Startups are hard and becoming a successful one is even harder, so here is a list of 11 failed startups that depended on others and shut down.
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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 11 startups that failed due to depending on others, along with analyses on why they shut down and interviews with their founders.
HitMeUp was a web-based business commercial center. The founder had no tech background, and after launching 3 versions, they decided to shut down.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Charlie Pool
Country:
United Kingdom
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2011
Closed in:
2015
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
< $1M
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Experience
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
PostRocket was a Facebook marketing platform co-founded in October 2010. Many technical issues and depending on FB affected the quality of their service.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Murry Ivanoff, Tim Chae
Country:
United States
Industry:
Analytics
Started in:
2010
Closed in:
2013
Nº of employees:
1-10
Funding Amount:
< $1M
Specific cause of failure:
Poor Product
You can read more about their failure here.
Totsy was a flash sale company that offered high-end fashion brands online for a low-price. Flash sales lost their attractiveness and became obsolete.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Christophe Garnier, Guillaume Gauthereau
Country:
United States
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2009
Closed in:
2013
Nº of employees:
50-100
Funding Amount:
$10M-$50M
Specific cause of failure:
Poor Product
You can read more about their failure here.
BeehiveID was a startup on the dating market, that identified online accounts created for fraudulent use. Techstars and RightSide Capital decided to invest $70K on their business. However, after some months BeehiveID closed their doors. Being too dependent on Facebook data killed their startup.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Mary Haskett
Country:
United States
Industry:
Software & Hardware
Started in:
2013
Closed in:
2015
Funding Amount:
< $100K
Specific cause of failure:
Dependence on Others
You can read more about their failure here.
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.
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.
Nicolas is an IT support engineer who built Hashtag Pirate, an Instagram hashtag search engine. He hired a freelance developer and, once launched, he put a big focus on SEO. Things were going pretty well. However, in 2015 Instagram announced changes to its API and so Hashtag Pirates stopped working.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Nicolas Elec Attallah
Country:
Spain
Industry:
Social Media
Started in:
2015
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Dependence on Others
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.
Sharkius was a social games company. It grew too fast, too quickly. It reached $80k/month revenue within months and wasted it. Learn from their mistakes!
Details of the startup:
Founder:
David Kramaley
Country:
United Kingdom
Industry:
Entertainment
Started in:
2007
Closed in:
2012
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
Sergio Mattei is an 18-year-old entrepreneur who built Taleship, a social writing application. He developed it himself when he was 16 and participated in a startup competition. Unfortunately, he didn’t win, but was able to get a lot of experience and knowledge that allowed him to grow it to +600 users. Hurricane Maria demotivated Sergio, who finally decided to shut down Taleship.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Sergio Mattei Diaz
Country:
Puerto Rico
Industry:
Social Media
Started in:
2016
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
