42 Failed Startups with No Market Need
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 42 startups that failed due to no market need, along with analyses on why they shut down and interviews with their founders.
42 Failed Startups with No Market Need
1) Aria Insights
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
You can read more about their failure here.
2) Berg
Berg was a cloud platform on which Little Printer, an IoT device, worked. They had loyal supporters, but couldn't convert it into a sustainable business.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Matt Webb
- Country: United Kingdom
- Industry: Design
- Started in: 2005
- Closed in: 2014
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
You can read more about their failure here.
3) Dinnr
Dinnr allowed to select a recipe and order pre-measured ingredients accompanied with instructions. However, there wasn’t a market need for the business.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Adil Mohammed, Michal Bohanes
- Country: United Kingdom
- Industry: Food & Beverage
- Started in: 2012
- Closed in: 2014
- Nº of employees: 1-10
- Funding Amount: < $1M
You can read more about their failure here.
4) EventVue
EventVue helped to improve the conference networking experience. They lacked product-market fit and failed to test early the usefulness of the product.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Josh Fraser, Rob Johnson
- Country: United States
- Industry: Finances
- Started in: 2007
- Closed in: 2010
- Nº of employees: 1-10
- Funding Amount: < $1M
You can read more about their failure here.
5) 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
You can read more about their failure here.
6) PoliMobile
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
You can read more about their failure here.
7) Quibi
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
You can read more about their failure here.
8) Shipitwise
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
You can read more about their failure here.
9) Sip
Sip was made by ProductHunt. It covered news in the tech industry in a bite-size format. Due to no market need and lack of focus, PH shut it down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Ryan Hoover, Nick Abouzeid, Chad Whitaker
- Country: United States
- Industry: Productivity
- Started in: 2018
- Closed in: 2019
- Nº of employees: 1-10
- Funding Amount: $0
You can read more about their failure here.
10) TeeBeeDee
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
You can read more about their failure here.
11) Teforia
Teforia was a tea brewer that yielded the perfect cup of tea by combining tradition with smart technology. It had an absence of market fit and shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Allen Han, Kris Efland
- Country: United States
- Industry: Food & Beverage
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2017
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
You can read more about their failure here.
12) Vreal
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
You can read more about their failure here.
13) Wattage
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
You can read more about their failure here.
14) 101 Studios
101 Studios was a producer of video games that taught users things while they played. They went with a “business to professor” business model, but despite professors like the idea, they wouldn’t implement it in their classes. The startup could never reach product-market fit and shut down months later.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Matt “GundayMonday” Sever
- Country: United States
- Industry: Education
You can read more about their failure here.
15) 140 Canvas
After dropping out of university, Harry went back home and found a gift: a fake big tweet from Federer. That’s when he came with a business idea: fake tweets printed and sold for £30. He partnered with a friend and launched the project within 2 months. However, after a Youtube’s influencer campaign, the site got 17,000 visitors and only 20 sales. That’s when they realized not so many people were interested in their product...
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Harry Dry
- Country: United Kingdom
- Industry: e-Commerce
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2018
You can read more about their failure here.
16) 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
You can read more about their failure here.
17) Addressbin
Addressbin was an easy way to collect email addresses. Bad marketing and big competitors where the problems that dug its grave.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Adam Bard
- Country: Canada
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2013
- Closed in: 2018
You can read more about their failure here.
18) AskTina
AskTina was a live video chat widget for experts to install on their blogs. They did not spend enough time validating the idea through customer interviews before investing in building the MVP.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Tom Hunt
- Country: United Kingdom
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2016
- Closed in: 2017
You can read more about their failure here.
19) BeehiveID
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
You can read more about their failure here.
20) Botnim
Botnim was a web application that provided near dishes and their nutritional values. Read now the story of the 2 co-founders with a failed startup.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Shaked Klein Orbach & Gilad Peled
- Country: Israel
- Industry: Food & Beverage
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2017
You can read more about their failure here.
21) Creator Growth Lab
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
You can read more about their failure here.
22) 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
You can read more about their failure here.
23) Eloquis
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
You can read more about their failure here.
24) Eventloot
Justin Anyanwu is a maker who a few years ago built Eventloot, a SaaS platform for wedding planning professionals. He hired some designers and developers and got the SaaS working. But after a few months of running Facebook Ads and sending cold emails, they decided to shut it down. They hadn’t built a platform that solved the problems wedding planners had.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Justin Anyanwu
- Country: United States
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2017
You can read more about their failure here.
25) 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
You can read more about their failure here.
