12 ms·

Startups that were massively funded that died in 2017

216 points by altstar 9y ago

Firebrand 9y ago
>Yik Yak - the anonymous social media app that was at the center of several college harassment scandals - announced its closure on April 28, after struggling to keep users on its platform. YikYak was very popular at my univeristy back in 2014. What replaced it? Or has anonymous social media fallen out of favor all together?
- dylz 9y ago
  Yikyak removed anonymity (it wasn't anonymous in the first place - devices, phone numbers, and invisible accounts were tracked/established/attached to posts), added public user profiles/names.
- opportune 9y ago
  Jodel is the main replacement to my knowledge. There might be others too, but I don't think any of them have caught on very much. It's a shame because there definitely still is a market for a yikyak clone, but I doubt investors are going to be very bullish about one. I think the main reason anonymous social media is out of favor is that it's hard to monetize. It's hard to gather information (and thus serve valuable ads) about your users when they are explicitly using your app to not share that information. When yikyak introduced profiles, I think that was when everybody stopped using it.
  - dylz 9y ago
    Anecdotal, but previously at UCB and now at UW for undergrad I've not seen a single person with Jodel installed - none of my friends have ever used or even known about it either. Is it more EU-targetted or seeded initially?
    - v3gas 9y ago
      More EU seeded, I guess, yes. Started in Germany.
- denzil_correa 9y ago
  > Or has anonymous social media fallen out of favor all together? Whisper still exists http://whisper.sh http://whisper.sh
  - tschwimmer 9y ago
    There's another app called Blind that's sort of like Yik Yak for SV tech companies.
- majjam 9y ago
  I enjoyed YikYak very much, reminded me of 'local' chat in Eve online. When it closed the alternatives seemed to be Jodel (German-centric), Spout (whilst your posts are localised, all users can see them instead of just local users, heavily moderated compared to YY) and Swiflie (allows nsfw content). However imo none provide the uncensored, very local experience that YikYak did.
  - fencepost 9y ago
    Yik-Yak was briefly entertaining in a "wow so that's what kids are talking about these days" way, but with no focus it was kind of vapid. Another geolocated thing that briefly existed was Google+ - at one point and only on mobile if you stopped the screen to the right there was a "Nearby" listing that showed public posts within some geographic radius that was never quite clear.
    - asveikau 9y ago
      I think that was actually Google Buzz circa 2009. It was an awesome feature. I remember using it on the Google maps app for WinCE (which was also a very good app at the time, people forget)... > When the service was accessed with a supported mobile device, Buzz tagged posts with the user's current location. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz
- fencepost 9y ago
  Interestingly, I think if it had lived only a few months longer Yik-Yak might have found new life as chat for collaborative augmented reality or real world interactive games. I'll use as the example Pokémon Go, which within the last month revised a major part of the game to introduce a feature that requires teams of people to defeat (gym raids). This has ended up with an assortment of tools being used in attempts to organize those teams, as well as some folks simply showing up and hoping others do the same. These include multiple fan/independent Discords, Facebook, and at least one browser map-based "I'm going to X" solution. Yik-Yak's geolocated chat (minus the anonymity that caused them so much trouble) seems like it would have been an excellent framework for for local team chats.
- didymospl 9y ago
  Do you think there is room for similar app? I haven't heard about Yik Yak but I have had the idea to create a local chat for some time already. And now, just a couple of weeks after I'd finally started writing some initial prototype(just after hours coding so far) I found out that my idea had already been implemented and failed miserably. Personally I'd use it to meet new people when I'm travelling alone or when none of my friends is interested to join me in an activity such as concert, tennis, football etc
pkaye 9y ago
Jawbone has been around for almost 20 years. Doesn't fit in with the rest.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  Otherwise we might as well include Apple and Google in a list of well-performing startups.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- galeaspablo 9y ago
  Agreed. As a follow up, where do you draw the line? Is there even a single frequently used definition of a startup, or is it a gray scale for everyone?
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    I thought around here the definition is usually a company still expecting massive growth, hasn't gone public, and not being too old. Not sure what the guidelines are with age.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  But they took hundreds of millions in normal funding and hundreds of millions in debt sort of funding this decade. The vast majority of their funding. Wasn't most of that funding and growth of Jawbone going with the company trying to semi-pivot into wristbands (UP) along with their services? And a bit of the Bluetooth speakers I guess. The 11 or so odd years before that were their Bluetooth headsets only. I think Jawbone could fit into this list. It's sort of like a spinoff company using initial foundations around 2011. That's not a good sentence or way of wording it but I can't think of something better right now. Still, the expectation from 2011 onward was huge growth with all that funding. Unlike their first 11 years.
  - rhizome 9y ago
draw_down 9y ago
Too bad about Maple. I really like David Chang and he is really trying to solve a problem he knows a lot about and cares a lot about.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  I cancelled my sub after learning he was affiliated. Explains a lot of the operational shortfalls. He's a brilliant chef, sometimes, but figured he never needed to learn how to run a business and it shows across his portfolio.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    What do you mean by "affiliated?"
