A structured encyclopedia of failure. Source-backed case studies of failed companies, products, and launches. Root causes separated from symptoms, with every claim cited.https://www.failurepedia.com/en-ushttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/black-bottom-paradise-valley/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/black-bottom-paradise-valley/Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were the heart of Black Detroit, a near-east-side district of hundreds of Black-owned businesses and a nationally famous music scene. In the name of urban renewal the city condemned it as a slum, and in the 1950s and 1960s it was cleared for the Chrysler Freeway and a modernist housing development. Around 43,000 people were displaced, about 70 percent of them Black, most of them renters who got no compensation and thirty days to leave. The neighborhood was never rebuilt for the people it removed.Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurefailed_strategyUrban Renewalhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/gateway-mall/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/gateway-mall/For more than a hundred years St. Louis tried to build a grand civic mall through downtown, a linear ribbon of parks and plazas from the Old Courthouse toward Union Station. It cleared block after block over the decades, and in 1983 and 1984 it imploded three historic buildings over failed petitions and lawsuits. What it never built was the coherent, lively space it kept promising. The result was a fragmented chain of underused plazas and parking that the city's own 2009 plan finally admitted had been assembled piecemeal, through disconnected design moves.Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurefailed_strategyUrban Renewalhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pueblo-center-redevelopment/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pueblo-center-redevelopment/For close to a century, la calle was the Mexican-American heart of downtown Tucson, an 80-acre district of homes, shops, and plazas. In 1966 Tucson voters approved the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project, the state's first major urban renewal, and the city condemned the barrio as a slum and cleared it. Some 263 buildings across 29 blocks were demolished and the community scattered, replaced by a civic superblock and an office complex that was so poorly planned it underperformed for decades and was itself torn down in 2018.Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurefailed_strategyUrban Renewalhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/altavista/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/altavista/Before Google, AltaVista was how you searched the web. Built in 1995 to show off Digital Equipment Corporation's fast Alpha chip, it was the first search engine that could index and search the whole internet quickly, and by the late 1990s it was one of the most visited sites online. Then it lost the plot. As Google won on focused, relevance-ranked search, AltaVista turned itself into a cluttered Yahoo-style portal and was passed from owner to owner. Google overtook it by around 2001, and Yahoo quietly switched it off in 2013.Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_strategyWeb Searchhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/compaq/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/compaq/Compaq was the great IBM-compatible upstart, founded by three engineers in 1982 and the fastest company ever to reach the Fortune 500. By the mid-1990s it had passed IBM to become the biggest PC maker in the world. Then Dell reinvented the business by selling directly to customers at lower prices, and Compaq, tied to its retail channel, could not answer. A $9.6 billion acquisition of Digital Equipment brought problems instead of synergies, the CEO was forced out, and in 2002 a declining Compaq was absorbed by Hewlett-Packard. The brand was gone entirely by 2013.Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_strategyPersonal Computershttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/encarta/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/encarta/In 1993 Microsoft's Encarta helped kill the printed encyclopedia, a multimedia reference on a single CD-ROM that made the expensive shelf of leather-bound volumes look obsolete. Then it was killed in turn. Wikipedia, launched in 2001, offered far more, for free, written by anyone, and Encarta's paid, closed, editor-written model could not compete. By 2009 Wikipedia had about 2.7 million English articles to Encarta's 42,000 and drew 97 percent of online-encyclopedia traffic, and Microsoft shut Encarta down.Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationReference Softwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/encyclopaedia-britannica/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/encyclopaedia-britannica/For 244 years the Encyclopaedia Britannica was the gold standard of reference, a 32-volume set that sold for about 1,400 dollars and sat on shelves as a mark of a serious household. Then free digital knowledge arrived. Microsoft's Encarta, bundled with PCs in the 1990s, gutted Britannica's revenue and forced a fire-sale of the company; then Wikipedia made a paid encyclopedia look quaint. In 2012 Britannica stopped printing. The company survived by going digital, but its flagship product, and the business that had sustained it for two centuries, did not.Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediaproduct_discontinuationReference Publishinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/tower-records/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/tower-records/For decades Tower Records was where you went for music. Russ Solomon built it from a Sacramento drugstore counter into a global chain of about 200 record superstores generating roughly a billion dollars a year, cathedrals of vinyl and CDs with deep catalogs and staff who knew everything. Then the music moved. Napster and Apple's iTunes pulled buyers to downloads, big-box stores undercut CD prices, and Tower, loaded with debt from a late expansion, could not adjust. Revenue halved in a single year and the chain was liquidated in 2006.Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediabankruptcyMusic Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/a123-systems/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/a123-systems/A123 Systems was an MIT-born battery maker that looked like the future of American electric vehicles, raising $371 million in the biggest green-tech IPO of 2009 and a $249 million federal grant. But the EV market did not scale as hoped, it leaned on a few shaky customers, and a costly recall of faulty batteries in Fisker's Karma drained it. A123 went bankrupt in 2012 and its assets were bought by a Chinese conglomerate.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologybankruptcyEnergy Storagehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/airware/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/airware/Airware raised $118 million from Silicon Valley's best investors to become the operating system of commercial drones. But it could not win in hardware against China's DJI, and its late pivot to enterprise drone-data software could not sell fast enough to pay the bills. After 18 months hunting for cash, it ran out in 2018 and shut down overnight.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownDroneshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/anki/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/anki/Anki was a consumer robotics star, debuting its AI-driven toy cars at Apple's 2013 stage, then selling 1.5 million Cozmo and Vector robots and nearly $100 million of them in 2017 alone. It still could not make the hardware pay for itself, and depended on the next round of funding to survive. When a late-stage deal with a strategic investor collapsed in 2019, Anki abruptly shut down and laid off its roughly 200 staff.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productcompany_shutdownConsumer Roboticshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/aereo/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/aereo/Aereo let you watch and record live broadcast TV over the internet for about $8 a month, using a personal dime-sized antenna it rented you in a data center. The whole company was a bet that this made it a device rental, not a cable operator. In June 2014 the Supreme Court disagreed 6 to 3, and Aereo, with roughly $100 million raised, paused within three days and was bankrupt by November.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediacompany_shutdownStreaming Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/apple-ping/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/apple-ping/Apple Ping was a music social network bolted into iTunes in 2010 with 160 million users of instant reach. It launched walled off inside a store, stripped of the Facebook integration Apple had planned, and quickly filled with spam and fake accounts. Almost no one used it, and Apple shut it down in 2012.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/barneys-new-york/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/barneys-new-york/Barneys New York was the temple of American luxury retail, the store that made careers and defined taste for decades. But luxury shopping moved online and to brands' own boutiques, its store-centric model aged, and a sharp rent increase on its Madison Avenue flagship tipped it over. It filed for bankruptcy in 2019, and rather than being saved, was sold for its name and liquidated after 96 years.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyLuxury Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/coda-automotive/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/coda-automotive/Coda Automotive raised about $125 million to sell an all-electric sedan, built partly in China, to American drivers. The car was plain, its roughly $45,000 price undercut it against the better-known Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, and almost nobody bought it. A 2012 airbag recall covered just 78 cars. Coda went bankrupt in 2013 having sold only around 100.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAutomotivehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/coolest-cooler/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/coolest-cooler/The Coolest Cooler was a cooler with a blender, speaker, and phone charger that became the most-funded Kickstarter ever in 2014, raising about $13 million from 60,000 backers. Then the hard part began. It badly underestimated what it cost to build, ran out of money, sold units on Amazon while backers waited, and wound down in 2019 with roughly 20,000 people who paid never getting a cooler.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productcompany_shutdownConsumer Productshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/cyanogen/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/cyanogen/Cyanogen turned a beloved community version of Android into a startup with a war cry, its CEO vowing to put "a bullet through Google's head" and wrest Android from Google's control. But its software still ran on Google's Android and phones still needed Google's apps, so no serious handset maker would abandon Google for it. Its biggest partner walked, and Cyanogen shut down its services and OS at the end of 2016.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownMobile Softwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/facebook-poke/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/facebook-poke/Facebook Poke was a Snapchat clone Facebook built in about 12 days after Snapchat refused to be acquired. It hit number one in the App Store the day after its December 2012 launch, then fell out of the top 50 within four days, because people did not want to send disappearing messages to their Facebook friends. It mostly made Snapchat more famous, and Facebook quietly removed it in 2014.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/facebook-m/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/facebook-m/Facebook M was a Messenger assistant that could book a table, order flowers, or plan a trip, because real people were answering behind the "AI." The plan was for those humans to train the software to take over. The economics never got there, M stayed a small Bay Area beta for two and a half years, and Facebook shut it down in 2018.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_strategyArtificial Intelligencehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/fisker-automotive/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/fisker-automotive/Fisker Automotive built the Karma, a gorgeous $100,000 plug-in hybrid designed by Henrik Fisker, on a $529 million federal loan. The car arrived a year and a half late, broke down in a Consumer Reports test, caught fire, and was recalled. When its only battery supplier, A123, went bankrupt in 2012 and the government froze the loan, production stopped, and Fisker collapsed into bankruptcy in 2013.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAutomotivehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/flybe/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/flybe/Flybe was Europe's largest independent regional airline, flying about 8 million passengers a year and more than a third of the UK's domestic flights from small airports. It also lost money for years. A January 2020 government-backed rescue bought it weeks, and then the coronavirus demand collapse finished it. In March 2020 Flybe entered administration and grounded every flight, the pandemic's first airline casualty.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationcompany_shutdownAviationhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/forever-21/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/forever-21/Forever 21 built a fast-fashion empire by leasing enormous mall stores across America even as rivals retreated, reaching about 800 shops and $450 million a year in rent. When mall traffic fell and shopping moved online, that footprint became a trap. It went bankrupt in 2019, was rescued, then filed again and shut all its US stores in 2025 as Shein and Temu undercut it.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyApparel Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/igtv/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/igtv/IGTV was Instagram's 2018 push into long-form vertical video, a standalone app and a YouTube challenger aimed at its billion users. Barely 1% ever downloaded the app, creators had little reason to post, and as TikTok's short-form video took over, Instagram folded IGTV away and pivoted everything to Reels, shutting the app in 2022.