7 Failed Startups from Germany & their Case Studies
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
1) Auctionata
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
- Industry: e-Commerce
- Started in: 2012
- Closed in: 2017
- Nº of employees: 250-500
- Funding Amount: > $50M
- Specific cause of failure: Legal Challenges
You can read more about their failure here.
2) 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
- 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
You can read more about their failure here.
3) 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
- Industry: Analytics
- Started in: 2015
- Closed in: 2016
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
4) 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
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2011
- Closed in: 2016
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Management
You can read more about their failure here.
5) 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
- Industry: Entertainment
- Started in: 2013
- Closed in: 2014
- Specific cause of failure: Competition
You can read more about their failure here.
6) 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
- Industry: Transportation
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2016
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
7) 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
- Industry: Education
- Started in: 2018
- Closed in: 2020
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Market Fit
You can read more about their failure here.
