Startup Failures in 2015

Amazon tried to disrupt Expedia and Booking.com — shut down in 7 months

Jeff Bezos personally demanded the Fire Phone — Amazon lost $178M and learned nothing works without apps

News Corp's billion-dollar bet on K-12 tablets that ended in a near-total writedown

The open textbook startup that threatened publishers so directly they sued it out of existence

Boxee built the software that connected TVs to internet content before Roku and Apple TV did. Samsung acquired it. Then abandoned it.

Spain's largest luxury flash sales acquired by Amazon for $80M — Amazon shut it after 5 years because flash sales conflicted with Amazon's everyday-low-price brand positioning

The atomic news app that broke stories into digestible facts — shut down when social media made that a feature, not a business

Bringing 3D printing to Staples proved the consumer market wasn't ready.

Justin Kan's errand app sold for $10M then killed—proof that on-demand everything doesn't pencil out.

Design flash-sale site pivoted four times and ran out of identity

The design flash-sale unicorn that raised $336M, grew to 2,000 employees in 18 months — and sold the whole thing for $15M

The design marketplace that raised $336M, pivoted three times, and sold for under $15M

A scalable NoSQL database with ACID guarantees that required less hardware and ran faster than competitors.

A real-time feed aggregator that consolidated social media updates, blog posts, and RSS feeds from multiple platforms.

The social aggregator that invented the Like button — Facebook bought it, used the idea, killed the product.

Frontback was a social app for sharing selfies from front and back cameras simultaneously.

Google put the internet on your face — and got called a 'Glasshole' for it

The future of computing on your face — until society rejected the camera on your face.

Google built a marketplace for video expert consultations. 14 months later, it was gone.

The social test-prep pioneer that pivoted to Pinterest for learning and found neither market wanted it

35 million users, zero licenses — the music streaming platform that bet it could outrun the labels

Location-based mobile app connecting businesses with customers seeking flash deals in real-time.

Home cleaning marketplace killed by worker misclassification lawsuits

The $38M home cleaning marketplace killed by worker misclassification lawsuits before it could scale

Smart internet-connected switches that learn from user behavior to automate home appliances.

Lumos built smart internet-connected switches that learn from user behavior to automate home appliances.

A sleek email app that made inboxes faster, lighter, and mobile-friendly with AI-powered sorting and smart gestures.

The creator of SimCity and The Sims was shut by EA in 2015 after a botched always-online SimCity relaunch nearly destroyed the franchise.

The live-streaming app that launched at SXSW 2015 to the loudest applause of the year — and died seven months later when Twitter blocked it

Microsoft paid $7.2B for Nokia's phones — then wrote down $7.6B eighteen months later

The $99 Kickstarter gaming console that briefly made the industry nervous — then disappeared.

Dave Morin's "thoughtful" private social network raised $60M to fix Facebook. Sold to Kakao for a nominal sum. Shut down in 2018.

The Spanish fintech that pivoted from near-death to a Nasdaq IPO.

The photo backup startup that lost its users' irreplaceable memories on the way down

A data visualization platform that made political funding and legislative information transparent and accessible to citizens and institutions.

A mobile platform that enabled political campaigns to engage supporters through targeted SMS messaging.

Crowdsourced invention platform raised $185M but couldn't manufacture profitably

The music streaming service that built the best product, lost to Spotify anyway, and went bankrupt in 2015

The music streaming app that was better than Spotify but still lost

An analytics tool for e-commerce sites that provided real-time customer behavior insights and customized messaging capabilities.

An intelligent real-time CRM platform that enabled local businesses to target consumers using data-driven insights.

The anonymous sharing app that hit #1 in the App Store — and shut down 15 months later because anonymity enables cruelty at scale

A web-based buy and sell platform with mobile and social network integration allowing users to trade goods and digital content.

A web-based buy and sell platform for users to trade goods and digitally created content.

The ridesharing startup that pioneered peer-to-peer rides before Lyft — raised $38.5M, invented features Uber and Lyft copied, and sold its assets to GM for $2M

Google bought the best music curation on the internet, then quietly deleted it.

A B2B live news video tool that couldn't survive when free consumer apps offered the same thing.

A smart workspace platform for businesses to manage projects and information.

Sold for $44M before growth flatlined completely — a lucky exit, not a win.

Viggle paid people to watch TV. Raised $150M+. Discovered you can't build a sustainable business by paying people to do something they already do for free.

An online platform that democratized hardware design and customization for anyone without technical expertise.

Peter Gabriel's music startup was acquired by Tesco — and that's where both ideas went to die

Microsoft built the living room PC experience before Apple TV and Netflix — then stopped developing it.

A Google Ventures-backed kids' clothing box imploded under operational chaos and wrong shipments.

Built end-to-end encrypted cloud storage before iCloud and Dropbox — Seagate acquired and shut it 6 years later to focus on hardware, while Dropbox grew to 500M users in the same period

Yahoo built the first visual web mashup tool in 2007. Beloved by developers. Killed in 2015 with zero explanation.

Turkey's original food delivery pioneer swallowed by Delivery Hero for $589M, losing all independence.

Raised $1.5M to send a single word. The internet called it stupid. They were right.

Europe's biggest Kickstarter drone raised £2.3M and delivered fewer than 600 of 15,000 units promised.

The virtual-assistant marketplace with 500 employees across 39 states — shut down overnight with no severance