Startup Failures in 2017

The New York Times paid $410M for one of the web's most-visited sites — then let Google's algorithm kill it.

Invented instant messaging, then got messaged into irrelevance.

AIM defined a generation's digital social life. 100M users. Away messages. Buddy lists. Verizon killed it with a press release.

Dalton Caldwell's $50/year ad-free Twitter alternative — crowdfunded $750K in 30 days from developers, built a beloved product, and shut down because users wouldn't pay for social networking

Hotels wanted tech — just not from a startup they'd never heard of.

Building a better scientific notebook than Jupyter meant nothing once Google, Microsoft and AWS backed the incumbent.

The peer-to-peer used car marketplace that burned $150 million and never solved operations

Desktop powder sintering — squeezed out between prosumer SLA and industrial MJF.

Structured public discussion with curated participants — Facebook acquired the 10-person team and shut the product within months

Bridj provided dynamic bus-sharing routes powered by mobile app technology.

Britain's home-delivery used car startup ran out of road before Cazoo made the model famous.

A 7-3 FDA panel vote against their lead antibiotic sent Cempra into a terminal collapse.

Four years of piping data, then the tap ran dry on Series A funding.

200 million children played Club Penguin. Disney shut it down. Kids streamed themselves crying.

A single card that stored all your credit cards electronically — made obsolete by Apple Pay and Google Pay before it could achieve scale.

The a16z-backed social learning network for professionals that professionals never adopted

del.icio.us invented social bookmarking in 2003. Yahoo bought it. Then AVOS. Then Science Inc. Then it died.

Transient gene therapy efficacy triggered immune responses that killed Dimension's hemophilia program.

Ex-Amazon founder built the right DevOps tool at the wrong time against open-source giants.

Raised $50M for smart earbuds that could filter ambient sound in real-time. Beautiful hardware. No scalable business model.

Caught in the regulatory crossfire meant for the giants—collateral damage in the DFS wars.

A construction communication app swallowed by WeWork before it could outrun Procore.

Photo slideshows set to music — acquired by Musical.ly then absorbed into TikTok

The luxury island music festival that was FEMA tents and cheese sandwiches

Made the most popular Marvel game online. Lost the Marvel license. Gave players 3 days notice before pulling the plug.

Selling surveillance tools to track protesters wasn't a business model — it was a liability.

Energy storage software trailblazer acqui-hired for its IP before the market fully matured.

Plant-based mayo unicorn — caught buying its own product off shelves

Real-time ocean tracking sounded great—until carriers refused to cooperate.

A Kickstarter darling that couldn't turn sleep data into a sustainable business.

Built a smart grocery scanner; Amazon built the same thing for free.

The invisible backbone of 7 million smart homes, commoditized and absorbed by its own partners.

Dubai's beloved bootstrapped marketplace killed by the harsh math of competing against VC-funded rivals.

The wearable pioneer that got crushed by the giants it inspired.

$3.2B for fitness trackers that broke. Apple Watch arrived.

The enterprise social network that IPO'd at $2B — sold for $462M after Slack changed everything

The "Tinder for jobs" app was acquired by Monster Worldwide in 2016 and shut down 11 months later when Monster itself was acquired by Randstad.

A $700 machine to squeeze a bag your hands could squeeze for free.

The $700 juicer that didn't need to exist — proven live on Bloomberg.

The mobile strategy gaming company that hit $400M in revenue at its peak — then watched the mobile gaming market consolidate around a handful of mega-titles

An AR live video pioneer killed the moment Snapchat and Instagram copied its core feature.

A Wi-Fi connected smart wine bottle with touchscreen display for wine preservation and serving.

Trained retail workers for interviews but couldn't train its own unit economics.

France's group payment app. Crédit Mutuel Arkéa acquired it. Product focus lost.

Autonomous selfie drone pre-sold 60,000 units from a viral video. The viral video wasn't shot with the Lily camera. Product never shipped at scale. $34M in pre-orders refunded.

The $34M pre-order drone that never shipped — and used rival footage in its own launch video.

Europe's Netflix before Netflix arrived — then Netflix arrived.

On-demand valet parking — solved an expensive problem for a small urban niche, then ran out of density.

