// startup autopsy

Eliyon Technologies

LinkedIn before LinkedIn — without the network effect

marketfitAcqui-hire

Fatal mistake: Built a professional data aggregation product without a defensible moat, making it trivially replicable by better-funded competitors like LinkedIn and Jigsaw.

Founded	2000
Closed	2005
Country	USA
Sector	Saas

50%

Key Events Timeline

2000-01-01

FOUNDING

Eliyon Technologies founded to aggregate professional profile data for B2B sales intelligence.

2002-06-01

FUNDING

Raised early funding rounds totaling $7M to build out its professional data aggregation platform.

2004-01-01

PRODUCT LAUNCH

Launched updated SaaS platform for sales teams, but faced mounting competition from LinkedIn and free data sources.

2004-09-01

PIVOT

Attempted to reposition as an enterprise data enrichment tool to differentiate from consumer-focused LinkedIn.

2005-06-01

SHUTDOWN

Acquired by Broadlook Technologies after failing to achieve sustainable growth; operations wound down.

Full Analysis

Analyst plan

Documented cause

Eliyon Technologies was a people-data SaaS platform that aggregated professional profiles and data for sales intelligence purposes. The company raised $7 million in funding but ultimately failed to achieve sust...

ainable business growth and profitability. The core challenge was a classic SaaS monetization problem: Eliyon attempted to build a premium service around data that was largely available for free or at

Verified lesson

“...”

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€12.6M

Peak valuation

HypeCycle · MoatType · ResearchTags

Eliyon Technologies raised €7M before built a professional data aggregation product without a defensible moat, making it trivially replicable by better-funded competitors like linkedin and jigsaw. ended it. See the documented cause, verified lesson and all failure signals.

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