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediaproduct_discontinuationSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/houseparty/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/houseparty/Houseparty was a group video chat app, from the same team behind Meerkat, that the pandemic turned into a phenomenon. Downloads jumped from about 570,000 to over 17 million in a single month in early 2020 as lockdowns hit. But the boom was borrowed. Once life reopened, users drained away as fast as they had arrived, and its owner Epic Games shut it down in 2021.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jibo/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jibo/Jibo was the friendly social robot for the home, funded by an enthusiastic 2014 crowdfunding campaign and more than $70 million in all. But it shipped nearly three years late, cost hundreds of dollars to do little that a $50 Amazon Echo could not, and by the time it arrived, smart speakers had taken the market. The company sold off its assets in 2018, and in 2019 the robots said goodbye as their servers went dark.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productcompany_shutdownConsumer Roboticshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/maplin/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/maplin/Maplin was Britain's high-street gadget and electronics-components shop, the place to buy a cable, a resistor, or a drone across 200-plus stores. Successive private-equity owners loaded it with debt while its niche, cheap components and cables, moved to Amazon and eBay. When credit insurers pulled cover in 2017, forcing it to pay for stock upfront, the end came fast. Maplin collapsed into administration in 2018, and all its stores closed.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatecompany_shutdownElectronics Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/meta-portal/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/meta-portal/Meta Portal was Facebook's video-calling screen for the living room, launched in 2018, just weeks after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and a breach of 50 million accounts. Asking people to put a Facebook camera and microphone in their home was a hard sell at the worst possible moment. Portal never passed 1% of the smart-display market, and Meta discontinued it in 2022.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productproduct_discontinuationConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nasty-gal/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nasty-gal/Nasty Gal was the poster child of the social-media fashion era, built by Sophia Amoruso from an eBay vintage store into a $300 million online brand and aFri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyE-commercehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/payless-shoesource/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/payless-shoesource/Payless ShoeSource sold cheap shoes from thousands of mall and strip-mall stores for decades. A $2 billion leveraged buyout in 2012 saddled it with debt just as shoe shopping moved online to Amazon and Zappos and to discounters like Walmart and Target. It went bankrupt in 2017, failed to fix the business, and in 2019 filed again and liquidated all of its roughly 2,100 stores in North America.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyFootwear Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pier-1-imports/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pier-1-imports/Pier 1 Imports sold quirky, affordable home furnishings and was a mall fixture for decades. Then it lost the thread. It thought it competed with Pottery Barn while its shoppers were actually going to Target and HomeGoods, it fumbled e-commerce, and it kept too many aging stores. It filed for bankruptcy in early 2020, failed to find a buyer, and COVID turned the closure into a full liquidation of its 900-plus stores.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyHome Goods Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/silicon-valley-bank/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/silicon-valley-bank/Silicon Valley Bank was the bank of the tech industry, holding the cash of a huge share of US startups and venture funds. It parked that money in long-dated bonds just before interest rates soared, taking losses it could not absorb. When it admitted the hole, a coordinated run pulled $42 billion in a day, and regulators seized the second-largest bank failure in US history within 48 hours in March 2023.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTfinancecompany_shutdownBankinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/solyndra/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/solyndra/Solyndra made an ingenious tubular solar panel that needed no tilt and half the mounting hardware, and it won a $535 million federal loan guarantee to build a robotic factory. Its whole cost advantage rested on silicon staying expensive. Silicon prices then fell roughly eightfold and cheap Chinese panels flooded the market, so in 2011 Solyndra went bankrupt, laid off 1,100 workers, and became a political scandal.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologybankruptcySolar Energyhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/vertu/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/vertu/Vertu made handmade luxury phones for the super-rich, sapphire screens and gold or platinum, priced from about $10,000 to over $200,000. The specs were ordinary, the market tiny, and the economics never worked. Spun out of Nokia in 1998, it was passed between four owners in a few years before collapsing into administration in 2017 with £138 million of debt.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productcompany_shutdownConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/zano/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/zano/Zano was a palm-sized selfie drone that became Europe's most-funded Kickstarter, raising £2.3 million from 12,000 backers in 2014 on the promise of obstacle-dodging, swarming autonomy. The tiny Welsh company behind it could not actually build it. A year later the drone barely flew indoors, the CEO resigned, and the company collapsed into liquidation with almost nothing delivered.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productcompany_shutdownDroneshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/a-and-p/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/a-and-p/A&P was America's Walmart before Walmart, the largest retailer in the country for decades, with 16,000 stores at its 1930s peak and a pioneering private-label, vertically integrated model. Then it stopped keeping up. Slow to modernize and squeezed by discounters below and premium grocers above, it declined for half a century, and a debt-laden late acquisition finished it. It went bankrupt twice and was liquidated in 2015.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyGrocery Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/3dfx/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/3dfx/3dfx made the Voodoo cards that gave 1990s PC gaming its first real 3D graphics, and for a moment it owned the category. Then it made a fatal move. It bought its own card manufacturer and cut out the partners who sold its chips, pushing them straight to Nvidia. Product delays and huge losses followed, and in December 2000 a beaten 3dfx sold its assets to Nvidia and dissolved.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownSemiconductorshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/biosphere-2/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/biosphere-2/Biosphere 2 was a sealed, three-acre glass world in the Arizona desert built to prove humans could live inside a self-sustaining ecosystem, a rehearsal for space colonies. Eight people locked themselves in for two years in 1991. The closed system could not hold. Oxygen fell until ten tons had to be pumped in, crops failed and the crew went hungry, the seal was broken repeatedly, and outside scientists resigned over the lack of rigor. It was widely derided as a costly stunt.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchEnvironmental Sciencehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/comet/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/comet/Comet was one of Britain's biggest electricals chains, but its sales and its lucrative warranty income were sliding as shoppers moved online. In early 2012 a private-equity firm bought it for a token 2 pounds, and within nine months it was gone. When credit insurers pulled cover, suppliers demanded cash upfront, the money ran out, and Comet collapsed into administration with about 6,600 jobs lost.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatecompany_shutdownElectronics Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/frys-electronics/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/frys-electronics/Fry's Electronics was the temple of the American tech nerd, vast themed superstores stocking everything from resistors to soda, doing about $2 billion a year at its peak. Then Amazon undercut it, its owners' attention drifted, and its shelves slowly went bare. On a single night in February 2021 it told staff every store was closing for good, ending 36 years without warning.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatecompany_shutdownElectronics Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hmv/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hmv/HMV was Britain's dominant music and entertainment retailer for most of a century, the famous record shop on nearly every high street. It moved to digital far too late, ceding CDs to Amazon and downloads to iTunes and then streaming to Spotify. It collapsed into administration in 2013, was rescued and cut down, collapsed again in 2018, and survives only as a fraction of its former self.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediafailed_strategyMusic Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/lehman-brothers/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/lehman-brothers/Lehman Brothers was a 158-year-old Wall Street institution and the fourth-largest US investment bank when it filed the largest bankruptcy in American history on September 15, 2008, with $639 billion in assets and $613 billion in debts. Under CEO Richard Fuld it had loaded up on subprime mortgages and extreme leverage, funding itself day to day in the repo market. When the government declined to rescue it, its collapse froze the global financial system and helped trigger the Great Recession.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTfinancebankruptcyInvestment Bankinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/polaroid/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/polaroid/Polaroid invented instant photography and for decades made fat margins selling the film that fed its cameras. Digital cameras quietly ate that cash cow, and Polaroid, already loaded with debt from years of costly bets and a hostile-takeover defense, had no cushion. Nearly $1 billion in debt and profitable in just one of its last five years, it filed for bankruptcy in 2001; the name survived, sold from owner to owner.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productbankruptcyPhotographyhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/silicon-graphics/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/silicon-graphics/Silicon Graphics built the powerful, expensive workstations that rendered the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and ran Hollywood and science, doing $3.66 billion in sales at its 1997 peak. Then cheap PCs with commodity 3D graphics cards from Nvidia and ATI caught up and did the same work for a fraction of the price. SGI could not replace its high-margin business, went bankrupt twice, and was sold for parts in 2009.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownComputing Hardwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/washington-mutual/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/washington-mutual/Washington Mutual was the largest bank failure in US history. A 119-year-old thrift that grew into the country's biggest savings-and-loan on a culture it branded "The Power of Yes," WaMu wrote aggressive subprime and option-ARM mortgages, ignored its own risk officers, and was rated well-capitalized by regulators on the very day it collapsed. When the crisis hit, customers pulled $16.7 billion in ten days; regulators seized it and sold it to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTfinancecompany_shutdownBankinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/color-labs/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/color-labs/Color raised $41 million before it shipped a single thing, the largest sum Sequoia had ever put into a pre-launch startup. Its app used a phone's sensors to auto-share your photos with strangers within about 100 feet. Almost nobody wanted that. Panned at its March 2011 launch and unable to find traction through repeated pivots, Color became the poster child of Silicon Valley overfunding, and ended less than two years later as a roughly $7 million acqui-hire by Apple.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_launchPhoto Sharinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/delorean-motor-company/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/delorean-motor-company/The DeLorean Motor Company built one car, the stainless-steel, gull-winged DMC-12, in a British-government-funded factory in Belfast. It was expensive (around $25,000, more than twice the average car), underpowered, and plagued by unreliable electronics, and it launched straight into the 1980-82 recession. Too few people bought it; by the end of 1981 only 3,000 had sold. The company went into receivership in February 1982, and the arrest of founder John DeLorean that October, on charges he was later acquitted of, finished off a firm that was already collapsing.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAutomotivehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/european-super-league/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/european-super-league/In April 2021, twelve of the richest football clubs in England, Spain, and Italy announced a breakaway European Super League, a closed competition with permanent founding members guaranteed a place no matter how they performed, financed by JPMorgan. It was meant to lock in the game's biggest revenues forever. Instead fans, players, managers, and governments revolted within hours, and the whole project collapsed in about 48 hours as the English clubs pulled out one after another.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediafailed_launchSports & Entertainmenthttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/everpix/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/everpix/Everpix was a widely admired cloud photo app that automatically organized your entire photo library into "Moments" and hid the blurry duplicates. Critics and users loved it. It still died. Built by ex-Apple engineers on just $1.8 million, it could not raise enough to scale a storage-heavy subscription business against free giants like Google and Facebook, a rescue by Path fell through, and it shut down in December 2013, refunding its paying subscribers on the way out.