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      David Chang owns equity in Maple and is their brand icon [1]. [1] http://www.bonappetit.com/restaurants-travel/article/maple-david-chang-delivery http://www.bonappetit.com/restaurants-travel/article/maple-d...
- phonon 9y ago
  He is still doing https://andofood.com/ https://andofood.com/ so I wouldn't worry too much...
- PhineasRex 9y ago
  Don't feel too sad about it, he launched Ando which is the same thing but faster and with better food quality.
  - draw_down 9y ago
    Oh. Cool!
idlewords 9y ago
The issue is not that these startups fail; the whole idea is that most startups will fail. It's how much easy money they take with them. It should not require $59M to learn that delivering expensive food at a loss is a poor business idea. The easy money in tech right now is harmful, as it crowds out actual innovation. But I don't see it getting better anytime soon.
- twblalock 9y ago
  Is there any reason to believe that the "actual" innovators are missing out on funding because money is being given to delivery startups instead? Besides, how many "actual" innovations were profitable at an early stage? I take issue with the entire concept of splitting "actual" innovations from attempted innovations, because all successful innovations began as attempts.
  - Roritharr 9y ago
    I only have anec-data, but I know several engineers who have very interesting hardware prototypes sitting on shelves or gathering dust in basements simply because they aren't the "hustlers" VCs are used to be wowed by. There's a couple of reasons people like that don't partner with someone who is able to raise the capital more easily, but the most pronounced i've heard was that they don't want to buy into the dishonest-"fake it till you make it" culture that surrounds VC.
    - Meekro 9y ago
      Even if your friends got the VC money, wouldn't the lack of "hustle" ability hurt their chances of turning the prototype into a successful company?
      - abritinthebay 9y ago
        Yes, it would. It’s an oft unacknowledged fact. Companies that don’t play the VC game are harder work but totally possible (and potentially more rewarding) but the VC game requires those “hustlers” because that’s the VC’s expectations.
jksmith 9y ago
So many of these startups seem to have fragile, non-strategic products to get these valuations. I don't understand how they get funded in the first place. Hopefully my first jaded thought is further from the truth than I suspect it is, which is some college grad whose dad is plugged in gets his weak idea funded. Or maybe the far uglier truth is that venture actually has that much money to flat out waste.
- CryoLogic 9y ago
  I agree with this sentiment. I have found that with a little big of economics I've been able to pick out successes much easier than large VC firms. It almost seems as if many of these firms are throwing money away without even thinking over the 101 level business requirements: expenses, revenues, growth rate, 2nd derivative growth rate, market size, profit per employee etc.
  - anitil 9y ago
    Could you point me in the direction of how to learn these things?
  - marcinzm 9y ago
    Why do you assume that VCs don't know this rather than assume that the market creates forces which make them not care? I'd guess there is more money floating around than there are startups which meet all the metrics. Thus there's investment in riskier ventures (remember it doesn't matter if any startup succeeds as long as the fund comes out on top as a whole). Moreover startups which do have all these metrics may have many competing VCs which in turn lowers the return for the VC.
    - eight_ender 9y ago
      This plus FOMO will continue to be a big factor until more and more of these bad ideas implode.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  I think your second truth is closer to the real one. There's a lot of capital floating around out there. Most of it is actually foreign, either OPEC sovereign wealth funds (like how Saudi Arabia put $3.5B into Uber) or wealthy Chinese businessmen. All that capital is seeking a productive return: it has to go do something, if it sits in a bank account it'll just shrink because of inflation. Right now, tech is basically the only sector of the economy that has noticeable growth. Hence, anything vaguely connected to tech gets plenty of funding, regardless of how ill-considered the idea is. The fundraising climate has tightened fairly significantly since 2015 - that's why all these companies are going out of business. But around 2012-2013, the way you got funded was you went out, painted a picture of how everyone in the world would be using your technology-enabled product, and asked lots of people for money. There were so many people with money to invest that you'd be bound to find somebody.
propman 9y ago
I saw the CEO of Quixey give a talk when it was blowing up and was blown away by how little he understood the technology or the market behind his product. I dug a little deeper, perplexed at how Quixey raised so much money, and was extremely underwhelmed by everything. I followed it every few months till it collapsed and it really did seem like watching a disaster unravel
- kayoone 9y ago
  why exactly ? just watched a bit of this talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgb505KRHEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgb505KRHEI and i did not get the feeling that he does not know what he is doing
iosDrone 9y ago
Make sure to add Blue Apron, it's only a matter of time!
- jcslzr 9y ago
  honestly for me its seems like a pretty good idea, I don't live in the US, so I really don't know why they are not making money other than not enough customers.
Ethereum 9y ago
“This is a sad time for Beepi and everyone involved. We set out on an ambitious mission to build a massive company and radically transform a decades-old industry, and stopped well short of the goal line. We take full responsibility for that." -Former Beepi CEO You can't help but feel bad for these guys. You know they must have poured their heart and soul into these companies. I guess that's corporate Darwinism for you though.
