53 Failed B2B Startups & their Case Studies
The B2B sector is a competitive one.
But at the same time, it can be really lucrative.
Thousands of B2B 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.
53 Failed B2B Startups
1) Admazely
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.
2) Appiterate
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.
3) Argyle Social
The Argyle Social was a social media marketing tool. The leading social media platforms change their APIs every time, which led to their shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Adam Covati
- Country: United States
- Industry: Marketing
- Started in: 2010
- Closed in: 2014
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Competition
You can read more about their failure here.
4) Aria Insights
Aria Insights developed highly advanced drones. After some pivots, the company couldn't find out the correct business model and had to shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Helen Greiner
- Country: United States
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2008
- Closed in: 2019
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
5) ArsDigita
ArsDigita was a Web Development Company established in 1997. Their decline was ascribed to an inexperienced external CEO and had to shut down in 2001.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Philip Greenspun, Tracy Adams, Ben Adida, Eve Andersson, Olin Shivers, Aurelius Prochazka, Jin Choi
- Country: United States
- Industry: e-Commerce
- Started in: 1997
- Closed in: 2002
- Nº of employees: 50-100
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Experience
You can read more about their failure here.
6) 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.
7) Design Inc.
Design Inc. linked clients to talented designers. They reached market saturation and the startup could not make enough revenue to cover operation costs.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Bjoern Zinssmeister, Marc Hemeon
- Country: United States
- Industry: Design
- Started in: 2016
- Closed in: 2017
- Nº of employees: 1-10
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
8) DotCloud
dotCloud was a PaaS for developers that enabled them to host, assemble and run their applications. They could not sustain operation costs by themselves.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Solomon Hykes
- Country: United States
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2008
- Closed in: 2016
- Nº of employees: 250-500
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Mismanagement of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
9) 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.
10) FoundationDB
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.
11) Karhoo
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.
12) LayerVault
LayerVault helped you store, track, review, and deliver design work. However, they were unable to secure additional capital to sustain their services.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Allan Grinshtein, Kelly Sutton
- Country: United States
- Industry: Design
- Started in: 2011
- Closed in: 2014
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: < $1M
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
13) Lookery
Lookery gave statistics showcasing services that empowered organizations. It was based on Facebook platform, and after the redesign, they had to shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: David Cancel, Rex Dixon, Todd Sawicki
- Country: United States
- Industry: Marketing
- Started in: 2007
- Closed in: 2009
- Nº of employees: 1-10
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Dependence on Others
You can read more about their failure here.
14) 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.
15) 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.
16) Parse
Parse offered a platform for mobile app devs with tools to let them build, run and test applications. Facebook bought Parse and shut it down in 2017.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Ilya Sukhar, James Yu, Kevin Lacker, Tikhon Bernstam
- Country: United States
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2011
- 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.
17) 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.
18) RewardMe
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.
19) Salorix
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.
20) ScaleFactor
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.
21) 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.
22) Shipbeat
Shipbeat was an API to help e-commerces. When Shipbeat expanded its logistic services in other market areas, they had some big difficulties and shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Joachim Rørbøl, Kenneth Svenningse
- Country: Denmark
- Industry: e-Commerce
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2016
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
23) Shipitwise
ShipItWise was a way of booking shipping services. However, the transportation companies involved weren’t eager on jumping on this new technology.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Aleksander Gansen, Anna Medjanskaja, Olari Miiter, Ragmar Saksing & Sander Gansen
- Country: Estonia
- Industry: Transportation
- Started in: 2016
- Closed in: 2019
- Nº of employees: 1-10
- Funding Amount: < $1M
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
24) Transpose
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.
25) Zirtual
Zirtual was a virtual assistant marketplace for busy entrepreneurs. Its management and the high burn rate brought the firm on the verge of bankruptcy.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Collin Vine, Erik Jensen, Maren Kate Donovan
- Country: United States
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2011
- Closed in: 2015
- Nº of employees: 100-250
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Mismanagement of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
26) ABBY
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
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
27) Adproval
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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
28) 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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Market Fit
You can read more about their failure here.
29) 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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Market Fit
You can read more about their failure here.
30) Bediwin Information Services
James is a IT professional who decided to start a business on a “IT-manager-for-hire” type model. He built the company with really few resources and tools and started looking for clients. At peak, he was earning £2,500, but after some years, he had to shut down as he realized his business model was completely broken.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: James Cort
- Country: United Kingdom
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2011
- Closed in: 2014
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
31) 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
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
32) 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
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
33) 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
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
34) FreshConnect
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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
35) Graphite Docs
Justin Hunter had the courage to challenge Google Docs, all because he was scared of losing all his writing saved in the cloud. So he created Graphite Docs, a privacy-focused alternative to Google Docs powered by blockchain, that assured users that their saved files were indeed safe. And the effort paid off; he started gaining traction from individual users. However, he decided to focus on the B2B model, rather than B2C, and this decision cost him the business. Why? Read on to find it out.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Justin Hunter
- Country: United States
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2020
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
36) 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
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
37) Ink
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
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
38) MotionThink
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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
39) 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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
40) Pactero
Wes founded Pactero, a platform to simplify the process of managing income share agreements. He confused the initial launch hype with market validation, but it was vanity. The business made around $180 total after spending $55k.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Wes Wagner
- Country: United States
- Industry: Education
- Started in: 2020
- Closed in: 2021
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
41) 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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Market Fit
You can read more about their failure here.
42) Profitabilly
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
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
43) 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
- Specific cause of failure: Poor Product
You can read more about their failure here.
44) 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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Market Fit
You can read more about their failure here.
45) 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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
46) 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
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Market Fit
You can read more about their failure here.
47) 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
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
48) 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
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
49) Toki
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
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Experience
You can read more about their failure here.
50) Uptrend
Maverick shifted from being an athlete to becoming an entrepreneur after seriously pondering what he wanted in life. He founded Uptrend, a deal sourcing agency for M&A firms in the US. He had some trial and errors initially but found his footing after he met an M&A advisor on a Facebook group who became his accountability partner. However, the business eventually closed down in January 2020 due to burnout and not having a foreseeable future.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Maverick Lim
- Country: Singapore
- Industry: Marketing
- Started in: 2019
- Closed in: 2020
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
51) Vulpine
Derric Haynie is an entrepreneur based in Oakland, California who, years ago, launched Vulpine Interactive, a social media and advertising agency. Peaking at 10 clients, $40k/mo and 5 employees, things were expected to keep going well. However, they ended up shutting the business and walked away with $70k in debt. Learn what happened!
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Derric Haynie
- Country: United States
- Industry: Social Media
- Started in: 2013
- Closed in: 2018
- Specific cause of failure: Mismanagement of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
52) Watu
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
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
53) Yottio
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
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
