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The Startup Graveyard

https://www.loot-drop.io/
46•skogstokig•1h ago

Comments

mushufasa•1h ago
this type of resource is actually super useful to idea-stage founders, as it can often be hard to research failed attempts at a domain (typically the websites and assets disappear over time). Even just an index is helpful.

In glancing through this list, some of these make me go "hmm." For example, MySpace is an entry. While it did eventually die, I'm not sure I personally would count myspace as a startup failure -- it got to huge scale, got acquired, and still had niche activity for many years of gradual decline post-acquisition. Certainly, the startup founders and investors had a successful exit.

forkLding•1h ago
Club Penguin was sold to Disney for 350 million, it didn't die in the sense that money ran out
giancarlostoro•27m ago
I was going to say, I don't see Club Penguin as a total failure. Heck, there's a dozen or more Club Penguin private servers. Don't let your children on them though, I hear they've got the same pedophilia problem as Roblox.
Oras•17m ago
There are a few startups that were acquired, not sure if the acquisition had covered the investment, as it's not clear.

- Pebble

- Udemy

- Viper

frankdenbow•1h ago
reminds of the old site fuckedcompany by pud which wrote about startup closures in the dot com era
Wistar•1h ago
My thought exactly.
baggachipz•1h ago
At one point, there were multiple new entries throughout each day. It was entertaining/terrifying to reload the page. Wonder when we'll see something like fuckedaicompany.com pop up.
gordonhart•1h ago
How'd you source the information? Curious to see Cloudera listed as dead and wasn't able to find anything corroborating this online.
rawgabbit•1h ago
Genuity was also bought out. Domo seems alive and well.
vaughands•1h ago
The author posted this on a vibe coding subreddit, so I'd be willing to wager some AI deep research with manual clean up.
gordonhart•35m ago
Seems like it. That would explain the various suspicious entries and lack of rigor (missing thousands of smaller startups that have failed in the last decade)
joloooo•20m ago
Circling the drain, but not dead
joering2•1h ago
Evernote is dead?
TZubiri•1h ago
I don't get the "Uber Rush" entry.

First of all, it's not a startup it's a feature.

Second, in my country this service exists, you can make deliveries with uber and it's used for package delivery as well as signing contracts.

alansaber•1h ago
RIP Theranos
bilater•1h ago
one of the startups listed that "failed" is music.ly. the app bytedance acquired to launch tiktok
siliconc0w•1h ago
Some of these are acquires so it's hard to argue the money was 'burned'. That said I do agree acquired companies can be viable as the product usually gets put on life-support or ruined/shutdown (like Club Penguin)
foobiekr•1h ago
A lot of acquisitions are tech and talent and the details matter. A startup that gets acquired for $30M after burning $70M is definitely burned.
raincole•1h ago
Even the products got eventually shut down I still don't think the money was necessarily 'burned.' Most buildings eventually fell or got destructed so were all the resources spent on construction burned? But whether a product actually helped the users is a question too nuance to ask.
njudah•54m ago
As they say, I'm not dead yet -- many of the companies listed as dead are acquired or very much still alive. (Domo is still publicly traded, for example.)
defaultcompany•46m ago
Poshmark also is not dead.
cploonker•42m ago
Similar site: https://www.failory.com/cemetery
henning•40m ago
The entry for Theranos does not mention the massive fraud that occurred. All of this bullshit is AI-generated, isn't it?
adityashankar•39m ago
The filters don't actually work, unless I'm misunderstanding them >.<, can you fix them please?
gkoberger•35m ago
I guess I don't see the problem? Nothing lasts forever, and everyone involved knew the risks.

That money wasn't purely wasted, it went into salaries and other products. At least half ended in exits and became a part of another company.

The ability to fail and fail big is what makes the SF tech scene special... people aren't afraid to try something audacious. And sure, the world could take-or-leave most of these products, but I don't really see the point in finding joy in dead companies.

jabedude•31m ago
I don't think this website is implying there was a 'problem' per se. In fact it seems to be geared towards helping resurrect the original premises
aeve890•33m ago
Ha, almost every "New Business Idea & Product Name" is heavily focused on AI. It tracks. Everytime I present a problem to an LLM the solution is the same "use AI". Can't blame them though.
nkohari•28m ago
Some of these are still in existence. For example, Wealthfront Cash is their HYSA offering, which is still very much a thing: https://www.wealthfront.com/cash
asdev•14m ago
feature request: tag startups with YCombinator and be able to visualize failure in terms of capital invested over time. my hunch is it's going up but would be cool to see the data
Oras•13m ago
E La Carte was such a nice idea. I remember it quite well as I tried to do something similar in the UK back in 2011. iPad menu in restaurants.
fluorinerocket•9m ago
I miss fuckedcompany.com
CrzyLngPwd•8m ago
Reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company
latchkey•8m ago
Back when PoD t-shirts were more of a thing..

https://www.wired.com/2015/05/techs-failures-live-t-shirts/

SoleilAbsolu•5m ago
Once they're done, shouldn't they be called "stopdowns"?
tptacek•4m ago
Are these LLM-generated causes of death? There are a couple startups here where I'm somewhat familiar with the "real" causes of death and the stated cause here is just fluff.
AstroBen•3m ago
[delayed]
klik99•1m ago
I think it's a great idea to highlight that companies that fail in the VC context aren't necessarily bad ideas for companies - there is just a specific business model that thrives with VC funding (extremely high scalability, reliable unit costs) and companies that don't fit that or fail to develop in that direction may still be great businesses but get driven into the ground by VCs trying to find the one unicorn out of 15 in the profile.