- mysterydip 9y ago
  At the same time, there's people that pour their heart and soul into mom n pop companies with nowhere near the visibility or valuation of these kinds. So while it sucks, I don't feel especially bad for someone who got their shot at the stars and missed.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  Yeah, my wife and I bought a car from Beepi and it was a great experience. If anything, I thought it was a little underpriced -- given everything they did for us, we probably would have paid another $400. I don't really know why it didn't succeed. ETA: well, here's a post-mortem (about halfway down): https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/25/anatomy-of-a-managed-marketplace/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/25/anatomy-of-a-managed-marke...
  - brogrammernot 9y ago
    They had an inherently flawed model in an industry that has a high barrier to entry and requires significant cash resources. Just take a look at Carvana's most recent earnings, they lost something like 40M in the first quarter on revenue of $160M. They're still spending a ton of money to compete. Beepi had a flawed model, and ran out of money. I find it hard to be sad for them as this is what is supposed to happen when you don't have a sustainable business model.
    - defined 9y ago
      I am sad for all the people who lost their jobs as a result of these failures, though.
arielm 9y ago
I think the “problem” here isn’t one big problem with a single process (VCs throwing money on bad ideas), but rather a combination of issues that together result in so much failure. There’s a lot of venture money out there, and like some other comments mentioned it needs to _do_ something - and that’s good. We as founders and consumers want to see that money do something. But... It needs to do something meaningful. I believe that responsibility lies in the hands of those that give it. Bad ideas are merely potential opportunities, but bad business plans, founders with short term vision, and lack of discipline make this into a real problem. So many companies can prove their model without big money. Yet, because investors are hoping for a home run those founders jump right into the deep end. I don’t want to say getting money needs to be harder, because ultimately that could slow down innovation. I do however believe investors need to raise the bar for founders.
- pm90 9y ago
  This is a good point. Investors really need to be smarter about deciding which people to invest with. I think they also need to be more creative. YC seems to be the only VC firm that is actively funding creative ideas, different strategies etc. instead of simply a "take this cash and give me stock" strategy (of course I'm being hyperbolic about the latter, but it seems that YC is definitely trying a lot more than conventional VC firms).
- m-j-fox 9y ago
  Agreed. But more specifically, how can VCs be more discriminating and also not make getting money harder? There was another thread today about an interview with some rockstar VC and his wisdom was: invest in ideas that sound stupid, but turn out not to be. I mean, here I've been trying to not sound stupid in front of investors and it's been holding me back.
  - arielm 9y ago
    I think that’s a terrible oversimplification... I think requiring a more thought out business plan (ie. one that includes steps to turn profit within some timeframe). Some investors I’ve met do this and do it well, while still investing in ideas that may not seem all there upfront.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kelukelugames 9y ago
1. Too bad about maple. 2. I fear Blind will go the way of Yik Yak. A lot of rude behavior on it. 3. I'm not a fan of wearable devices. I suspect people enjoy collecting health gadgets more than actually getting healthier. I also found a Jawbone speaker in the gym and couldn't figure out how to get it to work with my iPhone. But that's probably my fault :P
- ramparrt 9y ago
  >3. Can confirm. I have several wearables lying around no longer being used. The difference between the fitness devices that I use (smart scales, gps trackers) and the ones that I don't (pedometer/heart rate wearables) basically seems to be that the ones I use are measuring and recording data I was previously interested in before getting a device that tracked it. Ultimately, I can't get excited about a pedometer because I simply don't care about how many steps I take. Also, the fact that the pedometers require near constant use to be worthwhile means that there's some degree of mental energy devoted to them - is it charged, am I wearing it, etc. A smart scale I step onto for a few seconds each day and my garmin head unit is only used when I'm riding my bike so there's almost no conscious overhead.
  - rimliu 9y ago
    > the pedometers require near constant use to be worthwhile > means that there's some degree of mental energy devoted > to them - is it charged, am I wearing it, etc. That's what I like about my Withings Steel: it's just a normal (and beautiful!) wristwatch. I am wearing it everyday anyway. Actually I do not take it off, because it tracks sleep too. I am not worried about charging it, because it lasts for months. It looks like I get activity tracking as a bonus functionality. Much much better experience compared to some ugly dedicated tracker. Let's hope Nokia will not ruin it.
flukus 9y ago
It seems like most of these could potentially have been viable products, but none of them were ever going to be huge businesses making billions a year. Why isn't a niche product making people wealthy seen as good enough anymore?
- majani 9y ago
  I think one of the issues is that in VCs allow the hottest start-ups to take money off the table in later funding rounds. So the question in an entrepreneur's mind becomes whether he should build slowly and make a few hundred thousand a year steadily, or whether he should pump up with VC money, knowing he'll be allowed to take a couple million off the table before the music stops. It's a no brainer in my mind.
yourstruly33 9y ago
Mostly crap products. Glad they're gone.

