16 Failed Startups Founded in New York
Here’s a list of 16 failed startups from New York.
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.
16 Failed Startups Founded in New York
1) Call9
Call9 was a health startup targeted at patients who needed to speak with a doctor. The founder's inability to achieve growth, led to its shut down in 2019.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Celina Tenev, Timothy Peck, XiaoSong Mu
- Country: United States
- Industry: Health
- Started in: 2015
- Closed in: 2019
- Nº of employees: 100-250
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
2) Digg
Digg had the mission of "democratizing" the content and news that people saw. However, it missed lots of opportunities to become a thriving social network.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Kevin Rose
- Country: United States
- Industry: Social Media
- Started in: 2004
- Closed in: Active
- Nº of employees: 50-100
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Competition
You can read more about their failure here.
3) Fab
Fab was an e-commerce company focused on daily design inspiration. Its success resulted in companies launching their same exact replicas of Fab’s platform.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Bradford Shane Shellhammer, Deepa Shah, Jason Goldberg, Nishith Shah, Sunil Khedar
- Country: United States
- Industry: e-Commerce
- Started in: 2009
- Closed in: 2013
- Nº of employees: 500-1,000
- Funding Amount: > $50M
- Specific cause of failure: Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
4) 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.
5) Maple
Maple prepared and delivered meals in NY. They were losing money on each meal and it only began making a profit from 2016, just before they shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Akshay Navle, Caleb Merkl
- Country: United States
- Industry: Food & Beverage
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2017
- Nº of employees: 100-250
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
6) 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.
7) 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.
8) Totsy
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.
9) Turntable.fm
Turntable.fm was a platform on which DJ and fans were brought together. The cost of running it proved to be too expensive and they had to shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Billy Chasen
- Country: United States
- Industry: Music
- Started in: 2011
- Closed in: 2013
- Nº of employees: 1-10
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
10) Tutorspree
Tutorspree wanted to enhance tutoring. Their vision of pairing up tutors and students to meet up in person was not practical, which made it shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Aaron Harris, Josh Abrams, Ryan Bednar
- Country: United States
- Industry: Education
- Started in: 2010
- Closed in: 2013
- Nº of employees: 50-100
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
11) Vine
What happened to Vine? Why did Vine shut down? When? Does TikTok face the same risk? Here's our detailed analysis.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Colin Kroll, Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov
- Country: United States
- Industry: Social Media
- Started in: 2012
- Closed in: 2017
- Nº of employees: 50-100
- Specific cause of failure: Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
12) Wantful
Wantful was an e-Commerce founded in 2011. After experiencing exponential growth, it shut down in 2013 due to stiff competition from other companies.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: John Poisson
- Country: United States
- Industry: e-Commerce
- Started in: 2011
- Closed in: 2013
- Nº of employees: +10,000
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Competition
You can read more about their failure here.
13) Birdy
The Birdy was a simple app to track spending habits. Corey never figured out how to monetize it which also caused scaling issues.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Corey Maass
- Country: United States
- Industry: Finances
- Started in: 2009
- Closed in: 2015
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
14) 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.
15) ExploreVR
Andrey Norin is a budding entrepreneur, responsible for all the successes and the failures of ExploreVR. This was a directory site focused 100% on virtual reality. He started it in 2017 and shut down a few months later. His lack of experience in creating a business from scratch was the main cause of failure.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Andrey Norin
- Country: United States
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2017
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Experience
You can read more about their failure here.
16) Kopely
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
- Specific cause of failure: Dependence on Others
You can read more about their failure here.
