Tech Capital Partners Blog

In September 2008 I posted What’s in the Deadpool?; a categorization of failed startups (based on TechCrunch coverage). I’ve done the same analysis for 2009 and the results are below. If you are interested in the details behind the analysis I suggest you take a look at the original post, What’s in the Deadpool?.

Admittedly, charts like this are interesting but can be interpreted in many different ways. I’ve offered a few comments below but I’m curious to hear what you think…

All categories are 2% of total unless otherwise labelled.

Deadpool 2009 Highlights

• Social networks were still “hot” in 2009, coming in at #1 again but taking a smaller chunk of the pie. I also categorized them as vertical social networks because they were all targeted at a specific group of people. All of the failures in this category are remnants of the social networking startup explosion of ‘07.
• In similar fashion to the previous analysis, media streaming took second place (in 2008 I combined video and audio into one category called Media Streaming). In 2009, Music streaming alone had enough failures to warrant a dedicated category…looks like a tough business to be in, filled with lots of competition and licensing nightmares.
• A lot of money was spent on Search over the last few years; another difficult space to be in and what seems to be a lack of consumer interest in vertical search engines.
• MVNOs disappeared from the list…not too surprising.

Notables

• 7 out of the 45 (~16%) deadpool members were divisions of Yahoo! (acquired companies) that were shut down (eg. Maven Networks, GeoCities, FareChase, etc.
• 2 members were founded 10+ years ago (GeoCities and FileFront) both belonging to the File/Web hosting category.

Other Stats

• Average number of years from launch to deadpool (alive period): 2.8 years for 2009 deadpool members (1.8 years for Jan 2007 to Sep 2008 period)
• Longest ‘alive’ period: 10.3 years (6.4 years)
• Shortest ‘alive’ period: 6 months (2 months)
• Standard deviation: 2.1 years (1.25 years)

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