216 points by altstar 9y ago

>Yik Yak - the anonymous social media app that was at the center of several college harassment scandals - announced its closure on April 28, after struggling to keep users on its platform. YikYak was very popular at my univeristy back in 2014. What replaced it? Or has anonymous social media fallen out of favor all together?

dylz 9y ago
Yikyak removed anonymity (it wasn't anonymous in the first place - devices, phone numbers, and invisible accounts were tracked/established/attached to posts), added public user profiles/names.
opportune 9y ago
Jodel is the main replacement to my knowledge. There might be others too, but I don't think any of them have caught on very much. It's a shame because there definitely still is a market for a yikyak clone, but I doubt investors are going to be very bullish about one. I think the main reason anonymous social media is out of favor is that it's hard to monetize. It's hard to gather information (and thus serve valuable ads) about your users when they are explicitly using your app to not share that information. When yikyak introduced profiles, I think that was when everybody stopped using it.
- dylz 9y ago
  Anecdotal, but previously at UCB and now at UW for undergrad I've not seen a single person with Jodel installed - none of my friends have ever used or even known about it either. Is it more EU-targetted or seeded initially?
  - v3gas 9y ago
    More EU seeded, I guess, yes. Started in Germany.
denzil_correa 9y ago
> Or has anonymous social media fallen out of favor all together? Whisper still exists http://whisper.sh http://whisper.sh
- tschwimmer 9y ago
  There's another app called Blind that's sort of like Yik Yak for SV tech companies.
majjam 9y ago
I enjoyed YikYak very much, reminded me of 'local' chat in Eve online. When it closed the alternatives seemed to be Jodel (German-centric), Spout (whilst your posts are localised, all users can see them instead of just local users, heavily moderated compared to YY) and Swiflie (allows nsfw content). However imo none provide the uncensored, very local experience that YikYak did.
- fencepost 9y ago
  Yik-Yak was briefly entertaining in a "wow so that's what kids are talking about these days" way, but with no focus it was kind of vapid. Another geolocated thing that briefly existed was Google+ - at one point and only on mobile if you stopped the screen to the right there was a "Nearby" listing that showed public posts within some geographic radius that was never quite clear.
  - asveikau 9y ago
    I think that was actually Google Buzz circa 2009. It was an awesome feature. I remember using it on the Google maps app for WinCE (which was also a very good app at the time, people forget)... > When the service was accessed with a supported mobile device, Buzz tagged posts with the user's current location. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz
fencepost 9y ago
Interestingly, I think if it had lived only a few months longer Yik-Yak might have found new life as chat for collaborative augmented reality or real world interactive games. I'll use as the example Pokémon Go, which within the last month revised a major part of the game to introduce a feature that requires teams of people to defeat (gym raids). This has ended up with an assortment of tools being used in attempts to organize those teams, as well as some folks simply showing up and hoping others do the same. These include multiple fan/independent Discords, Facebook, and at least one browser map-based "I'm going to X" solution. Yik-Yak's geolocated chat (minus the anonymity that caused them so much trouble) seems like it would have been an excellent framework for for local team chats.
didymospl 9y ago
Do you think there is room for similar app? I haven't heard about Yik Yak but I have had the idea to create a local chat for some time already. And now, just a couple of weeks after I'd finally started writing some initial prototype(just after hours coding so far) I found out that my idea had already been implemented and failed miserably. Personally I'd use it to meet new people when I'm travelling alone or when none of my friends is interested to join me in an activity such as concert, tennis, football etc