26) Fantastic House Buyers
Fantastic House Buyers was an online service designed to improve the expensive and stressful experience of buying a house in the UK. Alan built it himself and start trying a lot of different marketing strategies. However, after a few months, he realized he had built something that no-one wanted.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Alan Murray
- Country: United Kingdom
- Industry: Services
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2018
You can read more about their failure here.
27) Gymlisted
Gymlisted was a website for finding the right private gym. Every day, Tom would go home from his day job and code up features for Gymlisted until midnight. Once launched, they started with their marketing efforts. But they soon realized there was pretty much no demand for what they were offering.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Tom Zaragoza
- Country: Canada
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2018
You can read more about their failure here.
28) Hello Tyro
Pierre co-founded Hello Tyro, a platform matching students with internship opportunities in Belgian startups. They raised €250k and reached €4k MRR at their top but didn't find Product-Market Fit. They ran out of cash and filed for bankruptcy in 2020.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Pierre Tillement
- Country: Belgium
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2020
You can read more about their failure here.
29) Juice Startup
Wit Sumathavanit has recently started to pivot from offline to online entrepreneurship. But before that, he tried to build a juice business in Bangkok. He lost around $3,000 but those learnings impacted his process to validate new ideas.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Wit Sumathavanit
- Country: Thailand
- Industry: Food & Beverage
- Started in: 2020
- Closed in: 2020
You can read more about their failure here.
30) Kolos
In 2012, Ivo started a 3-year journey building a business that sold iPad racing wheels, which would suck up $50,000 in personal and investor funds. The hardware accelerator he went through wasn't able to help turn his business into a success, neither was the Kickstarter campaign successful. Learning from the experience, today Ivo runs $1M+ crowdfunding campaigns. Read below to learn about his journey.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Ivaylo Kalburdzhiev
- Country: Bulgaria
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2012
- Closed in: 2015
You can read more about their failure here.
31) MyCity
Stepa co-founded MyCity, a tool for local authorities to build relationships with their residents. After realizing they had created a product for a non-existing market, they decided to shut it down.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Stepa Mitaki
- Country: Russia
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2016
You can read more about their failure here.
32) NE Lounge
Following his objective of reaching $10k/month from his online businesses, Jake launched NE Lounge, an Amazon FBA store selling inflatable products. 1 year and $16,000 later, the startup shut down. Choosing the wrong product in an unfamiliar niche is the cause to blame.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Jake Lang
- Country: United States
- Industry: e-Commerce
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2018
You can read more about their failure here.
33) Pactero
Wes founded Pactero, a platform to simplify the process of managing income share agreements. He confused the initial launch hype with market validation, but it was vanity. The business made around $180 total after spending $55k.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Wes Wagner
- Country: United States
- Industry: Education
- Started in: 2020
- Closed in: 2021
You can read more about their failure here.
34) Phoenix
Phoenix was a SaaS app to send a last message to the people you love when you die. However, it was the app which died first.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Enrique Benitez
- Country: Mexico
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2017
You can read more about their failure here.
35) Readership
Gregg Blanchard developed Readership from a fascination with Twitter API. While the visual analytics on Readership was appealing, it didn’t bring enough marketing value to get the buy-in needed to be a successful start-up.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Gregg Blanchard
- Country: United States
- Industry: Analytics
- Started in: 2019
- Closed in: 2019
You can read more about their failure here.
36) Reality Hunt
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
You can read more about their failure here.
37) Tali
Matt created Tali, a timekeeping solution for lawyers powered by voice technology like Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant. Like many first start-ups, they encountered many mistakes while trying to build. He created Tali in the effort to help lawyers more effectively keep track of their time instead of using pen and paper. Ultimately, due to a lack of traction and a misfit product market they had to wind things down.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Matthew Volm
- Country: United States
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2019
You can read more about their failure here.
38) Tandem
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
You can read more about their failure here.
39) Tandem App
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
You can read more about their failure here.
40) Team Voice
Team Voice was a SaaS platform for HR professionals. The problem they were trying to solve turned out to be a human problem, not a technology one.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Kirill Vechtomov
- Country: Canada
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2015
- Closed in: 2017
You can read more about their failure here.
41) Teamometer
When reading the Lean Startup book, Sergio came up with an idea he wanted to validate: a SaaS to help teams to perform at a higher level. The validation was done successfully, but since then, mistakes related to technology, founding team and listening to customers, meant its shut down 2 years later.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Sergio Schüler
- Country: Brazil
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2012
- Closed in: 2013
You can read more about their failure here.
42) WorldOs
WorldOS was a P2P infrastructure provider. Lucas tried to productize a buzzword, but was not solving the right problem.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Lucas Gonze
- Country: United States
- Industry: Software & Hardware
- Started in: 2005
- Closed in: 2005
You can read more about their failure here.
