When we wrote the introduction for this piece last year, we didn't know that we'd be deep in it by the time the feature came around. The holiday season has been marred by a new variant and seemingly the more things change, you get the picture.
In spite of the fact that we are still very much in the throes of a global epidemic, the startup world has not suffered as many high-profile losses as the year prior.
The first year of the Pandemic may have been the final straw for many companies that were already treading water. Some companies pivoted and others were born as a direct result of COVID-19.
The kind of blockbuster crashes we saw last year were largely absent in 2021. Keeping a startup afloat is still a difficult task even in a non-pandemic year, and not everyone made it to the New Year unscathed.
The Abundant Robotics are abundant.
The total raised was $12 million.
The image is called Abundant.
This has been a great year for robotic startups. Abundant was ahead of the curve on agtech robotic, which can be more curse than blessing. The firm quietly closed after two years after rolling out its first commercial deployment. The company has raised $12 million over the years, including a $10 million Series A led by GV.
Farmers are looking at ways to ease labor shortages with the use of automation. John Deere is investing a lot in acquisitions. The main question at the moment is who will deploy more widescale pickingrobots sooner than later?
It was reported in October that Waverly Labs had acquired Abundant's intellectual property.
Chanje will be here in 2021.
Chanje is the image.
FedEx was working with a startup in November of last year as it worked to upgrade its delivery vans. The company plans to add 1,000 electric delivery vehicles from Chanje Energy. Chanje imported electric delivery vans from China and sold them to companies like FedEx and even Amazon. FedEx and other customers were left in the lurch when the electric vehicle company quietly folded. Bryan Hansel, the CEO, was described by some of his employees as both narcissistic andcharismatic. Hansel tried to convince investors to purchase pieces of the company so that Chanje could continue to operate. The last of Chanje's employees were fired on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.
Many of Chanje's former employees are still owed months of back pay and promised bonuses, with at least four having filed suit against the startup. The company was sued for more than $3 million after Chanje did not deliver most of the vans it promised. FedEx didn't get the 1,000 electric vans it expected from Chanje. FedEx was forced to abandon a project to build charging infrastructure at its depots in California. FedEx is trying to get back some of the millions of dollars it spent on that charging infrastructure, but its prospects are bleak.
The sky was dark in the 20th century.
The image is called Dark Sky.
The Dark Sky weather app was acquired by Apple in March of 2020. The tech giant incorporated many of its features into the weather app. Apple made it clear from the beginning that the app would be closing in July. The fate of the app and service remained unclear. Dark Sky has a database of weather forecasts and historical weather data.
The Dark Sky app and service for existing customers will continue until the end of 2022, according to co-founder Adam Grossman. The Dark Sky website will be available until the end of 2022. It was implied that this was a shutdown announcement.
Katerra will be here in 2021.
The total raised was $2 billion.
The image is called Katerra.
Katerra was considered the darling of the construction tech world. It is argued that it made construction more mainstream. Katerra wanted to own the tech stack around a construction project, whether it be office buildings or apartments. By the end of 2020 there were signs of serious problems. The startup was said to be close to filing for Chapter 11 when SoftBank swooped in with a $200 million bail out. It was too late. The company was struggling with delays and cost overruns on some projects due to the COVID-19 epidemic, while the vertically integrated approach couldn't keep up with rising labor and construction costs. According to The Wall Street Journal,Irregularities that the company discovered in accounting practices added to headaches.
It was not a big deal when it was reported on June 1, 2021, that the organization was shutting down after burning through more than $2 billion in funding. At one point, Katerra was valued at $4 billion and employed more than 8,000 people. It was thought to have had around 2,400 employees when it closed. WeWork was the first SoftBank-backed proptech to fail. The year saw a number of large fundings in the construction tech space, despite concerns that the implosion of Katerra might affect faith in the industry as a whole.
The Loon was born in the year 2021.
The image is called "Alphabet."
The nine-year run of the company's flagship product, Loon, came to an end earlier this year. The company grounded the project after spinning off the X graduate. The project simply wasn't able to achieve profitability according to the CEO.
He wrote that they haven't found a way to get the costs low enough to build a sustainable business. Radical new technology is inherently risky, but that doesn't make it easier to break the news.
Project Taara is one of the outfits that have already adopted the technologies of Loon. SoftBank plans to execute on 200 patents that were passed along to it by Alphabet. Wing continues to gain steam.
The Houseparty took place in the year 2015.