David Chang's restaurant-quality food delivery startup never found a price that worked for everyone

Pete Cashmore built the internet's biggest tech blog from his bedroom in Scotland — then turned down $950M and sold for $50M

The startup intelligence platform that knew everything about other companies failing — except how to stop its own slow bleed

Real-time ad analytics pioneer quietly absorbed into Snap for a fraction of its promise.

Mexico's first bitcoin exchange. Shut down before the Fintech Law arrived.

One music service, four names, eleven years, and zero market share vs. Spotify and Apple Music.

Sold for $45M, then slowly erased from existence inside a larger company.

The #GIRLBOSS fashion empire that turned an eBay side hustle into a $350M brand — and lost it all to lawsuits and a founder war

Built a waitlist app for restaurants, then waited too long for a real moat.

Blockchain identity for everyone — until no one wanted it.

A/B testing pioneer sold for a fraction of its valuation after free tools ate the market

Waited for Open Banking to arrive — shut down before it did.

The Ethereum client company froze $280M in ETH with a single buggy smart contract and never recovered trust

MENA's payment infrastructure pioneer erased when Amazon rebranded everything its own.

When the well-funded competitor wins the market, even the better product must close its doors.

The photo host that broke millions of websites overnight by ransoming its own users

Microsoft Research's panoramic photography miracle — killed by a corporate focus change

The premium mobile studio that bet serious tabletop gamers would pay for digital — they would, just not enough of them.

Jeff Bezos-backed direct primary care network that proved the model worked but couldn't reach financial sustainability

Marc Lore built Diapers.com to $300M revenue. Amazon noticed, dropped diaper prices 30% to force a sale, acquired Quidsi for $545M in 2011, then shut every property in 2017 once the threat was neutralized.

The app search engine that raised $167.5M from Alibaba to index the world's apps — then shut when Alibaba decided it didn't need them anymore

Racing to build a 3D printing empire just as desktop printers gutted the service bureau market.

API monitoring pioneer undersold by Postman's freemium wave and acquired below investor expectations.

A global giant's Africa SME cloud product killed by infrastructure reality and corporate consolidation.

Getting acquired by Apple is a win — unless it means your product disappears forever.

Snapchat built camera glasses for $130. Ordered 800K pairs. Sold 220K. Wrote down $40M.

SoftBank's $6.5B Indian e-commerce bet collapsed when it refused a Flipkart acquisition offer and was left to slowly die as Amazon and Flipkart divided the market.

AI-powered wedding matching that was 42% wrong, 100% of the time.

The Arab world's biggest ecommerce brand swallowed whole by Amazon.

The farm-to-phone meal delivery startup that discovered vertical integration is a cost trap at small scale.

Staffjoy helped small businesses automate and improve scheduling for hourly workers.

India's homestay OTA. Founder arrested mid-shutdown. Unprecedented Indian startup crisis.

Cleaned everyone's contact data — couldn't clean up its own competitive position.

India's home services gig platform crushed between giants and brutal unit economics.

The original gig economy marketplace — saved by IKEA after a near-fatal pivot nearly destroyed it.

A Wi-Fi-connected smart tea brewing machine with mobile app control and prepackaged tea leaf packets designed to brew the perfect cup of tea.

A premium automated tea infusion device for home users.

The algae biofuel company that pivoted from jet fuel to food ingredients and still burned through $500M before bankruptcy.

A social payment platform that enabled groups and communities to crowdfund events and settle payments with friends.

The injectable drug delivery startup that raised $250M, won deals with AstraZeneca and Hikma, and collapsed after its CEO was charged with securities fraud.

Uber for vets—where the $75 house call fee couldn't cover a vet's hourly rate.

Invented the short video format. Never monetized it. TikTok inherited the creators.

Invented the short video format — then watched TikTok harvest the category it created.

Raised $55M to measure video ads, then Nielsen and comScore made them irrelevant.

Dutch container CI pioneer acquired by Oracle for a song, then slowly deprecated into nothingness.

Microsoft's mobile OS had beautiful design and zero apps — the ecosystem never came

Turned down $44.6B from Microsoft. Sold for $4.5B nine years later.

The enterprise social network that won the market, sold to Microsoft — and got integrated too slowly to survive Slack.

The Airbnb for bulldozers — acquired before the market was ready to share.

Model deployment pioneer swallowed by Alteryx before cloud giants commoditized the entire category.

The anonymous campus social network that couldn't survive what anonymity enables.

Adventures for everyone — but the startup itself couldn't find its footing.