Here’s a list of 7 failed startups from Germany.
Some of them were big, with huge teams and funding rounds.
Others were smaller, ran by the co-founders and with no funding.
But all of them shut down.
And each for a specific cause of failure
7 Failed Startups from Germany & their Case Studies
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2,189 Accelerators & Incubators
Information about the industries, countries, and cities they generally invest in.
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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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1,190 Unicorns
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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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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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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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Auctionata was an online auction platform for art and luxury. Their issues originated from unethical behavior, lack of transparency, and lies by the CEO.
Details of the startup:
Founders:
Alexander Gilkes, Alexander Zacke, Georg Untersalmberger, Susanne Zacke
Country:
Germany
Industry:
e-Commerce
Started in:
2012
Closed in:
2017
Nº of employees:
250-500
Funding Amount:
> $50M
Specific cause of failure:
Legal Challenges
Auctionata
You can read more about their failure here.
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
Moped
You can read more about their failure here.
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
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
No Market Need
ABBY
You can read more about their failure here.
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
Flux
You can read more about their failure here.
Gameslog
Gameslog was a gaming site monetized with affiliate marketing. But the site never took off, as the market was already saturated.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Michael Hebenstreit
Country:
Germany
Industry:
Entertainment
Started in:
2013
Closed in:
2014
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Competition
Gameslog
You can read more about their failure here.
Lieferoo
In 2014, Aazar, a Pakistani entrepreneur, decided to create an Uber for logistics and awkward items trying to solve a problem he and many other people were having: Bringing items from Pakistan to Germany. He soon validated the idea and built the product. But a combination of bad marketing and bad team fit led to their failure.
Details of the startup:
Founder:
Aazar Shad
Country:
Germany
Industry:
Transportation
Started in:
2014
Closed in:
2016
Funding Amount:
$0
Specific cause of failure:
Bad Marketing
Lieferoo
You can read more about their failure here.
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
Young Entrepreneurs' Program
You can read more about their failure here.
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