pkaye 9y ago

Jawbone has been around for almost 20 years. Doesn't fit in with the rest.

bdcravens 9y ago
Otherwise we might as well include Apple and Google in a list of well-performing startups.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
galeaspablo 9y ago
Agreed. As a follow up, where do you draw the line? Is there even a single frequently used definition of a startup, or is it a gray scale for everyone?
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  I thought around here the definition is usually a company still expecting massive growth, hasn't gone public, and not being too old. Not sure what the guidelines are with age.
skinnymuch 9y ago
But they took hundreds of millions in normal funding and hundreds of millions in debt sort of funding this decade. The vast majority of their funding. Wasn't most of that funding and growth of Jawbone going with the company trying to semi-pivot into wristbands (UP) along with their services? And a bit of the Bluetooth speakers I guess. The 11 or so odd years before that were their Bluetooth headsets only. I think Jawbone could fit into this list. It's sort of like a spinoff company using initial foundations around 2011. That's not a good sentence or way of wording it but I can't think of something better right now. Still, the expectation from 2011 onward was huge growth with all that funding. Unlike their first 11 years.
- rhizome 9y ago

draw_down 9y ago

Too bad about Maple. I really like David Chang and he is really trying to solve a problem he knows a lot about and cares a lot about.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
I cancelled my sub after learning he was affiliated. Explains a lot of the operational shortfalls. He's a brilliant chef, sometimes, but figured he never needed to learn how to run a business and it shows across his portfolio.
- rhizome 9y ago
  What do you mean by "affiliated?"
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    David Chang owns equity in Maple and is their brand icon [1]. [1] http://www.bonappetit.com/restaurants-travel/article/maple-david-chang-delivery http://www.bonappetit.com/restaurants-travel/article/maple-d...
phonon 9y ago
He is still doing https://andofood.com/ https://andofood.com/ so I wouldn't worry too much...
PhineasRex 9y ago
Don't feel too sad about it, he launched Ando which is the same thing but faster and with better food quality.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Oh. Cool!

idlewords 9y ago

The issue is not that these startups fail; the whole idea is that most startups will fail. It's how much easy money they take with them. It should not require $59M to learn that delivering expensive food at a loss is a poor business idea. The easy money in tech right now is harmful, as it crowds out actual innovation. But I don't see it getting better anytime soon.

twblalock 9y ago
Is there any reason to believe that the "actual" innovators are missing out on funding because money is being given to delivery startups instead? Besides, how many "actual" innovations were profitable at an early stage? I take issue with the entire concept of splitting "actual" innovations from attempted innovations, because all successful innovations began as attempts.
- Roritharr 9y ago
  I only have anec-data, but I know several engineers who have very interesting hardware prototypes sitting on shelves or gathering dust in basements simply because they aren't the "hustlers" VCs are used to be wowed by. There's a couple of reasons people like that don't partner with someone who is able to raise the capital more easily, but the most pronounced i've heard was that they don't want to buy into the dishonest-"fake it till you make it" culture that surrounds VC.
  - Meekro 9y ago
    Even if your friends got the VC money, wouldn't the lack of "hustle" ability hurt their chances of turning the prototype into a successful company?
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      Yes, it would. It’s an oft unacknowledged fact. Companies that don’t play the VC game are harder work but totally possible (and potentially more rewarding) but the VC game requires those “hustlers” because that’s the VC’s expectations.

