Here are some of the prominent startups that announced shutdown in May of 2018
Northwestern Mutual shutting down LearnVest – After paying $250 million for the startup three years ago, the insurance company is shutting it down June 5. In a statement posted to the Northwestern Mutual website, the company announced that it is discontinuing LearnVest’s financial planning offering for consumers and the LearnVest@Work program for businesses. Northwestern Mutual will relaunch LearnVest later this year as a digital resource portal focused on financial education for consumers. In an email sent to LearnVest clients, founder Alexa Von Tobel said the financial planning service will shut down June 5.
Klout, the $200 million website that measured how important you are on social media with one number, is shutting down – Klout, a startup that measured how important you are on social media, is shutting down by the end of the month. It was bought for $200 million in 2014. Klout was founded in 2009 by Joe Fernandez, partially as a way to get a job at Twitter, according to Business Insider. But ranking people by importance or influence turned out to be a strong enough idea to raise four rounds of venture funding from top-tier firms totaling $40 million. Eventually, it was sold in 2014 for $200 million to Lithium Technologies, which is the company that is shutting down the service later this month. Lithium is a private company that makes digital marketing tools. Klout enabled users to share their Facebook and Twitter data, and parsed that data through a vague algorithm to give users a simple popularity metric between 10 and 100, called the “Klout score.”
Social media ‘startup’ StumbleUpon closing after 16 years – StumbleUpon co-founder, Garrett Camp, has announced that the project is coming to an end 16 and half years after its launch in 2001. Camp is now recommending that StumbleUpon users migrate their accounts over to another of his projects, Mix.com, which he says incorporates the lessons learned from StumbleUpon “to take content discovery to the next level.”
Mouth.com, online purveyor of artisan emerging brands, calls it quits – The announcement on its website stated “On May 21, 2018, Mouth Foods, Inc. (“Mouth”) entered into an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors. The Assignment is an insolvency proceeding commenced under Delaware state law. Pursuant to the Assignment, the Assignee is in the process of marketing for sale the Mouth business and related assets of Mouth. As a result of the Assignment, Mouth is not currently promoting, distributing, or selling any products”
Event guide platform Vamos shuts down – The VAMOS Team posted a cryptic note on its website “We have some unfortunate news to share. We’re shutting down Vamos on Thursday May 24th after six exciting years. We always tried to provide the best event discovery experience to people around the globe. But now it’s the time to leave the stage and say thank you for your support and the fantastic response we received throughout the whole journey. For you this means that the website as well as the mobile apps for iOS and Android won’t be available after that date.”
Crowdfunded 3D Headphone Startup OSSIC is Shutting Down, 99% of Orders Go Undelivered – OSSIC, the headphone company known for its massively successful 3D headphone crowdfunding campaigns, is shutting down due to lack of capital. The company says in an update announcing its closure that the OSSIC X 3D headphones required “significantly more capital to ramp to full mass production,” which effectively leaves tens of thousands of pre-orders unfulfilled. OSSIC received over $2.7 million through its successful Kickstarter campaign, and $3.2 million through Indiegogo. The company is said to have raised seed investment from other sources, which accounted for about half of its total funding.
Lithium Technologies will shut down Klout and its Klout Score – The Klout acquisition provided Lithium with valuable artificial intelligence (AI) and machinelearning capabilities but Peter posted that “Klout as a standalone service is not aligned with our long-term strategy.” He added “Our goal with these AI and machine learning investments is to improve our customer care capabilities across the board, whether that’s self-service, peer-to-peer, or direct-to-brand. In the near-term, for example, we will be looking to improve agent productivity within SMM and improve the overall user experience in Community through the application of AI, while we are also planning the launch of a new social impact scoring methodology based on Twitter.:”
Indian micro-delivery startup MrNeeds shuts down – It was trying to stand out against eCommerce giants like Bigbasket, Grofers, and Amazon.in in a hyper-competitive market. MrNeeds was focused on optimizing the supply chain and minimizing delivery costs. It had raised about $500K in pre-Series-A funding from a group of angel investors.
Article: How Nigerian startup founders cope with the stigma of failure in an unforgiving market – Njoku’s words on his Medium post last month were blunt, but they resonate with both experienced and young tech entrepreneurs trying to navigate a tough underfunded, competitive Nigerian market. It’s a far cry from the home of modern startup culture, Silicon Valley, where the popular mantra, “fail fast, fail often” seems to suggest that community respects failure and even encourages startups to fail. The attitude is entirely different in Nigeria where founders often try to keep news of their failure as quiet as possible.