years, they went out of business due to bankruptcy.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Jesper Bylund

  • Country:

    Sweden

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2006

  • Closed in:

    2012

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Competition

You can read more about their failure here.

Muun

Muun

Eelco built Muun in his own, a SaaS that allowed co-working spaces owners to run their businesses effectively. He validated the idea and after weeks, he launched it. However, once in the market, Muun had to compete with really big competitors which had much more features and a better pricing. So, Eelco decided to shut it down.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Eelco

  • Country:

    Netherlands

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2018

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Marketing

You can read more about their failure here.

NE Lounge

NE Lounge

Following his objective of reaching $10k/month from his online businesses, Jake launched NE Lounge, an Amazon FBA store selling inflatable products. 1 year and $16,000 later, the startup shut down. Choosing the wrong product in an unfamiliar niche is the cause to blame.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Jake Lang

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    e-Commerce

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2018

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Onepagetrip

Onepagetrip

Onepagetrip was a travel itinerary sharing community. Not having a plan to make money from the beginning was a stupid rookie mistake.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Ana Santos

  • Country:

    Australia

  • Industry:

    Travel

  • Started in:

    2014

  • Closed in:

    2015

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Business Model

You can read more about their failure here.

Patron.ai

Patron.ai

Ömer launched patron.ai, a gamification platform for developer teams. After promoting it on Twitter and Product Hunt without getting much traction, he decided to shut down the project. That decision was mainly due to a lack of product-market fit and not talking enough to users that signed up.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Ömer Taban

  • Country:

    Turkey

  • Industry:

    Productivity

  • Started in:

    2018

  • Closed in:

    2020

  • Funding Amount:

    < $100K

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Phoenix

Phoenix

Phoenix was a SaaS app to send a last message to the people you love when you die. However, it was the app which died first.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Enrique Benitez

  • Country:

    Mexico

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Refolo

Refolo

Lola founded Refolo, a meal-planning app focused on plant-based eating. After spending 2 years selling a solution for a problem that people weren't already investing money in, she decided to shut it down looking for other opportunities.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Lola Ojabowale

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Health

  • Started in:

    2018

  • Closed in:

    2020

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

REPitchbook

REPitchbook

Charlie Reese is a Canadian software developer who came with (what he thought it was) a revolutionary idea for a SaaS business in the real estate industry. Using his knowledge in JavaScript, React, and SQL, he built a prototype in 6 weeks. But he failed to validate his idea and shut down.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Charlie Reese

  • Country:

    Canada

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2018

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Poor Product

You can read more about their failure here.

RingDaddy

RingDaddy

Isaac Medeiros is a 23-year-old digital marketer that recently launched his first no-code SaaS project, a mass SMS marketing platform for streamers made with a bunch of no-code tools. We'll discuss how starting using no-code tools helped him realize that building an MVP is easier than ever.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Isaac Medeiros

  • Country:

    Brazil

  • Industry:

    Marketing

  • Started in:

    2020

  • Closed in:

    2020

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Ropero

Ropero

Ropero was an e-commerce aiming to sell t-shirts in an unprepared market. Many expenses and little earnings.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Rafael Soto

  • Country:

    Mexico

  • Industry:

    e-Commerce

  • Started in:

    2005

  • Closed in:

    2006

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Singulution

Singulution

Hunt was a software engineer at a Silicon Valley company when he decided to build Singulution, a point of sale & business management solution for multi-location vendors. However, after 10 months of work and $30,000 spent, he couldn’t validate his idea and ran out of money. The company was eventually absorbed by another startup.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Hunt Burdick

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2018

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Swipes

Swipes

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.

Tailor

Tailor

Joe is a 25-year-old founder who, following Pieter Levels example, decided to build 12 startups in 12 months. Doing some A/B testing for his other projects, he found the existing tools had a lot of missing features and decided to spend 2 months full-time working on a new solution. But things didn't go well...

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Joe D’elia

  • Country:

    United Kingdom

  • Industry:

    Analytics

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Marketing

You can read more about their failure here.

Tali

Tali

Matt created Tali, a timekeeping solution for lawyers powered by voice technology like Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant. Like many first start-ups, they encountered many mistakes while trying to build. He created Tali in the effort to help lawyers more effectively keep track of their time instead of using pen and paper. Ultimately, due to a lack of traction and a misfit product market they had to wind things down.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Matthew Volm

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2019

  • Funding Amount:

    $500K-$1M

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Tandem

Tandem

Tandem was a live streaming platform for fitness. Cause of failure? Live fitness isn't that engaging. Influencers were reluctant to adopt a new platform.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Nick Raushenbush

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Health

  • Started in:

    2016

  • Closed in:

    2016

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

Tandem App

Tandem App

Will is a software engineer based in San Francisco, who co-founded Tandem, an app to help people stay on top of their medications. They carried out some research and considered it was a great business idea. But, after launching, they discovered retention was really difficult and decided not to continue.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Will Sun

  • Country:

    United States

  • Industry:

    Health

  • Started in:

    2016

  • Closed in:

    2016

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Team Voice

Team Voice

Team Voice was a SaaS platform for HR professionals. The problem they were trying to solve turned out to be a human problem, not a technology one.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Kirill Vechtomov

  • Country:

    Canada

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2015

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Teamometer

Teamometer

When reading the Lean Startup book, Sergio came up with an idea he wanted to validate: a SaaS to help teams to perform at a higher level. The validation was done successfully, but since then, mistakes related to technology, founding team and listening to customers, meant its shut down 2 years later.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Sergio Schüler

  • Country:

    Brazil

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2012

  • Closed in:

    2013

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    No Market Need

You can read more about their failure here.

Vivalatina

Vivalatina

Nicolas started an e-Commerce that imported sterling silver jewelry from Mexico and resold it in France. His lack of knowledge on marketing made it impossible to him to achieve customers. After some big mistakes, he decided to shut it down and start re-thinking the business model. He is now making $7,200/Month.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Nicolas Tranchant

  • Country:

    Mexico

  • Industry:

    e-Commerce

  • Started in:

    2012

  • Closed in:

    2014

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Marketing

You can read more about their failure here.

WantRemoteJob

WantRemoteJob

Vyacheslav is a software engineer who in 2017 decided to build a board for remote jobs on the IT industry. He built it using his programming knowledge and invite a list of contacts he knew to try the product. But he soon realized he couldn’t handle everything and that keeping up the project would require a lot of time and people. It wasn’t going to pay off, so he shut it down.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Vyacheslav Grzhybovsky

  • Country:

    Latvia

  • Industry:

    Software & Hardware

  • Started in:

    2017

  • Closed in:

    2017

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

WedMap

WedMap

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.

Young Entrepreneurs' Program

Young Entrepreneurs' Program

Fabian founded Young Entrepreneurs Program, a one-year educational program for entrepreneurs aged 17 to 23. After 2 years and 150,000€ spent, they had 30,000€ in ARR and had to shut down due to no product-market fit.

Details of the startup:

  • Founder:

    Fabian Tausch

  • Country:

    Germany

  • Industry:

    Education

  • Started in:

    2018

  • Closed in:

    2020

  • Funding Amount:

    $0

  • Specific cause of failure:

    Bad Market Fit

You can read more about their failure here.

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