Story Category: Startups
Gymlisted was a website for finding the right private gym. Every day, Tom would go home from his day job and code up features for Gymlisted until midnight. Once launched, they started with their marketing efforts. But they soon realized there was pretty much no demand for what they were offering.
Mike Carson, a computer programmer, built park.io, a service that allows you to backorder top level domains that have expired and will be available for registration again soon. He started it as project to solve a problem he was facing. But, with almost none marketing, he was able to grow it to a business generating +$125K per month.
QuickHaggle was a community in which online users could exchange their skills. However, just like in old age, with the barter system, it became really difficult to find people who were looking for your service, and in exchange, could carry out what you needed. After some months, Bilal decided to shut it down.
In only 9 months, Mattijs Naus (and a small team) created Pagestead, a self-hosted, fully white-labeled website builder. They launched on spring 2017 and were soon able to earn a great MRR with it. Pagestead now makes $7,000/month and has +140 customers. However, in the development and growth process, they committed some big mistakes.
BeehiveID was a startup on the dating market, that identified online accounts created for fraudulent use. Techstars and RightSide Capital decided to invest $70K on their business. However, after some months BeehiveID closed their doors. Being too dependents on Facebook data killed their startup.
HitroNaSplet was a hosting reseller company. They invested a lot of time in SEO and achieved the first page in Google, which let them start making some monthly revenue. However, after some months, they realized it didn't generate enough revenue to be worth the time invested, so they closed their doors.
Almost every business enterprise now thrives online due to an increase in digital-dependency among people all over the world. Here we enlist few of the top-notch business sectors flourishing under the digital sheath.
February was a special month. We had a lot of time to publish new great interviews and work on different features. This resulted in a lot of new users on our website, hundreds of email subscribers and our first dollar (which, in fact, were $160!).
Toygaroo was the Netflix of toys. Funded by a great group of people based in Los Angeles, the company appeared on Shark Tank asking $100k for a 10% stake. They ended up raising $250K in 2 funding rounds, but after some months, they had to shut down the company. Inventory and logistical costs were too high, so capital rapidly disappeared.
The Nerd Cave was a new kind of retail model, a truly safe space for gamers of all kinds to go and enjoy their passion and hobby. They were doing it great, earning $16,000 AUD/month. But when they moved to a new location, they saw a big loss of income, which provoked the closure of their doors.