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownConsumer Software (Photography)https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-buzz/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-buzz/Google Buzz was Google's 2010 attempt to bolt a social network onto Gmail. To create an instant social graph, it automatically built your public list of followers from the people you emailed most, and exposed that list by default. Overnight, users found their most frequent contacts (ex-spouses, patients, in one case an abusive ex-husband) made public. The backlash was immediate, the FTC charged deceptive privacy practices, and Google accepted 20 years of privacy audits. Buzz was dead within about two years.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationSocial Networkinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/klout/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/klout/Klout tried to turn online influence into a single number, scoring every social-media user from 1 to 100. For a few years the score was everywhere, cited in marketing decks and even job interviews. It was also widely mocked as a gameable vanity metric that ranked a tech blogger above the US president. Lithium bought Klout for about $200 million in 2014, could not make it fit, and quietly shut it down in 2018.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupproduct_discontinuationSocial Media Analyticshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/phlogiston/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/phlogiston/For most of the 18th century, phlogiston was chemistry's leading idea. Named by Georg Stahl in 1718, it held that a fire-substance, phlogiston, was released whenever things burned or metals rusted, and it unified combustion, rusting, and respiration under one elegant theory. It had one stubborn problem. Metals gain weight when they burn, the opposite of what losing phlogiston should do. When Lavoisier weighed things carefully and showed combustion is combination with oxygen, the whole framework collapsed in the Chemical Revolution of the 1790s.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchScientific Researchhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sydney-opera-house/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sydney-opera-house/The Sydney Opera House is one of the most beloved buildings on Earth, and its construction was a procurement catastrophe. Jorn Utzon's competition-winning design was budgeted at about 7 million Australian dollars and four years; it ended up roughly 1457 percent over budget and took some fourteen years. Fighting the New South Wales government over cost and control, Utzon resigned in 1966, left Australia, and never returned, his name unmentioned when the building opened in 1973.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurefailed_launchPublic Architecture & Constructionhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/viddy/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/viddy/Viddy was "the Instagram for video," a 15-second-clip app that exploded in 2012 to a claimed 50 million users, most arriving through Facebook's Open Graph, which auto-shared their activity to friends. It raised $30 million at a $370 million valuation. Then Facebook changed its algorithm, the free growth vanished overnight, and Viddy laid off a third of its staff, handed $18 million back to investors, sold to Fullscreen for $20 million, and shut down in December 2014.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownVideo Sharing (Social Media)https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/amazon-restaurants/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/amazon-restaurants/Amazon Restaurants was Amazon's four-year attempt to win food delivery. Launched in Seattle in 2015 through Prime Now, it offered free delivery for Prime members and no menu markups, and it still could not gain a foothold against Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Deliveroo. Amazon closed the UK service in 2018 and shut the US business in June 2019, then did the telling thing. Instead of competing, it put $575 million into its rival Deliveroo.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologymarket_withdrawalFood Deliveryhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/apple-maps/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/apple-maps/In September 2012 Apple dropped Google Maps as the iPhone default and shipped its own Maps in iOS 6. It was a disaster of wrong locations, roads that did not exist, melted 3D bridges, and no transit directions. Within a week Tim Cook issued Apple's first public product apology and told customers to use rivals instead. The debacle cost software chief Scott Forstall his job. The product eventually recovered, but the launch remains one of tech's most famous failures.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchSoftware (Mapping)https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/apple-newton/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/apple-newton/The Apple Newton MessagePad was the original personal digital assistant, a pen-based handheld launched in 1993 whose headline feature, handwriting recognition, famously did not work. Mocked in Doonesbury and on The Simpsons, priced at $699, and years ahead of the technology it needed, it sold a fraction of Apple's hopes. Steve Jobs killed it in 1998 on his return. Its deepest legacy is not the device but the chip it forced Apple to co-create, ARM, which now powers every iPhone.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/amazon-spark/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/amazon-spark/Amazon Spark was Amazon's Instagram, a shoppable photo feed for Prime members where you posted products you loved and others tapped "smiles" instead of likes. The problem was in the premise. It was built around buying, not around people, so it felt transactional and bland, and it lacked the reasons anyone opens Instagram. About 10,000 Amazon customers used it on day one. Two years later, in 2019, Amazon quietly shut it down.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationSocial Commercehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/facebook-paper/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/facebook-paper/Facebook Paper was a gorgeous, gesture-driven news-reading app that Facebook launched in 2014 to be "the modern age's newspaper." Critics loved how it looked; it made the regular Facebook app seem cluttered by comparison. Almost nobody used it. Built by a small team over a year, it fell out of the top 300 apps within a month and drew barely a million downloads for a company with over a billion users. Facebook shut it down in 2016 and moved its design into Instant Articles.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationConsumer Softwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-allo/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-allo/Google Allo was a 2016 "smart messaging" app built around the new Google Assistant, and it was dead on arrival. It launched into a market already owned by WhatsApp, iMessage, and Facebook Messenger, with over a billion users each, and offered nothing compelling enough to make anyone switch. It never reached 50 million users. Google paused it after 18 months, redirected its team to RCS, and shut Allo down in March 2019, one more entry in Google's long graveyard of abandoned messaging apps.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationMessaginghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-daydream/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-daydream/Google Daydream was Google's bet on virtual reality you already owned. Slot your phone into a soft headset and go. Launched in 2016 with the Pixel, it never caught on. The core idea had a fatal catch, putting your phone in a headset means losing the phone you use all day, and standalone headsets like Oculus soon did VR better. Google barely nurtured it, did not even mention it at its 2018 developer conference, and killed it in 2019.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationVirtual Realityhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/libra-diem/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/libra-diem/In 2019 Facebook unveiled Libra, a plan for a global digital currency backed by a basket of national currencies and run by an association of some thirty companies. It was one of the most ambitious things Facebook ever attempted, and regulators and central banks around the world moved to stop it almost immediately. Over three years the project shrank from a world currency to a single US stablecoin, rebranded to Diem, and in 2022 gave up entirely, selling its assets for about $200 million.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTfinancefailed_launchCryptocurrencyhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/microsoft-bob/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/microsoft-bob/Microsoft Bob was Microsoft's 1995 attempt to make the PC friendly by turning it into a cartoon house, with rooms full of clickable objects and a talking dog named Rover to guide you. Meant to be warmer than Windows, it landed as expensive, patronizing, and pointless, panned by the press and ignored by buyers. It was discontinued within about a year. Its most lasting legacy is Comic Sans, the font created for it.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationConsumer Softwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/windows-vista/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/windows-vista/Windows Vista was Microsoft's long-delayed 2007 successor to Windows XP, and it arrived slower than the thing it replaced. Its Aero interface dragged, its User Account Control nagged users with endless permission prompts, and it was incompatible with heaps of existing hardware and software. People refused to upgrade. Vista peaked below 24% share while XP kept 62%. Microsoft rushed out Windows 7 in under three years, and Vista became a byword for a bad release.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchOperating Systemshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/bethlehem-steel/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/bethlehem-steel/Bethlehem Steel built America, its beams framed the skyscrapers and its plates armored the warships, and it was the country's second-largest steelmaker. Then cheap foreign steel, nimble minimills, and a crushing legacy of pension and retiree costs ground it down. By the 1990s it was carrying four pensioners for every active worker and losing hundreds of millions a year. It went bankrupt in 2001, and in 2003 its assets were sold for scrap-heap prices to a new company.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcySteelhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/cuecat/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/cuecat/The CueCat was a cat-shaped barcode scanner given away free during the dot-com boom so you could scan codes printed in magazines and be whisked to a website. Over a million were shipped. The premise never made sense to anyone, scanning a barcode was more work than typing a web address, so the devices became paperweights. It also quietly tracked what users scanned, sparking a privacy backlash, and hobbyists cracked it within days. Its maker, Digital Convergence, burned through a fortune and folded.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/digital-equipment-corporation/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/digital-equipment-corporation/Digital Equipment Corporation was the second-largest computer company in the world, the maker of the VAX minicomputer that a generation of engineers revered. Its founder, Ken Olsen, ran a superbly organized company and was hailed as one of the great CEOs. He also dismissed the personal computer as a toy. DEC clung to its minicomputers as the market moved to cheap PCs and workstations, its own PC flopped, and the once-mighty giant was sold to Compaq in 1998 for $9.6 billion.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatefailed_strategyComputinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/montgomery-ward/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/montgomery-ward/Montgomery Ward invented the mail-order catalog in 1872 and grew into one of America's great retailers. Then its chairman, Sewell Avery, became convinced a depression would follow World War II, refused to open a single new store, and hoarded $327 million in cash for a downturn that never came. While Ward's sat still, Sears expanded and left it far behind. It never recovered, limping through the discount era before Walmart and Target finished it off and it liquidated in 2001.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nintendo-virtual-boy/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nintendo-virtual-boy/The Virtual Boy was Nintendo's 1995 attempt at 3D gaming, a red-and-black console you hunched over on a tabletop stand and peered into like a viewfinder. It rendered everything in eye-straining monochrome red, gave players headaches and neck fatigue, and shipped with just 14 games in the US. It was not portable like the Game Boy and not comfortable like a TV console. Nintendo pulled it within a year, its shortest-lived system ever.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nokia-n-gage/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nokia-n-gage/The Nokia N-Gage was a 2003 gaming phone, Nokia's attempt to take on the Game Boy Advance while also being your mobile. It failed at both. You had to hold the tall device sideways against your face to make calls (the infamous "taco phone"), its screen was half the size of a real handheld's, and changing a game meant powering down and removing the battery. Nokia hoped to sell 6 million; it sold about 2 million, and shut the platform down in 2009.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pontiac-aztek/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pontiac-aztek/The Pontiac Aztek was GM's early crossover SUV, and it became a punchline. When GM unveiled it in 2001, the auto-show audience gasped, and Consumer Reports said people would point and laugh at drivers. A genuinely useful, competent vehicle had been cost-shaved and compromised in development into something widely called deformed. It also launched badly, no all-wheel drive for months, priced above its target buyers. GM aimed for 75,000 sales a year and never cleared 28,000, cancelling it in 2005.