jksmith 9y ago

So many of these startups seem to have fragile, non-strategic products to get these valuations. I don't understand how they get funded in the first place. Hopefully my first jaded thought is further from the truth than I suspect it is, which is some college grad whose dad is plugged in gets his weak idea funded. Or maybe the far uglier truth is that venture actually has that much money to flat out waste.

CryoLogic 9y ago
I agree with this sentiment. I have found that with a little big of economics I've been able to pick out successes much easier than large VC firms. It almost seems as if many of these firms are throwing money away without even thinking over the 101 level business requirements: expenses, revenues, growth rate, 2nd derivative growth rate, market size, profit per employee etc.
- anitil 9y ago
  Could you point me in the direction of how to learn these things?
- marcinzm 9y ago
  Why do you assume that VCs don't know this rather than assume that the market creates forces which make them not care? I'd guess there is more money floating around than there are startups which meet all the metrics. Thus there's investment in riskier ventures (remember it doesn't matter if any startup succeeds as long as the fund comes out on top as a whole). Moreover startups which do have all these metrics may have many competing VCs which in turn lowers the return for the VC.
  - eight_ender 9y ago
    This plus FOMO will continue to be a big factor until more and more of these bad ideas implode.
nostrademons 9y ago
I think your second truth is closer to the real one. There's a lot of capital floating around out there. Most of it is actually foreign, either OPEC sovereign wealth funds (like how Saudi Arabia put $3.5B into Uber) or wealthy Chinese businessmen. All that capital is seeking a productive return: it has to go do something, if it sits in a bank account it'll just shrink because of inflation. Right now, tech is basically the only sector of the economy that has noticeable growth. Hence, anything vaguely connected to tech gets plenty of funding, regardless of how ill-considered the idea is. The fundraising climate has tightened fairly significantly since 2015 - that's why all these companies are going out of business. But around 2012-2013, the way you got funded was you went out, painted a picture of how everyone in the world would be using your technology-enabled product, and asked lots of people for money. There were so many people with money to invest that you'd be bound to find somebody.

propman 9y ago

I saw the CEO of Quixey give a talk when it was blowing up and was blown away by how little he understood the technology or the market behind his product. I dug a little deeper, perplexed at how Quixey raised so much money, and was extremely underwhelmed by everything. I followed it every few months till it collapsed and it really did seem like watching a disaster unravel

kayoone 9y ago
why exactly ? just watched a bit of this talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgb505KRHEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgb505KRHEI and i did not get the feeling that he does not know what he is doing

iosDrone 9y ago

Make sure to add Blue Apron, it's only a matter of time!

jcslzr 9y ago
honestly for me its seems like a pretty good idea, I don't live in the US, so I really don't know why they are not making money other than not enough customers.

Ethereum 9y ago

“This is a sad time for Beepi and everyone involved. We set out on an ambitious mission to build a massive company and radically transform a decades-old industry, and stopped well short of the goal line. We take full responsibility for that." -Former Beepi CEO You can't help but feel bad for these guys. You know they must have poured their heart and soul into these companies. I guess that's corporate Darwinism for you though.

mysterydip 9y ago
At the same time, there's people that pour their heart and soul into mom n pop companies with nowhere near the visibility or valuation of these kinds. So while it sucks, I don't feel especially bad for someone who got their shot at the stars and missed.
ScottBurson 9y ago
Yeah, my wife and I bought a car from Beepi and it was a great experience. If anything, I thought it was a little underpriced -- given everything they did for us, we probably would have paid another $400. I don't really know why it didn't succeed. ETA: well, here's a post-mortem (about halfway down): https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/25/anatomy-of-a-managed-marketplace/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/25/anatomy-of-a-managed-marke...
- brogrammernot 9y ago
  They had an inherently flawed model in an industry that has a high barrier to entry and requires significant cash resources. Just take a look at Carvana's most recent earnings, they lost something like 40M in the first quarter on revenue of $160M. They're still spending a ton of money to compete. Beepi had a flawed model, and ran out of money. I find it hard to be sad for them as this is what is supposed to happen when you don't have a sustainable business model.
  - defined 9y ago
    I am sad for all the people who lost their jobs as a result of these failures, though.

