Each company believed in its mission. Each founder worked tirelessly. Below are their epitaphs — and the lessons written in their ruins.
R.I.P.
2013 — 2017
Vine
"6 seconds of fame, 3 years of life"
⚔ Outcompeted
Once dominant in short-form video, Vine lost creators to Instagram and Snapchat after failing to implement monetization fast enough. Creators left for platforms that paid them.
Acquired by Twitter for
$30M
R.I.P.
2018 — 2020
Quibi
"Hollywood in your pocket — nobody wanted it"
🎯 No Market Fit
Raised $1.75B to build a mobile-first streaming service. Launched during COVID lockdowns when nobody was commuting. Content couldn't be shared or viewed on TVs. Shut down after 6 months.
Raised
$1.75B
R.I.P.
1999 — 2000
Pets.com
"The sock puppet that burned $300M"
💸 Broken Unit Economics
Sold $1 products and spent $2 shipping them. Believed growth would solve margins. It didn't. The famous sock puppet mascot outlasted the company. A textbook dotcom cautionary tale.
Raised
$300M
R.I.P.
2012 — 2017
Jawbone
"Fitness tech pioneer that fell apart at the seams"
🔧 Hardware Defects
Once valued at $3.2B, Jawbone's wearables were plagued by hardware defects. Customer complaints mounted while the company pivoted to healthcare. Fitbit and Apple Watch moved in and never left.
Raised
$1B+
R.I.P.
2013 — 2017
Yik Yak
"Anonymous social — a feature, not a company"
🎯 Lost Core Identity
Peaked at 1.8M users and $400M valuation. Real identity features added to combat bullying destroyed the product's entire value proposition. Sold for just $1M. One product decision erased everything.
Peak Valuation
$400M
R.I.P.
1985 — 2013
Blockbuster
"Had every chance. Took none of them."
⚔ Innovator's Dilemma
Turned down purchasing Netflix for $50M in 2000. Laughed at streaming. At its peak had 9,000 stores and 60,000 employees. Netflix is now worth $300B. One Blockbuster remains open in Bend, Oregon.
Peak Revenue
$5.9B
R.I.P.
2003 — 2018
Theranos
"The startup that faked it until it couldn't make it"
🔧 Fraud
Once valued at $9B on the promise of revolutionary blood testing. The technology never worked. Whistleblowers were silenced. Elizabeth Holmes convicted of fraud. A lesson in the danger of "fake it till you make it" in healthcare.
Peak Valuation
$9B
R.I.P.
2010 — 2013
Color Labs
"$41M raised. App deleted in 6 months."
🎯 Premature Scaling
Raised $41M before launching a photo-sharing app that nobody understood. The concept — sharing with strangers nearby — was too abstract. They never found product-market fit. Sold to Apple for parts in 2012.
Raised
$41M
R.I.P.
2011 — 2016
Secret
"Anonymity breeds toxicity, not community"
📋 Legal & Ethics
Anonymous sharing app hit $100M valuation in under a year. Became a platform for bullying, doxxing, and rumours. Banned in Brazil. CEO shut it down voluntarily, admitting it brought out the worst in humanity.
Raised
$35M
R.I.P.
2011 — 2019
Google+
"A social network nobody asked Google to build"
🎯 No Differentiation
Google forced its social network on users across Search, YouTube, and Gmail — and still couldn't attract them. A 2018 data breach affecting 500K users sealed its fate. Shut down after 8 years of trying to be Facebook.
Parent Company Valuation
$100B+
R.I.P.
2010 — 2019
WeWork
"A real estate company cosplaying as a tech startup"
👥 Governance Collapse
Once valued at $47B, WeWork's IPO filing revealed massive losses, conflicts of interest, and erratic leadership. CEO Adam Neumann was ousted, the IPO was pulled, and SoftBank had to bail the company out. A masterclass in unchecked founder power.
Peak Valuation
$47B
R.I.P.
2019 — 2022
FTX
"Billions in customer funds. All of it gone."
🔧 Fraud
Sam Bankman-Fried built the world's second-largest crypto exchange, then secretly funnelled customer funds to his trading firm Alameda Research. When a bank run hit in November 2022, $8B in customer funds was missing. SBF was convicted on seven counts of fraud.
Peak Valuation
$32B
R.I.P.
2020 — 2023
Clubhouse
"The app of the pandemic — and nothing else"
⚔ First-Mover Advantage Evaporated
Exploded to 10M weekly users during COVID lockdowns on the novelty of live audio rooms. Twitter Spaces, Spotify, and others cloned the feature within months. When the world reopened, nobody needed an audio-only app anymore.
Peak Valuation
$4B
R.I.P.
2013 — 2017
Juicero
"A $400 machine to squeeze a bag you could squeeze yourself"
🎯 Absurd Product-Market Fit
Raised $120M to build a Wi-Fi-connected juice press that required proprietary $7 juice packs. Bloomberg reporters revealed the packs could be squeezed by hand just as fast. The story went viral. Juicero shut down two months later.
Raised
$120M