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationproduct_discontinuationAutomotivehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/wang-laboratories/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/wang-laboratories/Wang Laboratories owned the office. Founded by the inventor An Wang, it dominated word processing in the 1970s and 1980s with dedicated machines that captured a third of the world market. Then the personal computer arrived, and Wang's proprietary systems, brilliant for one task, could not adapt to a world of open standards and networked PCs. Losses piled up, the founding family's $1.6 billion stake shrank to $50 million, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1992.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyComputinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/woolworth/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/woolworth/F.W. Woolworth invented the five-and-dime, the fixed-low-price variety store that put affordable goods on open counters, and grew into a nationwide symbol of retail. Its downfall was location. Its stores sat downtown, with cramped floors and no parking, just as Americans moved to the suburbs, the malls, and the big-box discounters. Woolworth converted to self-service too slowly and never adapted, and by the end of 1997 it closed its last 400 US stores, ending a 118-year era.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatefailed_strategyRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/xerox-parc/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/xerox-parc/Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center invented the modern personal computer, the graphical interface, the mouse, Ethernet, and the laser printer. Then Xerox, a copier company run by executives who could not see past photocopying, failed to commercialize almost any of it. Steve Jobs toured PARC in 1979, saw the future, and built it at Apple for a fraction of the price. The one great exception, laser printing, earned Xerox billions, which is why "Xerox fumbled the future" is a fiercely contested verdict.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatefailed_strategyComputinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/lower-hill-district/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/lower-hill-district/In the 1950s Pittsburgh set out to remake its downtown with a gleaming domed arena and a modern district around it. It chose to build on the Lower Hill District, the downtown edge of one of the most important Black neighborhoods in America. The city cleared roughly 95 acres and displaced around 8,000 residents and more than 400 businesses. It built the Civic Arena and almost nothing else. For decades the surrounding land was a field of surface parking, the arena itself was torn down in 2011, and the Hill has spent generations pressing to be made whole.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurefailed_strategyUrban Renewalhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/oak-street-connector/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/oak-street-connector/In the 1950s New Haven's Mayor Richard C. Lee made his city a national showcase of urban renewal, and the Oak Street neighborhood was the first target. The dense district of Italian and Jewish immigrants and Black families was cleared, its 881 families and 350 businesses displaced, to build the Route 34 expressway. The highway was never finished. It ended in a mile-long stub that led nowhere and cut the Hill district off from downtown, and since 2013 the city has been trying to tear it back out.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurefailed_strategyUrban Renewalhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pei-plan/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pei-plan/In 1964 Oklahoma City hired the celebrated architect I.M. Pei to reinvent its downtown. Over the next decade and a half, urban renewal cleared roughly 530 buildings across the core, about 40 percent of downtown, to make way for a modern district anchored by a 100 million dollar shopping galleria. The galleria was never built. Much of the cleared land became surface parking for a generation, and by 1988 a city councilman was calling downtown dead and admitting the city had helped kill it.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurefailed_strategyUrban Renewalhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/air-berlin/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/air-berlin/Air Berlin grew into Germany's second-largest airline through debt-funded acquisitions, but never made money and was kept aloft by Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways. Etihad's hub-feed strategy distracted it from low-cost competition, and when Etihad stopped writing cheques in August 2017 the airline collapsed within weeks.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/alitalia/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/alitalia/Italy's flag carrier lost money in all but one year of its 75-year life. A high cost base, money-losing routes, and low-cost and high-speed-rail competition made it chronically unprofitable, but serial state bailouts kept it flying instead of forcing reform, until the money and the model both ran out in 2021.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationfailed_turnaroundAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/aol-time-warner/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/aol-time-warner/The largest merger of its era united a dot-com darling with a media empire. It then destroyed roughly $99 billion in value as cultures clashed and AOL's business collapsed, widely called the worst merger in corporate history.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediafailed_acquisitionMedia & Internethttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/arcandor/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/arcandor/Arcandor was a German retail giant. Karstadt department stores, the Quelle mail-order house, and a majority stake in Thomas Cook. Its core businesses were in long decline, and a sale-and-leaseback strategy stripped its store properties, leaving it paying rents it couldn't afford. It filed for insolvency in 2009.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/daewoo/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/daewoo/Daewoo grew from a small trading firm into one of South Korea's three largest chaebol, built on aggressive debt-funded global expansion. When the 1997 Asian financial crisis forced its rivals to retrench, Daewoo took on still more debt instead, and in 1999 it collapsed under roughly $50–57 billion of it, one of the largest corporate failures in history.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyConglomeratehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/debenhams/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/debenhams/Debenhams traded for 243 years, until a 2003 private-equity buyout loaded it with debt and sold the freeholds under its own stores. Left paying rent it once owned and starved of money to modernize, the hollowed-out chain couldn't fight the shift online, and was liquidated in 2021.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatecompany_shutdownRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/dick-smith/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/dick-smith/Woolworths sold the Australian electronics chain Dick Smith to a private-equity firm in 2012 for about A$20 million, less than its inventory was worth. Barely a year later it was floated on the stock market at around A$520 million. The dressed-up business couldn't fund its own stock, and it collapsed within weeks in early 2016.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatecompany_shutdownRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/flip-video/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/flip-video/The Flip was a dead-simple pocket camcorder and the best-selling one on the market. Cisco bought its maker for $590 million in 2009, then abruptly killed it two years later. Whether smartphones doomed it or Cisco sacrificed a still-profitable business to exit consumer is genuinely disputed.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/homejoy/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/homejoy/An on-demand home-cleaning startup used deep discounts to sign up customers who didn't come back. Its cut left too little for good cleaners, and, facing lawsuits over whether those cleaners were employees, it shut down in 2015.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownOn-demand Serviceshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jet-airways/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jet-airways/Jet Airways grew into one of India's largest full-service airlines, then stopped flying in April 2019 under about $1.2 billion of debt. A high-cost model, low-cost competition, rising fuel, and a weak rupee bled it for years; when lenders wouldn't extend more cash, it grounded its whole fleet within weeks.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kiko/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kiko/One of Y Combinator's very first startups, Kiko was an early Ajax web calendar. It is remembered as the app "Google Calendar killed", but its own founders later admitted a standalone calendar with no email and no revenue model was doomed regardless. They auctioned it on eBay and went on to build Twitch.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownProductivity Softwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kingfisher-airlines/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kingfisher-airlines/Kingfisher Airlines launched in 2005 as India's glamorous premium carrier and never made a profit. A disastrous move into low-cost flying via Air Deccan, debt-funded expansion, high fuel costs, and fierce competition drained it for years, until unpaid staff, grounded planes, and a suspended license ended it in 2012.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationcompany_shutdownAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kmart/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kmart/Kmart helped invent American discount retailing. Through the 1990s it was squeezed between Walmart's lower prices and Target's more upscale appeal, never carving out a position of its own, and failing execution left it filing what was then the largest US retail bankruptcy in January 2002.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/long-term-capital-management/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/long-term-capital-management/A hedge fund run by Nobel laureates earned spectacular returns on enormous leverage. Then the 1998 Russian default broke its models, cost it about $4.6 billion, and forced a Federal Reserve-organized bank rescue.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTfinancecompany_shutdownHedge Fundshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/magic-leap/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/magic-leap/An augmented-reality startup that raised more than $2.6 billion on secrecy and hype, shipped a headset few wanted, and abandoned its consumer dream for enterprise.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_strategyAugmented Realityhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/monarch-airlines/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/monarch-airlines/Monarch spent fifty years flying British holidaymakers to the sun, then reinvented itself as a scheduled low-cost airline against Ryanair and easyJet. Terrorism gutted its North African and Mediterranean routes and a weak post-Brexit pound raised costs, and in October 2017 it became the largest UK airline ever to collapse.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationcompany_shutdownAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/mothercare/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/mothercare/Mothercare was the British high street's default shop for prams, cots, and baby clothes for half a century. Then supermarkets and Amazon sold the same things cheaper and easier, and Mothercare, outdated and undifferentiated, gave parents little reason to make the trip. Its UK stores went into administration in 2019, though the brand lives on through licensing.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatefailed_turnaroundRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/new-coke/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/new-coke/Coca-Cola replaced its 99-year-old formula after winning taste tests, misjudged customers' attachment to the original, and reversed course in 79 days.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productfailed_launchBeverageshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/olympia-york/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/olympia-york/Olympia & York was one of the world's largest property developers, run by Canada's Reichmann family. It bet the company on Canary Wharf, a vast speculative office complex in London's Docklands, built on enormous debt before the tenants or the promised transit link arrived. When the early-1990s property market crashed, the empty towers helped bring the whole empire down.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTfinancebankruptcyReal Estatehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/one-tel/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/one-tel/One.Tel grew explosively into one of Australia's biggest companies, backed by the Murdoch and Packer empires, then collapsed in 2001. Ruinous cash burn and weak financial visibility meant it was insolvent months before anyone acted; when its backers pulled a rescue, it fell apart within days.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownTelecommunicationshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/osborne-computer/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/osborne-computer/Osborne made the first commercially successful portable computer and grew explosively. Then, the story goes, it killed itself by showing off future models before the current one sold, though historians argue competition and finances mattered as much.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologybankruptcyPersonal Computershttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pan-am/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pan-am/Pan American World Airways was the iconic face of US international flying, and had almost no domestic network. When deregulation opened its skies to domestic rivals in 1978, its model was exposed; a costly acquisition meant to fix that only loaded on debt, it sold its crown jewels to survive, and after the Lockerbie bombing and years of losses it shut down in December 1991.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationcompany_shutdownAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/quaker-snapple/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/quaker-snapple/Fresh off its triumph with Gatorade, Quaker Oats paid $1.7 billion for Snapple. It then misread the quirky brand and its small-store distributors, and sold it three years later for $300 million, a roughly $1.4 billion loss.