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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 26 startups that failed due to being early to market, along with analyses on why they shut down and interviews with their founders.
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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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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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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.
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.
MatterFab had the goal of making metal-based manufacturing affordable. However, the business never found a profitable business model and pricing strategy.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Matthew Burris
Country:
United States
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2013
Closed in:
2019
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Springpad was designed to empower users to clip, organize, and interpret all types of web content. The company failed to develop a monetization strategy.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Jason Horman
Country:
United States
Industry:
Productivity
Started in:
2008
Closed in:
2014
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$1M-$10M
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
TeeBeeDee was a social network aimed at people over 40 to share their experiences. They weren’t able to grow their user base fast enough to survive.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
David Markus, Jon Brandt, Robin Wolaner, Todd Basche
Country:
United States
Industry:
Social Media
Started in:
2007
Closed in:
2009
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$1M-$10M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
Vreal was a virtual reality startup that enabled users to interact with content creators. They were ahead of their time in a market not fully developed.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Todd Hooper
Country:
United States
Industry:
Entertainment
Started in:
2015
Closed in:
Active
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Timing
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
Zoomo's goal was to build trust in the Indian used cars market. The buy-and-sell vehicle market was relatively young in India and decided to shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Arnav Kumar, Himangshu Hazarika
Country:
India
Industry:
Transportation
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
2016
Nº of employees:
10-50
Funding Amount:
$1M-$10M
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
Andrew Kamphey has started several projects related to creators and influencer marketing. One of them was Creator Growth Lab, a tool to help Instagram creators grow by themselves. He invested $5,000, never made a penny, and realized there was no need for that product.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Andrew Kamphey
Country:
Indonesia
Industry:
Analytics
Started in:
2018
Closed in:
2019
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Dependence on Others
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.
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.
Jasmeet is an Indian software engineer who a few years ago decided to build new revenue strategies for his business directory and decided to build a job board with a unique offline-online model. But their idea was too ahead to the time and, due to a bad business model, they had to shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Jasmeet Singh
Country:
India
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2017
Closed in:
2017
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
After a decade of training and coaching, Andrew realized that stress was one of their clients’ main issues. That’s how he thought about creating a stress relief app. He partnered up with a dev company to build his idea while he took care of marketing. In few months, he got a great list of interested people, but COVID-19 changed things… the devs were no longer interested in building the app.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Andrew Laux
Country:
United States
Industry:
Health
Started in:
2019
Closed in:
2020
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Dependence on Others
You can read more about their failure here.
Mishra Motors was to be the premier electric sports bike in India. Time and capital were the causes of its collapse.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Naveen Mishra
Country:
India
Industry:
Transportation
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
Marc co-founded *openmargin, a social e-reader app that turned books into small communities. Being too early in the market, having huge competitors like Amazon, and not shipping fast enough were three of the reasons for the startup’s failure.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Marc Köhlbrugge
Country:
Netherlands
Industry:
Productivity
Started in:
2009
Closed in:
2014
Funding Amount:
$100K-$500K
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
Toby founded two projects that gave him lots of valuable lessons for his current Startup Mill projects. They were RealityHunt and "I Voted Remain". He learned to build a simple landing page before committing to building it and to build processes that simplify your way of working.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Toby Allen
Country:
Belgium
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.
Talking with her manicurist, Margaret got to know some of the common challenges beauty service providers faced in Armenia. Her startup Sofetch aimed to solve some of these. She hired a developer to build it and as she was beginning to prepare the launch, COVID happened and the beauty industry was disrupted. She tried pivoting, but nothing worked so she decided to move on to a new startup idea.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Margaret Rostamian
Country:
Armenia
Industry:
Health
Started in:
2019
Closed in:
2020
Funding Amount:
< $100K
Specific cause of failure:
Failure to Pivot
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
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.
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
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
