// startup autopsy

itarget.com

Targeted too early, missed the market entirely.

timingSlow Death

Years-long decline before final shutdown · Fatal mistake: Raised and spent heavily in 1999 assuming dot-com growth would continue, leaving no buffer when the bubble burst.

Founded	1997
Closed	2001
Country	USA
Sector	Saas

50%

Key Events Timeline

1997-01-01

FOUNDING

itarget.com founded to offer online targeting and segmentation SaaS tools.

1999-06-01

FUNDING

Received its last known funding round during the peak of dot-com enthusiasm.

2000-04-01

PIVOT

Dot-com crash decimated online advertising budgets, forcing a scramble for enterprise clients.

2001-06-01

SHUTDOWN

Operations ceased as funding ran dry and the market for targeting software collapsed.

Full Analysis

Analyst plan

Documented cause

itarget.com was an early SaaS targeting tool startup that failed during the dot-com bust in the early 2000s. The company received its last funding in 1999 during the height of the internet bubble, positioning i...

tself in the emerging online advertising targeting software market. However, the timing proved catastrophic. When the dot-com bubble burst, enterprise budgets for technology spending collapsed dramati

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HypeCycle · MoatType · ResearchTags

itarget.com collapsed from raised and spent heavily in 1999 assuming dot-com growth would continue, leaving no buffer when the bubble burst.. Documented cause, verified lesson, all failure signals.

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