DEADPOOL
Foundry Group, an 18-year-old venture firm with nearly $3.5 billion in assets under management, has quietly decided to shut down and not raise any more funds. The move was unexpected…
Uber is closing alcohol delivery service Drizly three years after acquistion
Uber is shutting down alcohol delivery service Drizly three years after the cab-hailing company acquired it for $1.1 billion. Drizly ran independently all this time, and Uber eventually decided to…
RIP? Third-party podcast app Castro appears to be dead, company goes quiet
The once popular third-party podcast app Castro had seemingly shut down this weekend, after earlier saying that it was “actively seeking a new home” for its product. The announcement had…
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Remembering the startups we lost in 2023
Not every startup collapse is an FTX or Theranos. They don’t all burn so brightly and explode so spectacularly. More often than not, there won’t be some high-profile court case and prison time. Amanda Seyfried isn’t going to play you in the made for Hulu movie. The story of most…
From the ElectraMeccanica Solo to the Honda e, let’s remember all the small and low(er)-priced electric vehicles that didn’t make it in 2023.
Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down
The grip Twitter, now called X, has on the market may be stronger than some believed. Unfortunately, that’s led to the first casualty among Twitter alternatives, as the startup Pebble…
Netflix says its DVD-by-mail customers get to keep their final shipment of discs
Netflix has one final surprise for customers of its 25-year-old DVD-by-mail business (yes, it still exists!) ahead of its September 29th shutdown. They get to keep their last shipment of…
YouTube Stories are shutting down June 26 as company focuses on Shorts
Stories are over — at least on YouTube, that is. The Google-owned video site announced today that YouTube Stories will be shutting down on June 26, 2023, as the company…
Spotify is shutting down Heardle, the Wordle-like music guessing game it bought last year
Spotify is closing down Heardle, the Wordle-inspired music guessing game it acquired last July for an undisclosed sum. Similar to Wordle, Heardle offers players six tries to guess a popular…
Library e-book app OverDrive to shut down on May 1st, readers directed to Libby instead
For over a decade, the OverDrive app has offered a service that allows institutions, including public libraries and schools, to lend their digital catalogs of e-books, audiobooks and other digital…
Meta is killing Move, another experimental social app from its in-house incubator NPE Team
Meta is killing off yet another project from its in-house R&D group, the NPE Team, following the company’s sizable layoffs announced in November, impacting 13% of its workforce. The latest…
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Remembering the startups we lost in 2022
It’s been a year. This roundup is never a particularly fun one to write. No one wants to see startups fail, but we’re all keenly aware that most ultimately do. A commonly cited figure suggest that 90% of these companies will ultimately fail. But even with that in mind, 2022…
Zenly was the best social app and it will (sadly) shut down on February 3
Zenly, the popular social mapping app that Snap acquired five years ago, is going to shut down on February 3, 2023. This is going to be a sad day as…
Disney+ US goes R-rated with ‘Deadpool,’ ‘Deadpool 2’ and ‘Logan’
Disney+ strays farther from its family-friendly image with the addition of “Deadpool,” “Deadpool 2” and “Logan” arriving to the streaming service today, July 22. Alongside Disney’s announcement yesterday, the company…
DoorDash bought Chowbotics last year, now it’s shutting down the salad robot startup
It’s been a good couple of years for robotics and automation startups. With all of the successful funding and launches, it can be easy to lose sight of just how…
Meta shuts down its experimental video speed-dating service, Sparked
Meta is shutting down a video speed-dating service it had tested over a good part of last year, the company informed the service’s users via a recent email. Last April,…
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How Ryan Reynolds has mastered authentic marketing
Most people know Ryan Reynolds from his movies, but the actor has his hands in a number of entrepreneurial ventures. He owns a majority stake in Mint Mobile, a mobile virtual network operator, which has grown more than 50,000% in the past three years. He was also invested in Aviation…
Mozilla shutters Firefox Send and Notes
Mozilla today announced that it will shutter two products: Firefox Send, the free file transfer service it already put on hiatus in July, and Firefox Notes, its note-taking extension and…
Stockwell, the AI-vending machine startup formerly known as Bodega, is shutting down July 1
Stockwell AI entered the world with a bang but it is leaving with a whimper. Founded in 2017 by ex-Googlers, the AI vending machine startup formerly known as Bodega first…
Alphabet today announced that it is calling it quits on its efforts to build and monetize its Makani wind energy kites. Makani, which was founded in 2006, came into Google/Alphabet…
HQ Trivia is dead. Today the company laid off its full staff of 25 and will cease operation of its trivia, sports and word guessing games, a source close to…
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Remembering the startups we lost in 2019
All manner of startups fail for all manner of reasons. But there’s one constant: this is an incredibly difficult business. Launching a successful company isn’t just a matter of drive and finding the right people (though both, clearly, are important). Doing well in this business requires the stars to align…
The new Disney+ streaming service is oriented around fans and families
You can tell a lot about a service by what it prioritizes on its home screen. With the new Disney + service, the focus is initially organized by fan base,…
RIP Google+
That’s it for Google+, Google’s failed social network that once tried to take on Facebook and Twitter. As scheduled, the company has now started deleting user accounts and their data.…
New trailer for Dark Phoenix doesn’t bode well for the X-Men
The latest trailer is out for what could be the final installation in this iteration of the X-Men franchise — and things don’t look great (either for our heroes or…
Google+ for consumers will shut down on April 2nd
It’s no secret that Google planned to pull life support from the consumer version of Google+, its failure of a social network, in April. Until now, though, we didn’t know…
Disney quietly shut down Babble, the parenting blog it once acquired for $40M
As Disney gets closer to launching a shiny new video service and continues to ramp up efforts in other new streaming areas like gaming, it looks like it might be…
Google+ is shutting down at last. Google announced today it’s sunsetting its consumer-facing social network due to lack of user and developer adoption, low usage and engagement. Oh, and a…
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‘Venom’ is better than it has any right to be
What happens when a cast of Oscar contenders like Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed and Michelle Williams are turned loose to chew the scenery of a (seemingly wryly self-aware) B movie? Audiences get “Venom,” the latest bid from Sony Pictures to create its own superhero mega-franchise now that storylines for the…
Watch Deadpool introduce the X-Force in new Deadpool 2 trailer
It’s the most anticipated Josh Brolin-starring Marvel movie coming out this year – no, not that one. The one with the dick jokes. Deadpool 2 arrives in theaters on May 18,…
