17 Failed Transportation Startups & their Case Studies
There are a lot of things to consider when building a new startup - where to get funding, how to validate your idea, and what features should the product have.
One of the challenges is finding a market that is willing to pay for your solution without even knowing what it is yet.
However, 90% of startups will fail and shut down.
In this article, you can find 17 failed Transportation startups as well as analyses on why they closed down.
17 Failed Transportation Startups
1) Beepi
Beepi was a marketplace for used cars. They ran out of cash to operate and tried to sell to potential buyers, but didn't achieve to close the operation.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Ale Resnik, Owen Savir
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2013
- Closed in: 2016
- Nº of employees: 100-250
- Funding Amount: > $50M
- Specific cause of failure: Mismanagement of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
2) HiGear
HiGear was a peer-to-peer online company that listed luxury cars for rent. A criminal gang stole four cars worth $400k. They opted to shut down operations.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Ali Moiz, Murtaza Hussain
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2011
- Closed in: 2011
- Nº of employees: 1-10
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Legal Challenges
You can read more about their failure here.
3) Karhoo
Karhoo was a cab aggregator. It was out of business after 6 months of operation. Poor management and bad execution of a good concept were the main causes.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Daniel Ishag
- Country: United Kingdom
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2016
- Nº of employees: 50-100
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Poor Product
You can read more about their failure here.
4) Leap Transit
Leap Transit was a private bus service based in San Francisco. They didn't comply with the SF regulations, which made them halt their operations.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Kyle Kirchhoff
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2013
- Closed in: 2015
- Nº of employees: 50-100
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Legal Challenges
You can read more about their failure here.
5) Navdy
Navdy provided a display that projected GPS in the cars' front. They failed due to a saturated market and a device that didn't satisfy customer needs.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Doug Simpson, Karl Guttag
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2013
- Closed in: 2018
- Nº of employees: 50-100
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
6) 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
- Started in: 2016
- Closed in: 2019
- Nº of employees: 1-10
- Funding Amount: < $1M
- Specific cause of failure: No Market Need
You can read more about their failure here.
7) Shuddle
Shuddle was the go-to service for parents that needed someone to drive their kids to school. Parents found it disappointing, so they had to shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Nick Allen, Rodrigo Prudencio
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2016
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
8) Shyp
Shyp imitated the Uber model with an on-demand shipping service. However, they were unable to figure out a profitable business model and had to shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Jack Smith, Joshua Scott, Kevin Gibbon
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2013
- Closed in: 2018
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: > $50M
- Specific cause of failure: Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
9) Sidecar
Sidecar was a transportation company. They had top-notch technology but no marketing strategy, and could only become useful in high-density cities.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Jahan Khanna, Sunil Paul
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2011
- Closed in: 2015
- Nº of employees: 50-100
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Competition
You can read more about their failure here.
10) Skully
Skully was a helmet targetting motorcycle riders. They had to close shops due to no fundings and couldn't complete the production of the pre-orders.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Marcus Weller, Mitch Weller
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2013
- Closed in: 2016
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: $10M-$50M
- Specific cause of failure: Mismanagement of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
11) Stratolaunch
Stratolaunch aimed to launch orbital rockets from the stratosphere. Paul Allen’s passing away in October of 2018 spell out the same fate for Stratolaunch.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Paul Allen
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2010
- Closed in: 2019
- Nº of employees: 500-1,000
- Funding Amount: $0
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Focus
You can read more about their failure here.
12) WOW Air
WOW Air was the Icelandic answer to RyanAir for low-cost air travel in Europe. The cause of failure was that they wanted to become too big too fast.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Skuli Mogensen
- Country: Iceland
- Started in: 2011
- Closed in: 2019
- Nº of employees: 50-100
- Specific cause of failure: Multiple Reasons
You can read more about their failure here.
13) Zoomo
Zoomo's goal was to build trust in the Indian used cars market. The buy-and-sell vehicle market was relatively young in India and decided to shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founders: Arnav Kumar, Himangshu Hazarika
- Country: India
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2016
- Nº of employees: 10-50
- Funding Amount: $1M-$10M
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Business Model
You can read more about their failure here.
14) Autto.in
Autto.in was an on-demand doorstep car service provider, created by Deepak in 2017. Soon after launching, a co-founder joined him and they started marketing the startup, spending a lot of money in customer acquisition. As money burnt, they decided to reach investors, who put them pressure in growing fast. After some months, they decided to shut down.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Deepak Murthy
- Country: India
- Started in: 2017
- Closed in: 2017
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
15) 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
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2016
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
16) Mishra Motors
Mishra Motors was to be the premier electric sports bike in India. Time and capital were the causes of its collapse.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Naveen Mishra
- Country: India
- Started in: 2014
- Closed in: 2016
- Specific cause of failure: Lack of Funds
You can read more about their failure here.
17) MotoBox
Simple, WiFi-enabled, OBD-II vehicle data logger and cloud services creating a platform for custom software development, which couldn’t reach customers.
Details of the startup:
- Founder: Joe Stech
- Country: United States
- Started in: 2013
- Closed in: 2013
- Specific cause of failure: Bad Marketing
You can read more about their failure here.
