Geweldige ideeën die elk jaar worden geboren, maar sommigen winnen aan populariteit en succes en anderen falen. Hier is de lijst met startups die zijn afgesloten maar hadden moeten zijn geslaagd.

• Friendster - een van de eerste sociale netwerken die in 2002 werd opgericht. In werd opgericht vóór Myspace. Het kreeg financiering van bijna $ 50 miljoen. Friendster was erg populair en Google wilde de startup kopen. Maar het aanbod werd afgewezen. Het opstarten is mislukt omdat het niet de mogelijkheid bood om het nieuws te delen. De gebruikers hadden alleen profielen en er werd niets nieuws getoond. Als het bedrijf zich op dat aspect heeft gericht, wie weet, misschien hebben we nu geen Facebook.
• GovWorks.com – e-government solution created in 1998 and failed in 2001. It helped the government to track contracts, citizens to apply for a job, pay bills, search partners, etc. The company failed because of constant disagreements between its founders and management team. Besides that, the product had bugs that could not be fixed.
• Webvan – one of the first e-grocery companies founded in 1999 and shut down in 2001. It offered online purchases of groceries and delivery of the goods. But the company was founded too early when online purchases were not as popular as nowadays. Much money was spent on trucks, warehouses, computers, etc. But there were only a few customers.
• Boo.com – online fashion store created in 1998 in the UK. The site haв become popular and well-known even before it was launched. But the company appeared in the time when Internet was just developing and only a small part of people was online. The company failed in 2000 because it was founded too early.
• Pay By Touch – created in 2002, it could be the future of payment systems. It had a biometric sensor that allowed people to pay for goods. You should just swipe the finger on the sensor. The company got huge funding but failed because of its founder. The company’s CEO took drugs, stole company’s money and was accused of domestic abuse.
• AltaVista – the first search engine created in 1998. It was the first company that offered a free mail. It appeared before Google but failed. The point is that nobody knew how to earn money from web searching in that time. Three years later Google found the answer. In 2003, AltaVista was bought by Yahoo.
• WebTV – founded in 1995, it provided the connection between TV and Internet. It was a box with the help of which you might use Internet without a PC. The idea was brilliant but it was realized too early.
• Napster – a platform for sharing music online created in 1999. It was very popular but bands did not want to allow sharing their music for free. And they took the company’s founders to the court. Everything started with Metallica. The company shut down in 2001.

LILY DRONES- The drone company that fell to earth.

A new age crowdfunding startup that gained a lot of hype but apparently founders had to shut down because of lack of funds.

When the founders Henry Bradlow and Antoine Balaresque, announced in May 2015, a drone camera that is capable of flying by itself and capture video of approximately 20mins , it garnered attention of many tech lovers/customers being one of its kind product. Soon enough they secured funding of ~15M$ for their idea and about 34M$ in pre-booking orders but who had guessed that the so hyped product will not even get to be released. Although, the founders promised to payback all pre-order customers but their image was tarnished.

But the good news for the tech world was that the company was soon acquired by the MOTA group and re-created this drone based on the very same basis Lily was on: Simplicity, Function, and Making a Difference.

Source: The Drone Company That Fell to Earth | Backchannel

• when at one time you had a $100+ billion market cap, and
• you could have bought Disney with your lunch money, and
• you still had a chance to sell for $45 billion just 2 years ago and turned it down, and
• you were the place to go for internet searches, but you never actually developed any search technology, and then you turned down the chance to buy Google for single-digit millions, and
• you pretty much invented internet advertising, but your share goes down quarterly, and
• you bought the inventor of pay-per-click search ads (Overture), but never monetized that as well as, perhaps, the greatest legal printer of cash ever (Google), and
• when you've done all this, you are still a pretty great company in some ways, then
• you might just be the all-time greatest failed internet startup.

• They ditched a perfectly working MySQL application and migrated to Oracle which caused them to hire Oracle consultants for $2000 per day and spend millions on Oracle big-iron.
• They were hiring out of control.
• They decided to build a new building to house their new offices because the Ocean Park Blvd offices in Santa Monica weren't pretty enough.
• They opened up a London office in Piccadilly Circus, the most expensive rental area in London.
• They replicated their entire USA development team in the UK for no apparent reason.
• They started work on a German operation.
• They launched a warehouse in Belgium (my baby) to service Europe.
• All executives flew first class between Europe and USA.
• Engineers were flown around the world as needed.
• I was even told to expense my groceries while in Santa Monica for 3 months. Trivial, but the little things add up.

The most hilarious one is definitely Karhoo.

Founded in early 2015, by the end of the year Karhoo had raised a reported US$250m, and expected to launch its app 3 months later in London, New York and Singapore after apparently securing a network of 200,000 taxis and minicabs.

It planned to raise US$1bn in mid 2017.

The CEO and founder, Daniel Ishag, planned to take on Uber and “…level the playing field."

A year after the reported US$250m raise and six months after the app launch, it shut down its service, with all the money blown, and with more than 100 staff out-of-pocket - ok, that’s the not so funny bit.

It later emerged that Karhoo had actually raised closer to US$30m, and the US$250m was just bullshit.

The incredible lack of financial controls were highlighted by Daniel’s own spending on the company’s credit cards - first class flights, designer shoes, £5,000 on vet bills for his pet dog!

The dog must have been wondering what the heck was going on. And now he’s back to his dog’s life, he’s probably still trying to figure out what the heck happened.

The odd thing is that it’s this type of bullshit and hype that sometimes gets entrepreneurs very very far. A good chance Daniel will be back with a vengeance…

Umm….I think I know one company. The company for which once came an opportunity in 1998 to buy “GOOGLE" in just 1 million dollars but that company refused the offer and didn't buy GOOGLE because they wanted​ to concentrate more on their startup and to develop their own platform.

Dat is niet alles. In 2002 realiseerde het bedrijf zich dat ze een fout hadden gemaakt en geprobeerd om GOOGLE te kopen voor 3 miljard dollar. De oprichter van GOOGLE Larry Page en Sergey Brin vroegen 5 miljard dollar, maar het bedrijf weigerde het aanbod opnieuw .

In februari 2008 sloot Microsoft Corporation een deal om dat bedrijf voor 44,6 miljard dollar te kopen, maar het bedrijf verwierp het aanbod door te beweren dat het "substantieel ondergewaardeerd" was.

En op 8 juni 2017 werd het bedrijf voor 4,83 miljard dollar verkocht aan Verizon .

Het bedrijf was " Yahoo" .