The image is from TechCrunch.
It soared before Houseparty ended. The social video chat app claimed that it was landing 50 million new users a month in the early days of the Pandemic. It seems that Houseparty didn't stay relevant after the Pandemic hit. In September, it was announced that Houseparty would be shutting down in October, a little over two years after it was acquired by the company.
There are a variety of reasons as to why the once-booming app was shut down. Houseparty CEO and co-founder Sima Sistani said in a thread that it was simply a strategy shift.
Sistani wrote that the metaverse vision and products they are working on are about shared experiences, but in a more rich form than 2D video.
Houseparty is the core of the voice chat in the game.
Pearl Automation will be in place for the next 20 years.
Pearl Automation was a startup that was out of the ordinary. Pearl, founded by former Apple engineers, began shipping its products at a cost of $499.99.
The RearVision app in landscape will show you a full-screen view of what the cameras in the license plate holder is seeing, with a 175-degree viewing angle, if you connect it to it. You can choose between a full fish-eye experience or a warp-corrected view that fills the display corner-to-corner with the space behind your car. You can pivot the view up or down to get a better look at more of the sky, or more of the ground as needed.
While Etherington liked the industrial design and minimal software of the product, he noted that it is a premium device which needed upgrades for a specific subset of users. It seems like the subset wasn't enough to keep the company going.
Despite the fact that Pearl Automation had raised $50 million in venture capital funding, the company shut down due to disappointing product sales and high burn rate. According to the website, investors included Accel, Venrock, and Shasta.
Mentions of honorable nature.
Fry's electronics.
A closed Fry's Electronics store is seen in Plano, Texas. Fry's Electronics is closing all of its stores permanently. The company said in a statement on its website that it was forced to close its business permanently because of changing consumer shopping habits and the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic. There were 31 Fry's Electronics stores in the US. IANS/Dan Tian
I apologize. It would feel weird to do a list without it. The electronics chain's February closing left a giant hole in the hearts of many who grew up in its aisles. The 1893 World's Fair theme didn't make for an exciting exterior, but the indoor coil did the trick.
In a world where RadioShack is a shadow of its former self, it is amazing that this strange, beautiful beast held on for as long as it could. Fry's had 34 giant stores in nine states. The environment of brick and mortars was already troubling. It is a testament to the size of the stores that their former homes are now dealing withzoning headaches.
The phones are from the company.
The image has been changed.
The death of the mobile division was a long time coming. The South Korean electronics giant simply couldn't keep up with their competitors in the market. In order to spend more time with TVs and other smart home products, the company decided to exit from phones.
Visionrare (2021-21)?
The image was created by Bryce Durbin.
Its vision was so rare. Visionrare was launched by Jacob Claerhout and Boris Gordts with two trends in mind. Users were able to bid for NFT shares of different startups on the platform, stacking up a fake portfolio to compete against others. Some Y Combinator startups are on board.
Visionrare's pitch was interesting. One day, the fake stock market could serve as a signal for VCs looking for their next hires, as it could get non-accredited investors a track record in betting on startups.
Entrepreneurs and investors said it was illegal if you think it sounds buzzy. The co-founders shut down the paid marketplace due to questions about the legality of the platform and the legal complexity of selling novelty NFT shares in real startups.
Visionrare's approach to the burgeoning sector rang alarm bells. You would think that happens more often. The company's founders promised to revive it soon. They are building something new, as shown in their LinkedIn show.
Nuzzel was born in 2012
Nuzzel was launched nearly a decade ago by Friendster's Jonathan Abrams, a social news reading service that highlights headlines that are being read and shared by friends in your network. The simple yet savvy startup attracted a loyal user base, especially for users who wanted a more personalized timeline. Nuzzel had raised $5.1 million from investors, includingSalesforce CEO.
Nuzzel was acquired by Scroll, which wanted to bring aggregation and curation to its subscription service. No one from Nuzzel's original team joined Scroll in a full-time capacity, but the app continued to function as is. Nuzzel was shut down by Nuzzel in May. Nuzzel's team explained in a post that the product needed to be rebuilt in order to scale.
Tony Haile said in the now- deleted post that he was as disappointed as the people who love Nuzzel. We tried to make that happen, but couldn't get there. Nuzzel's function has always felt like it should be a part of the social network and I'm excited to help make that happen.
Top Stories, one of the most-loved features of Nuzzel, was brought back to the service in the debut of its premium subscription service.