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productfailed_acquisitionBeverageshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/rbs-abn-amro/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/rbs-abn-amro/At the top of the market in 2007, an RBS-led consortium paid about €71 billion for ABN AMRO, the largest banking takeover ever, funded largely by debt. Within a year the deal had helped push Royal Bank of Scotland into a £24bn loss and a UK government rescue.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTfinancefailed_acquisitionBankinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/schlecker/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/schlecker/Schlecker was Germany's biggest drugstore chain, around 14,000 small, cramped shops on seemingly every corner. As rivals dm and Rossmann won shoppers with bigger, brighter, better-run stores, Schlecker kept its dated format and bled money for years, until it filed for insolvency in 2012, found no buyer, and closed everything.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/target-canada/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/target-canada/Target rushed more than 100 stores across Canada in a single year on an untested inventory system. Empty shelves, high prices, and a supply-chain meltdown burned about $2 billion and forced a full retreat within two years.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatemarket_withdrawalRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/toys-r-us/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/toys-r-us/An iconic toy retailer was loaded with billions in buyout debt that starved its response to Amazon and big-box rivals. It ended in bankruptcy and the loss of its US stores.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/turntable-fm/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/turntable-fm/Turntable.fm was a 2011 viral hit where people took turns DJ-ing in virtual rooms. But paying to license the music was ruinously expensive, and the active, attention-heavy format never became a daily habit. It shut down in 2013.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupproduct_discontinuationSocial Musichttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/wow-air/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/wow-air/WOW air turned Iceland into a cut-price bridge across the Atlantic, growing from nothing to millions of passengers on dirt-cheap fares via Reykjavik. Then it over-reached into long-haul routes its ultra-low-cost model didn't fit, and with fuel rising and rescues falling through it collapsed overnight in March 2019.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationcompany_shutdownAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/yahoo/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/yahoo/Yahoo was one of the internet's original giants, worth about $125 billion at the dot-com peak. It turned down Microsoft's ~$44.6 billion takeover in 2008, missed the shift to mobile and social, and after a failed turnaround under Marissa Mayer agreed in 2016 to sell its core business to Verizon for about $4.83 billion, a fraction of what it had walked away from.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_turnaroundInternethttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/app-net/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/app-net/App.net was a paid, ad-free social network, a bet that if users, not advertisers, paid the bills, the product would finally serve them. Launched in 2012 on a $750,000 crowdfunding wave, it never pulled enough paying users from free Twitter, ran out of money for staff by 2014, and shut down in 2017.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_strategySocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/grooveshark/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/grooveshark/Grooveshark let anyone upload and stream music for free and grew to some 20 million users, on a catalog it largely didn't have the rights to. After years of label lawsuits and a ruling that its own employees had uploaded thousands of copyrighted songs, it shut down overnight in a 2015 settlement.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownMusic Streaminghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/meerkat/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/meerkat/Meerkat was the live-streaming app that took over SXSW 2015, and it ran on Twitter's social graph. Weeks in, Twitter cut off that access with about two hours' notice, bought and promoted a rival called Periscope, and Meerkat was finished within months.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupproduct_discontinuationSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/path/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/path/Path was a beautifully designed "personal" social network capped at 50 friends. Silicon Valley's bet that intimacy could beat scale. It turned down $100 million from Google, then couldn't grow against Facebook and Instagram, sold to Korea's Kakao in 2015, and shut down in 2018.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_strategySocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/scalefactor/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/scalefactor/ScaleFactor raised $100 million selling AI that would automate small-business bookkeeping. Behind the software, dozens of human accountants did the work by hand, often with errors, and when customers churned, the startup blamed COVID and shut down in 2020.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownFintechhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/washio/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/washio/Washio was the "Uber for laundry", press a button, someone picks up your dirty clothes and returns them washed within a day. It raised about $17 million and reached seven cities, but the on-demand economics never worked, and in 2016 it became a poster child of the "Uber for X" bust.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownOn-Demand Laundryhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/yik-yak/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/yik-yak/Yik Yak was an anonymous, hyperlocal app that exploded on US college campuses and hit a ~$400 million valuation. The same anonymity that fueled it enabled cyberbullying and threats, and when the founders reined it in, they killed the thing users came for. It shut down in 2017, sold for about $1 million.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/beme/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/beme/Beme was YouTuber Casey Neistat's video app, you filmed by pressing the phone to your chest, so you could never see the screen, in the name of unedited authenticity. Despite Neistat's huge following it never caught on against Snapchat or Instagram, so CNN bought it for about $25 million in 2016, then shut it down within two years.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_acquisitionSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/ello/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/ello/Ello was the ad-free "anti-Facebook" that went viral in September 2014 on a manifesto, "You are not a product." Tens of thousands requested invites every hour, but most never came back, it took VC money that jarred with its no-ads ethos, and the hype drained away within weeks. It limped on for years before going dark in 2023.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_strategySocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jaiku/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jaiku/Jaiku was a Finnish microblogging service that launched alongside Twitter in 2006 and, on mobile, was arguably better. Google bought it in 2007, then did almost nothing with it for years while Twitter ran away with the market, before shutting it down in 2012.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_acquisitionSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/luxe/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/luxe/Luxe let you summon a valet by app to park your car anywhere in the city and bring it back on demand. It raised over $75 million, including $50 million from Hertz, but on-demand valet parking had no path to a profitable margin, and after retreating from city after city it shut the service in 2017 and was acqui-hired by Volvo.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_strategyTransportationhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/maple/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/maple/Maple was David Chang's much-hyped New York meal startup, no storefront, its own kitchens, chef-quality lunches at $12 all-in, delivered fast. It owned the entire food cycle to control quality and cost, but the margins never worked, and in 2017 it shut down and folded its technology into Deliveroo.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownFood Deliveryhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nexus-q/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nexus-q/The Nexus Q was Google's $299 spherical media streamer, unveiled in 2012 to do less than a $99 Apple TV, stream only Google's own services, and only with an Android phone as its remote. Reviews were brutal, and Google postponed the launch indefinitely before it ever went on sale, giving pre-order units away free.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productfailed_launchConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sprig/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sprig/Sprig cooked its own healthy meals in its own kitchens and delivered them in minutes, owning the entire chain from sourcing to your door. It raised $56.7 million on that vertically integrated model, but the economics of doing everything itself never worked at scale, and it shut down in 2017.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownFood Deliveryhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/vessel/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/vessel/Vessel was ex-Hulu CEO Jason Kilar's "Hulu for YouTube", pay $2.99 a month to watch creators' videos 72 hours before they hit YouTube free. It raised over $130 million on that bet, but not enough people would pay for early access to free content, and Verizon bought it for its tech and shut the service in 2016.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediafailed_strategyStreaming Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/yahoo-screen/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/yahoo-screen/Yahoo Screen was Yahoo's bid to be a premium YouTube, a video hub that revived the cancelled sitcom Community and streamed the first live NFL regular-season game. But it couldn't sell the ads to pay for that content, took a $42 million write-off, and Yahoo quietly shut it down in January 2016.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediaproduct_discontinuationStreaming Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/cold-fusion/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/cold-fusion/In March 1989 two chemists announced, at a press conference before peer review, that they had produced nuclear fusion in a tabletop jar at room temperature, a limitless clean-energy breakthrough. Within weeks, labs worldwide failed to reproduce it and found the measurements flawed; "cold fusion" became the byword for premature science.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchScientific Researchhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/concorde/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/concorde/Concorde was an engineering triumph and a commercial failure. The Anglo-French supersonic airliner crossed the Atlantic in half the time, but sonic-boom bans confined it to over-water routes, the 1973 oil crisis made its thirst ruinous, and every airline order was cancelled except the two state carriers. Just 20 were built, subsidised by governments, and it was retired in 2003.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationfailed_strategyAviationhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/polywater/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/polywater/Polywater was a supposed new, polymerized form of water, denser, thicker, boiling near 1,000°F, reported from Soviet labs and chased worldwide in the late 1960s, amid Cold War fears of a "polywater gap" and even that it might turn all of Earth's water solid. Hundreds of papers later, it turned out to be ordinary water contaminated with sweat and grime.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchScientific Researchhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/42floors/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/42floors/42Floors set out to fix the misery of searching for office space online. Then it tried to also become an on-the-ground brokerage, and found it couldn't scale a national search platform and a hands-on brokerage at once. In 2015 it killed the brokerage, laid off half its staff, and refocused.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_strategyCommercial Real Estatehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/alcatel-lucent/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/alcatel-lucent/The 2006 "merger of equals" between France's Alcatel and America's Lucent was meant to create a telecom-equipment champion. Instead it produced a decade of losses, culture clashes, and endless restructuring, before Nokia absorbed what was left in 2016.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_acquisitionTelecommunications Equipmenthttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/ansett-australia/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/ansett-australia/One of Australia's two great airlines flew an ageing, under-invested fleet that was grounded over safety while low-cost newcomers and Qantas undercut it. Losing about A$1.3 million a day, it was cut loose by its owner after 9/11 and collapsed in 2001.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/apple-airpower/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/apple-airpower/Apple announced a charge-anywhere wireless mat, hit engineering walls it could not clear, and cancelled it without ever shipping, its first such reversal.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/atrium/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/atrium/Atrium raised $75 million to reinvent the law firm, pairing an in-house firm with software that would make legal work dramatically more efficient. The two-company model never cohered, the promised efficiency gains didn't materialize, and after a last-ditch pivot it shut down in 2020.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownLegal Technologyhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/arch-deluxe/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/arch-deluxe/McDonald's spent a reported $300 million to sell adults a "grown-up" burger. It learned that customers came to McDonald's for exactly what it already was, not an upscale sandwich priced above the Big Mac.