Evaluating only Kimono Labs’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Competition as the #1 likely cause. Documented cause: Acquisition gone wrong.
Key Events Timeline
FOUNDING
Kimono Labs founded to enable no-code web scraping and API creation from any website.
FUNDING
Raised approximately $1M in seed funding from investors including Y Combinator.
ACQUISITION ATTEMPT
Palantir Technologies acqui-hired the founding team in February 2016.
SHUTDOWN
Service shut down with only two weeks notice, stranding thousands of production users.
Full Analysis
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Documented cause
Kimono Labs built a no-code web scraping tool that let users turn any website into an API by clicking on page elements. Founded in 2014 and backed by approximately $1M in funding, the service gained significant developer traction. In February 2016, Palantir Technologies acquired the team in an acqui-hire deal. The product was shut down on March 1, 2016, giving users just two weeks notice, stranding thousands of developers who had built production pipelines on the platform.
Lesson
“Acqui-hires harm loyal users — build export tools and sunset plans before day one.”
Failure anatomy
Collapse type
Acqui-hire
📉 MEDIUM
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