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The SaaS sector is a competitive one.
But at the same time, it can be really lucrative.
Thousands of SaaS startups have emerged in the last years and a lot of money has flown into them
However, the majority of these startups have since shut down.
In this article, you can find some of them as well as analysis on why they failed.
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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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.
Get the Sheet for $50Information 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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List of startup investors in the BioTech, Health, and Medicine industries, along with their Twitter, LinkedIn, and email addresses.
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List of 250 startup investors in the AI and Machine Learning industries, along with their Twitter, LinkedIn, and email addresses.
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PoliMobile provided political campaigns with a strategic way to reach their supporters. No one wanted to pay for such a service and they had to shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Curt Prins
Country:
United States
Industry:
Marketing
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
No Market Need
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.
Transpose was a comprehensive information management platform. Operated for two years before shutting down due to the inability to generate enough revenue.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Hussein Ahmed, Matt Goyer, Samah Gad, Skyler Johnson-Wagner
Country:
United States
Industry:
Productivity
Started in:
2015
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$1M-$10M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
ABBY was a documentation service for A/B tests. To make such a service successful, Andy would have needed to educate the users, and that was not possible.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Andy Goldschmidt
Country:
Germany
Industry:
Analytics
Started in:
2015
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
Matthew founded Adproval, a marketplace to connect blogging and social media influencers with brands. Raised around $300k in funds and made $200/mo from their self-service software for bloggers. In the end, they made over $200k in revenue from consulting services but it wasn't enough.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Matthew Anderson
Country:
United States
Industry:
Marketing
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2017
Funding Amount:
$100K-$500K
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Holger Sindbaek is the founder of Habitual, a habit-tracking app that was initially created since Holger could not find an app that could suit his habit-tracking needs after reading Atomic Habits book. With other successful apps under his belt like a Solitaire card game played by 3M people per month, it seems like he has the knack of making startups fly. So what went wrong with Habitual? Discover it in this interview.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Holger Sindbaek
Country:
Denmark
Industry:
Productivity
Started in:
2019
Closed in:
2021
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
Andrew Askins, in partner with two of his best friends, started his company Krit in 2014. In 2015 they launched Ink, a tool that let freelancers create contracts and get them signed online. They got a couple thousand free users, but ultimately got burnt out before they could make the business model work. Now, they have been able to overcome this failure and build a successful consulting business.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Andrew Askins
Country:
United States
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2015
Closed in:
2015
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
Stepa co-founded MyCity, a tool for local authorities to build relationships with their residents. After realizing they had created a product for a non-existing market, they decided to shut it down.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Stepa Mitaki
Country:
Russia
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
< $100K
Specific cause of failure:
No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
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 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.
Natagon is an entrepreneur from Bali who, trying to solve a problem he was struggling with in his development agency, built a SaaS that mixed a project management software with an accounting one. Using cold-emails, he was soon able to make it profitable, but lack of passion led to its shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Natagon
Country:
Indonesia
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2018
Closed in:
2019
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Inspired by the iOS app Launchpad, Miloslav Voloskov started drafting ideas to what eventually was called Thepresence. This aimed to provide a more modern and unconventional take on website builders. But this venture got shut down even before it was able to take off. A mental illness shutting down a business that could have changed the drag-and-drop website builder game? It’s more likely than you think.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Miloslav Voloskov
Country:
Russia
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2018
Closed in:
2018
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Other
You can read more about their failure here.
Vladimir was the founder of Toki, a one-stop solution to finding trends and analytics on TikTok. It started as a side-project, but after launching on Product Hunt, they realized they didn't have a deep connection with the problem they were tackling and lost motivation to keep going.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Vladimir Esaulov
Country:
Russia
Industry:
Marketing
Started in:
2020
Closed in:
2020
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Experience
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.