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productfailed_launchFast Foodhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/balanced-payments/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/balanced-payments/Balanced built payments infrastructure for online marketplaces and processed hundreds of millions a year. Then its bigger, better-funded YC classmate Stripe moved into the same niche, and in a thin-margin, scale-driven business, Balanced lost its customers and handed them to the rival that beat it.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownPaymentshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/beepi/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/beepi/Beepi promised to fix used-car buying, purchase online, delivered to your door. It raised about $150 million at a $560M valuation, then burned roughly $7 million a month on inflated costs while fighting a market where most people won't buy a car sight-unseen. Two rescue deals collapsed, and it shut down in 2016.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownUsed-Car Marketplacehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/benq-mobile/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/benq-mobile/Siemens paid Taiwan's BenQ to take its loss-making mobile-phone business off its hands. Within a year BenQ Mobile had burned about €840 million, failed to gain on Nokia and Motorola, and collapsed into insolvency.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_acquisitionMobile Phoneshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/berlin-brandenburg-airport/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/berlin-brandenburg-airport/Germany's flagship new airport became a byword for megaproject dysfunction. A fire-safety system that failed its tests, chronic mismanagement, and repeated delays pushed its opening about nine years late and its cost to roughly triple the plan.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurefailed_launchAviation & Public Infrastructurehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/betamax/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/betamax/The technically respected videotape format lost the home-video war to VHS. Sony kept Betamax closed and short-recording, while JVC licensed VHS widely and let it record a whole movie.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologymarket_withdrawalConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/better-place/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/better-place/The EV battery-swapping startup that raised around $850M and built the infrastructure before proving anyone would buy the cars, then went bankrupt.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupbankruptcyElectric Vehicleshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/blab/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/blab/Blab was a live-streaming app for group video chats, a "Periscope for groups", that grew to 3.9 million users in a year. But only about one in ten came back daily, the format never sustained engagement, and against Twitter-backed Periscope it shut down in 2016.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupproduct_discontinuationLive Streaminghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/blackberry-playbook/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/blackberry-playbook/BlackBerry rushed a tablet to challenge the iPad, and shipped it without native email, the very thing its brand was built on. Panned and unsold, the PlayBook forced a $485 million writedown and was gone within two years.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchTabletshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/bird-scooters/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/bird-scooters/The fastest startup ever to a billion-dollar valuation blanketed cities with shared e-scooters. But they wore out and vanished faster than they earned, and Bird went from a $2 billion company to bankruptcy in five years.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyMicromobilityhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/blackberry/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/blackberry/The smartphone pioneer that dismissed the touchscreen, watched its market share fall from dominance to near zero, and quit making phones.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_strategySmartphoneshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/boo-com/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/boo-com/A UK online-fashion pioneer that raised about $135M, built a beautiful but unusable website, over-expanded across countries, and collapsed in six months of selling.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupbankruptcyE-commercehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/blockbuster/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/blockbuster/The video-rental giant that passed on Netflix, leaned on late fees, and abandoned its own online strategy before streaming buried it.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediabankruptcyVideo Rentalhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/braniff-international/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/braniff-international/When US airlines were deregulated in 1978, Braniff bet on rapid growth, new cities, routes, and about a billion dollars of aircraft. Then debt, fuel costs, and 20% interest rates crushed the over-extended carrier, which shut down in 1982.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/borders/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/borders/The bookstore chain that outsourced its website to Amazon and arrived late to e-books, then went bankrupt and liquidated every store.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediabankruptcyBookstore Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/bump/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/bump/Bump let you tap two phones together to swap contacts and photos, and it was a genuine hit, 125 million downloads. But it never found a way to make money, Apple's AirDrop made phone-tapping redundant, and after Google bought it for a modest ~$35 million, the app was shut down within months.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupproduct_discontinuationConsumer Mobile Appshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/circuit-city/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/circuit-city/A leading US electronics retailer fired its most experienced salespeople to cut costs, gutting the service that set it apart. It was bankrupt within two years.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/cnn-plus/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/cnn-plus/CNN's premium streaming service launched into an imminent merger and was shut down by its new owners about a month later.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediafailed_launchStreaming Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/commodore-international/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/commodore-international/Commodore dominated home computing with the best-selling Commodore 64 and owned the technically brilliant Amiga. Then boardroom turmoil, revolving-door management, and neglect of software and marketing squandered it all, and it went bankrupt in 1994.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologybankruptcyHome Computershttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/crystal-pepsi/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/crystal-pepsi/A clear cola that rode novelty to a fast start, then collapsed as the curiosity faded, the taste disappointed, and Coca-Cola sabotaged the category.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productfailed_launchBeverageshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/daimlerchrysler/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/daimlerchrysler/The largest cross-border industrial merger of its time joined Daimler-Benz and Chrysler as "equals." But a German-American culture clash blocked integration, the synergies never came, and Daimler sold Chrysler nine years later for a fraction of the price.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationfailed_acquisitionAutomotivehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/denver-airport-baggage-system/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/denver-airport-baggage-system/Denver's new airport bet on the world's largest automated baggage system. It mangled and misrouted bags, delayed the airport's opening by about 16 months, and was quietly abandoned a decade later.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructureproduct_discontinuationAviation & Systems Engineeringhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/digg/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/digg/The web's leading social-news site until a 2010 redesign stripped out what users loved, drove them to Reddit, and left Digg to sell for about $500,000.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediafailed_strategySocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/doppler-labs/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/doppler-labs/Doppler Labs raised over $50 million to build the Here One "smart earbuds", noise-cancelling buds that let you reshape the sounds around you. But the battery lasted only a couple of hours, sales were weak, and as investors turned against hardware it couldn't raise more. It shut down in 2017.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/dreamcast/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/dreamcast/A pioneering console, the first with built-in online play, overwhelmed by the PlayStation 2 and Sega's own damaged reputation, ending Sega's hardware business.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologymarket_withdrawalVideo Game Consoleshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/essential-phone/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/essential-phone/Backed by a star founder and hundreds of millions in funding, Essential launched a single well-hyped Android phone into a market owned by Apple and Samsung. Poor sales, a cancelled successor, and no path to ship its next device shut the company down after one product.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/etoys/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/etoys/The most famous online toy store of the dot-com boom soared to a $76 first-day stock price. It then burned through cash building warehouses for a business it needed only weeks a year, and, out-competed and out of money, went bankrupt in 2001.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupbankruptcyE-commercehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/exec/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/exec/Exec promised to instantly run any errand for $25 an hour. But outside founders and engineers, few people could figure out what to do with a "do anything" service. It pivoted to cleaning, got out-funded by rivals like Homejoy and Handybook, and was sold for under $10 million.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_strategyOn-Demand Serviceshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/fab-com/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/fab-com/A design flash-sale site grew to 10 million members faster than Facebook and raised over $300 million at a $1 billion valuation. Then it burned $14 million a month, pivoted again and again, and sold for about $15 million.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_strategyE-commercehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/fire-phone/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/fire-phone/Amazon's premium-priced smartphone launched into a mature two-OS market with no compelling advantage, and was written off within months.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/facebook-home/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/facebook-home/Facebook tried to put itself at the center of the phone with a home-screen takeover and a dedicated handset, the HTC First. Within weeks the phone was cut from $99 to 99 cents, and Home was quietly abandoned.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchMobile Softwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/fokker/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/fokker/A pioneering Dutch aircraft maker, once the world's largest, Fokker could not out-invest Boeing and Airbus in a scale-driven industry. Its new-jet development costs spiralled, and it collapsed in 1996 when owner Daimler-Benz Aerospace cut it loose.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAircraft Manufacturinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/ford-edsel/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/ford-edsel/Ford built a whole new car division on secretive hype, then launched the Edsel into a recession with unloved styling and expectations it couldn't meet. It lost an estimated $250-350 million in about two years.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationfailed_launchAutomotivehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/friendster/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/friendster/The first big social network, which turned down a $30M Google offer, then let slow pages and crashes drive its users to MySpace and Facebook.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediaproduct_discontinuationSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/go90/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/go90/Verizon spent over a billion dollars building go90, a free mobile-video service meant to win millennials from YouTube and Netflix. The audience never came, and after three years Verizon folded it and took a ~$900 million charge.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediaproduct_discontinuationStreaming Videohttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/gilt-groupe/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/gilt-groupe/Gilt Groupe pioneered the flash sale, time-limited online sales of discounted luxury goods, and hit a $1 billion valuation. But slim margins, waning novelty, and the difficulty of scaling a profitable e-commerce operation caught up with it, and it sold to Hudson's Bay for $250 million, below what it had raised.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_strategyFlash-Sale Ecommercehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-glass/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-glass/The face-worn computer whose always-on camera provoked a privacy backlash the consumer product never overcame.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationWearableshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-inbox/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-inbox/Inbox by Gmail was a well-liked reinvention of email from the Gmail team, built around bundles, snooze, and reminders. Google folded its best ideas into Gmail and shut Inbox down after four years, another entry in Google's long list of retired products.