// startup autopsy

Spring.me

Formspring rebranded as Spring.me after cyberbullying killed the original — the same anonymous Q&A product with a new name had identical harassment problems and shut 12 months later

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Fatal mistake: Spring.me was the rebrand of Formspring after cyberbullying controversies. Formspring had been anonymous Q&A social with 30M users. Rebranded as Spring.me 2012. Core product unchanged — anonymous questions. Same cyberbullying problems returned immediately. Teen suicide cases linked to anonymous question harassment continued. App Store restrictions re-applied. Spring.me shut June 2013.

Founded	2012
Closed	2013
Country	USA
Sector	Social

50%

Key Events Timeline

2012

FOUNDING

2012

DOWN ROUND

2013

SHUTDOWN

Full Analysis

Analyst plan

Documented cause

Spring.me was a Formspring rebrand with identical product. Same cyberbullying returned immediately. App Store restrictions re-applied. Shut June 2013....

Verified lesson

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€33.8M

Peak valuation

HypeCycle · MoatType · ResearchTags

Spring.me raised €13.5M before spring.me was the rebrand of formspring after cyberbullying controversies. formspring had been anonymous q&a social with 30m users. rebranded as spring.me 2012. core product unchanged — anonymous questions. same cyberbullying problems returned immediately. teen suicide cases linked to anonymous question harassment continued. app store restrictions re-applied. spring.me shut june 2013. ended it. See the documented cause, verified lesson and all failure signals.

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