arielm 9y ago

I think the “problem” here isn’t one big problem with a single process (VCs throwing money on bad ideas), but rather a combination of issues that together result in so much failure. There’s a lot of venture money out there, and like some other comments mentioned it needs to _do_ something - and that’s good. We as founders and consumers want to see that money do something. But... It needs to do something meaningful. I believe that responsibility lies in the hands of those that give it. Bad ideas are merely potential opportunities, but bad business plans, founders with short term vision, and lack of discipline make this into a real problem. So many companies can prove their model without big money. Yet, because investors are hoping for a home run those founders jump right into the deep end. I don’t want to say getting money needs to be harder, because ultimately that could slow down innovation. I do however believe investors need to raise the bar for founders.

pm90 9y ago
This is a good point. Investors really need to be smarter about deciding which people to invest with. I think they also need to be more creative. YC seems to be the only VC firm that is actively funding creative ideas, different strategies etc. instead of simply a "take this cash and give me stock" strategy (of course I'm being hyperbolic about the latter, but it seems that YC is definitely trying a lot more than conventional VC firms).
m-j-fox 9y ago
Agreed. But more specifically, how can VCs be more discriminating and also not make getting money harder? There was another thread today about an interview with some rockstar VC and his wisdom was: invest in ideas that sound stupid, but turn out not to be. I mean, here I've been trying to not sound stupid in front of investors and it's been holding me back.
- arielm 9y ago
  I think that’s a terrible oversimplification... I think requiring a more thought out business plan (ie. one that includes steps to turn profit within some timeframe). Some investors I’ve met do this and do it well, while still investing in ideas that may not seem all there upfront.

deleted 9y ago

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kelukelugames 9y ago

1. Too bad about maple. 2. I fear Blind will go the way of Yik Yak. A lot of rude behavior on it. 3. I'm not a fan of wearable devices. I suspect people enjoy collecting health gadgets more than actually getting healthier. I also found a Jawbone speaker in the gym and couldn't figure out how to get it to work with my iPhone. But that's probably my fault :P

ramparrt 9y ago
>3. Can confirm. I have several wearables lying around no longer being used. The difference between the fitness devices that I use (smart scales, gps trackers) and the ones that I don't (pedometer/heart rate wearables) basically seems to be that the ones I use are measuring and recording data I was previously interested in before getting a device that tracked it. Ultimately, I can't get excited about a pedometer because I simply don't care about how many steps I take. Also, the fact that the pedometers require near constant use to be worthwhile means that there's some degree of mental energy devoted to them - is it charged, am I wearing it, etc. A smart scale I step onto for a few seconds each day and my garmin head unit is only used when I'm riding my bike so there's almost no conscious overhead.
- rimliu 9y ago
  > the pedometers require near constant use to be worthwhile > means that there's some degree of mental energy devoted > to them - is it charged, am I wearing it, etc. That's what I like about my Withings Steel: it's just a normal (and beautiful!) wristwatch. I am wearing it everyday anyway. Actually I do not take it off, because it tracks sleep too. I am not worried about charging it, because it lasts for months. It looks like I get activity tracking as a bonus functionality. Much much better experience compared to some ugly dedicated tracker. Let's hope Nokia will not ruin it.

flukus 9y ago

It seems like most of these could potentially have been viable products, but none of them were ever going to be huge businesses making billions a year. Why isn't a niche product making people wealthy seen as good enough anymore?

majani 9y ago
I think one of the issues is that in VCs allow the hottest start-ups to take money off the table in later funding rounds. So the question in an entrepreneur's mind becomes whether he should build slowly and make a few hundred thousand a year steadily, or whether he should pump up with VC money, knowing he'll be allowed to take a couple million off the table before the music stops. It's a no brainer in my mind.

yourstruly33 9y ago

Mostly crap products. Glad they're gone.