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationCommunication Softwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-plus/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-plus/Google's answer to Facebook, forced across its products yet barely used, was wound down after a data-exposure bug hastened the decision.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediaproduct_discontinuationSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-stadia/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-stadia/Google's cloud-gaming platform launched with too few games, never found an audience, and was shut down three years later.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchCloud Gaminghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-reader/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-reader/A beloved RSS reader with a devoted following that Google shut down anyway, judging it too niche and hard to justify against bigger bets.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationSoftwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-wave/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/google-wave/Google tried to merge email, instant messaging, and collaborative documents into real-time "waves." It dazzled at its unveiling but confused nearly everyone who tried it, and Google halted development barely a year later, citing weak adoption.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationCommunication Softwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/gopro-karma/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/gopro-karma/GoPro's first drone launched to fanfare, then had to be recalled within weeks when units lost power and fell from the sky. GoPro left the drone business a year later.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologymarket_withdrawalConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/groupon/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/groupon/Groupon pioneered the "daily deal" and IPO'd in 2011 at a $13 billion valuation. Months later it had to restate its results after its auditor found a "material weakness" in its financial controls, and the daily-deal model itself faded. Its stock lost more than 80% of its value within a year.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_strategyLocal Commercehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hanjin-shipping/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hanjin-shipping/South Korea's largest container line ordered a wave of ships just before the 2008 crash. A years-long shipping glut and its own debt then sank it, and its 2016 collapse stranded ships and billions in cargo at sea, snarling global trade.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyContainer Shippinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/grundig/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/grundig/A post-war German champion, Grundig became Europe's biggest radio maker. Ground down over decades by lower-cost Japanese and Asian rivals it could not match on price, it went bankrupt in 2003 after years of losses.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTconsumer_productbankruptcyConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hd-dvd/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hd-dvd/Toshiba's high-definition disc format lost a format war to Sony's Blu-ray when studios and retailers defected, and was abandoned within weeks.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologymarket_withdrawalConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hipmunk/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hipmunk/Hipmunk was a beloved travel-search site that sorted flights by "agony." But it couldn't beat Google Flights, Kayak, and Expedia as an independent business in a consolidating market. It sold to Concur (SAP) in 2016, was quietly neglected, and shut down in 2020.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupproduct_discontinuationTravel Searchhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hp-touchpad/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/hp-touchpad/HP's well-reviewed webOS tablet launched into the iPad's shadow with no app ecosystem, sold dismally, and was killed 49 days later.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jawbone/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jawbone/The audio-and-wearables maker that raised over $900M and was once valued near $3B, then liquidated as product problems and Fitbit and Apple overtook it.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownConsumer Hardwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/iridium/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/iridium/A $5 billion constellation of 66 satellites promised a phone that worked anywhere on Earth. But cheap cellular spread during its long build, and the original venture went bankrupt nine months after launch.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurebankruptcySatellite Communicationshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jcpenney/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/jcpenney/A celebrated Apple retail executive tried to remake J.C. Penney by scrapping coupons and sales for everyday low prices, and drove away the bargain-hunting customers it depended on, with sales down about 25% in a year.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatefailed_turnaroundRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/juicero/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/juicero/The $700 Wi-Fi juice press, backed by $120M in venture capital, that became a punchline when reporters found you could squeeze its packs by hand.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_launchConsumer Hardwarehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/knight-capital/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/knight-capital/A botched software deployment left obsolete code running on a Knight Capital trading server. Its automated system fired millions of erroneous orders for about 45 minutes, a ~$440 million loss, roughly the whole firm's value, that ended its independence.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTfinancecompany_shutdownTrading & Market-Makinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kodak/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kodak/The company that invented the digital camera but delayed embracing it to protect its film business, and filed for bankruptcy as digital took over.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyPhotographyhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kozmo-com/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/kozmo-com/A dot-com darling promised free one-hour delivery of videos, snacks, and small goods with no minimum order. It burned about $280 million learning that delivering low-value items for free can never turn a profit, and shut down abruptly in 2001.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownOn-demand Deliveryhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/loopt/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/loopt/Loopt was a pioneer of location-based social networking, years before Foursquare. But it never won the space it helped invent, and as rivals pulled ahead its prospects faded. In 2012 it sold to a prepaid-card company, Green Dot, for its mobile team and patents, not its product.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupproduct_discontinuationLocation-Based Socialhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/lytro/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/lytro/Lytro's "light-field" camera captured a whole field of light, letting you refocus a photo after taking it, a genuine technical marvel. But the cameras never found a broad market, a pivot to VR didn't save it, and after raising over $200 million, Lytro sold its patents to Google for about $40 million and shut down.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownCamerashttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/marconi/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/marconi/Britain's GEC sold its rock-solid defense business and bet the proceeds on a debt-fuelled spree of overpriced US telecom acquisitions at the peak of the boom. Then the telecom market collapsed, destroying the 115-year-old company and leaving shareholders with 0.5%.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatefailed_strategyTelecommunications Equipmenthttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/mg-rover/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/mg-rover/Sold by BMW for a token £10, MG Rover tried to survive as Britain's last mass-market carmaker, stripped of its profitable brands and never profitable. A Chinese rescue fell through, and it collapsed in 2005 with about 6,000 Longbridge jobs lost.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAutomotivehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/microsoft-band/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/microsoft-band/Microsoft's $199 fitness wearable launched to a first-day sellout and a well-reviewed sequel. But modest sales against Fitbit and the Apple Watch led Microsoft to exit wearables after two years, with no Band 3.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationWearableshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/microsoft-kin/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/microsoft-kin/After buying the Sidekick maker and spending about a billion dollars, Microsoft launched the Kin "social phones" for teens. It killed them 48 days later, having reportedly sold fewer than 10,000 units.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchMobile Phoneshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/mixer/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/mixer/Microsoft's game-streaming service bet that signing Twitch's biggest stars to exclusive deals would let it leapfrog the market leaders. The audiences didn't follow, and Microsoft shut Mixer down less than a year later, pushing users to Facebook Gaming.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediamarket_withdrawalGame Streaminghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/moviepass/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/moviepass/The $9.95-a-month unlimited movie subscription that grew explosively while losing money on nearly every ticket, and collapsed within two years.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediafailed_strategyMovie Subscriptionhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/munchery/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/munchery/Munchery cooked its own fresh meals and delivered them, raising $125 million at a $300M valuation. But food delivery's economics were punishing, it over-expanded, burned cash, made far too much food, and thrashed through strategies. It abruptly shut down in 2019, leaving small vendors unpaid.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownFood Deliveryhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/myspace/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/myspace/The world's biggest social network let its product stagnate under News Corp while chasing ad revenue. A cleaner, faster Facebook took everything, turning a $580 million purchase into a $35 million sale.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediafailed_strategySocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/netscape/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/netscape/Netscape Navigator took the early web by storm, holding about 90% of the browser market and staging a legendary 1995 IPO. Then Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer free with Windows, and there was no business left in selling a browser.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationWeb Browsershttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/napster/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/napster/Napster made free music feel infinite and grew to tens of millions of users. It was shut down within two years when courts found its unlicensed file-sharing to be copyright infringement.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediacompany_shutdownMusic & File Sharinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nokia/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nokia/The world's largest phone maker clung to its aging software, missed the smartphone shift, and sold its handset business to Microsoft.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_strategyMobile Phoneshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nortel/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/nortel/Once worth about C$350 billion, more than a third of the entire Toronto Stock Exchange, Nortel abandoned innovation for a debt-fuelled acquisition spree. Gutted by the telecom bust and out-competed by cheaper rivals, it filed for bankruptcy in 2009.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologybankruptcyTelecommunications Equipmenthttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/northern-rock/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/northern-rock/A fast-growing UK mortgage lender funded itself not with deposits but by borrowing short-term in wholesale money markets. When those markets froze in 2007, it triggered the first run on a British bank in 150 years and was nationalized.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTfinancefailed_strategyBanking & Mortgageshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/omgpop/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/omgpop/OMGPOP's drawing game Draw Something was a viral sensation, and Zynga bought the studio for about $200 million at the very peak. Days later the game began shedding millions of players, and barely a year on, Zynga shut OMGPOP down.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupfailed_acquisitionMobile Gameshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/onlive/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/onlive/OnLive streamed console-quality games from remote data centers years before home internet could deliver them lag-free. Real-world latency and ruinous infrastructure costs collapsed the company in 2012; it was fire-sold for $4.8M after a valuation near $1.8B.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownCloud Gaminghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/ouya/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/ouya/A record-breaking Kickstarter promised a cheap, open Android console to "open the last closed platform", the TV. But the hardware was weak, the games were weaker, and outside its backers almost no one bought it, so Ouya was sold for parts within two years.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchVideo Game Consoleshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/parse/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/parse/Parse was a backend-as-a-service that let mobile developers skip building their own servers. After Facebook bought it in 2013, some 600,000 apps came to depend on it, then Facebook decided the platform wasn't core and shut Parse down, a landmark lesson in building on someone else's platform.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupproduct_discontinuationDeveloper Toolshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pebble/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pebble/The record-breaking crowdfunded smartwatch that could not survive the platform owners entering its market.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pets-com/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/pets-com/The sock-puppet dot-com that sold pet supplies below cost, outspent its revenue many times over on marketing, and collapsed nine months after its IPO.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownE-commercehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/philips-cd-i/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/philips-cd-i/Philips' CD-i tried to be a multimedia player, an educational device, and a game console all at once. Expensive and unfocused, with an infamously weak game library, it never found a market, reportedly costing Philips close to $1 billion.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/playstation-vita/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/playstation-vita/Sony's technically impressive handheld launched into the rise of smartphone gaming, saddled with expensive proprietary memory cards. Starved of software as Sony pivoted to the PlayStation 4, it sold about 16 million units and was quietly retired.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationVideo Gameshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/powa-technologies/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/powa-technologies/One of Britain's most-hyped startups raised around $175 million and claimed a $2.7 billion valuation. But its flagship product had almost no real customers, and Powa burned through the money and collapsed into administration.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupbankruptcyFintech & Mobile Commercehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/prim/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/prim/Prim offered door-to-door laundry, wash, fold, and delivery for $25 a bag. But sending a person to drive to your home and back for one or two bags burned more money than the bag was worth, and reliable laundromat supply proved impossible. It shut down six months after launch.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownOn-Demand Laundryhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/quibi/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/quibi/The $1.75-billion short-form streaming bet that launched into a pandemic and shut down within six months.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediacompany_shutdownStreaming Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/quirky/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/quirky/Quirky crowdsourced inventions, the public submitted ideas, the community voted, and Quirky manufactured and sold the winners, sharing royalties. But making physical products is capital-intensive and low-margin, it launched far too many, and real hits were rare. It went bankrupt after raising about $185 million.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupbankruptcyConsumer Productshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/radioshack/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/radioshack/A onetime electronics-retail institution that lost its identity, missed the shift to e-commerce and smartphones, and drowned in debt and too many stores.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatebankruptcyRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/rdio/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/rdio/Rdio was a beautifully designed music-streaming service that critics loved. But it was slow to launch a free tier, out-marketed by Spotify, and bleeding about $2 million a month against brutal economics, and it filed for bankruptcy in 2015, its technology bought by Pandora.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupbankruptcyMusic Streaminghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/rethink-robotics/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/rethink-robotics/Founded by iRobot's Rodney Brooks, Rethink pioneered friendly "collaborative robots", Baxter and Sawyer, meant to work safely beside people. But the robots weren't precise or robust enough for real factories, nimbler rivals moved faster, and after raising nearly $150 million it closed in 2018.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologycompany_shutdownRoboticshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/saab-automobile/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/saab-automobile/A beloved, quirky Swedish carmaker was absorbed into General Motors and lost the distinctive identity that was its only edge. Never reaching the scale to be profitable, it went bankrupt in 2011 when a last-minute rescue was blocked.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAutomotivehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sears-holdings/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sears-holdings/Once America's dominant retailer, Sears was merged with Kmart and run as a turnaround that starved its stores of investment. Leaning on financial engineering and asset sales, it declined for years and went bankrupt in 2018.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatefailed_turnaroundRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/secret/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/secret/Secret let people post anonymous confessions and rumors, and it briefly caught fire, raising about $35 million at a $100 million valuation. But anonymity bred cyberbullying the company was slow to control, a panicked redesign turned it into a Yik Yak clone, and it shut down about 16 months after launch.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownAnonymous Socialhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/seeso/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/seeso/Seeso was NBCUniversal's ad-free, comedy-only streaming service, SNL and Monty Python alongside originals, for $3.99 a month. But a single-genre subscription was too narrow when Netflix and a growing wave of broad services offered plenty of comedy too. It shut down about 18 months after launch.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediaproduct_discontinuationStreaming Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/segway/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/segway/The self-balancing personal transporter hyped as world-changing that sold a tiny fraction of its projections and never found a mass use case.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationPersonal Transportationhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sidecar/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sidecar/Sidecar invented much of what modern ridesharing takes for granted, everyday drivers, driver destinations, shared rides, upfront pricing. But it raised about $35 million against Uber's $6.6 billion and Lyft's $1.26 billion, and in a winner-take-most market that gap was fatal. It shut down at the end of 2015.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownRidesharinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/shyp/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/shyp/Shyp let you photograph an item and, for a flat $5, have a courier pick it up, package it, and ship it. The flat fee could never cover the variable cost of shipping anything from a bike to a laptop, and a growth-at-all-costs expansion burned the runway before the model could be fixed.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownLogisticshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sinclair-c5/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sinclair-c5/Clive Sinclair's battery-electric tricycle launched in 1985 to instant ridicule, too low to feel safe, too short-ranged to be useful, wanted by almost no one. It sank his vehicle company within ten months.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationfailed_launchElectric Vehicleshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/spoonrocket/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/spoonrocket/SpoonRocket cooked its own cheap meals and delivered them in about ten minutes. It reached positive unit margins, but the model was capital-hungry, and when the venture-funding climate froze in early 2016, it couldn't raise the money to keep scaling and shut down.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownFood Deliveryhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sun-microsystems/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/sun-microsystems/A Silicon Valley icon worth over $200 billion at the dot-com peak, Sun built the servers that ran the early web. Then cheap commodity Linux servers undercut its proprietary hardware, a shift its own engineers had foreseen, and after a decade of failed turnarounds Oracle bought it for a fraction of its former worth.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_turnaroundEnterprise Computinghttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/steam-machines/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/steam-machines/Valve's Steam Machines were living-room gaming PCs running its own Linux-based SteamOS. Caught between a console and a PC, with fewer games, worse performance, and a confusing range of prices, they had no clear customer. Fewer than half a million sold, partners bailed, and Valve quietly shelved the whole idea.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_launchVideo Gameshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/swissair/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/swissair/Switzerland's flag carrier was so solid it was called "the Flying Bank." Then a strategy of buying stakes in failing airlines buried it in debt, and the post-9/11 downturn grounded its fleet when it ran out of cash in 2001.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyAirlineshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/tata-nano/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/tata-nano/Marketed as "the world's cheapest car," Tata's ~$2,000 Nano was meant to put India's scooter families into a safe car. But the "cheapest" label branded it a poor man's car, and status-conscious buyers stayed away.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationproduct_discontinuationAutomotivehttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/tesco-fresh-easy/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/tesco-fresh-easy/Britain's biggest grocer spent years researching America, then opened a chain of small self-checkout convenience stores that misread how Americans shop. After well over £1 billion in losses, Tesco abandoned the US in 2013.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatemarket_withdrawalGrocery Retailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/thomas-cook/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/thomas-cook/The world's oldest holiday firm, 178 years old, was strangled by debt built from ill-fated deals, above all its 2007 merger with MyTravel. Unable to invest as travel moved online and hit by external shocks, it collapsed in 2019, stranding some 600,000 travellers.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtransportationbankruptcyTravel & Tourismhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/tutorspree/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/tutorspree/The YC-backed "Airbnb for tutoring" grew almost entirely through free Google search. When a 2013 Google algorithm update cut its traffic by roughly 80% overnight, no other channel could replace the lost customers, and single-channel dependency ended the company.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupcompany_shutdownOnline Tutoringhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/vine/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/vine/The six-second video app that defined a genre, then was shut down by a struggling Twitter that never gave its creators a way to earn.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmediaproduct_discontinuationSocial Mediahttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/walmart-germany/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/walmart-germany/Walmart brought its US superstore playbook to Germany and found it didn't translate. It couldn't beat Aldi on price, its American service put customers off, and rigid labor rules left no room for its model, and it exited in 2006 at a ~$1 billion loss.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcorporatemarket_withdrawalRetailhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/webvan/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/webvan/The dot-com grocery-delivery startup that spent a billion dollars building warehouses before proving anyone wanted the service, and went bankrupt in 2001.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTstartupbankruptcyOnline Groceryhttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/wii-u/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/wii-u/A capable console undone by a confusing name and marketing that left buyers thinking it was a Wii accessory. Nintendo's worst-selling home console.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationVideo Game Consoleshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/windows-phone/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/windows-phone/Microsoft's mobile OS arrived after iOS and Android had won, and never escaped the app gap that starved it of both developers and users.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_strategyMobile Operating Systemshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/zune/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/zune/Microsoft's music player arrived years after the iPod had won, then was overtaken by the smartphone before it could differentiate.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyproduct_discontinuationConsumer Electronicshttps://www.failurepedia.com/cases/zynga/https://www.failurepedia.com/cases/zynga/Zynga was the king of Facebook gaming, FarmVille, Words With Friends, and IPO'd in December 2011. Then Facebook changed the rules that fed its viral growth, players moved to mobile, and a business built almost entirely on one platform it didn't control lost about three-quarters of its value within a year.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechnologyfailed_strategySocial Gaming