Candy-apple red concept car with a chrome shield grille in a dark showroom
A MUSEUM OF AMBITION. AN ARCHIVE OF ENDINGS.

StartupGraveyard

Every startup parks here eventually.

Ignition
EST. FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF FOUNDERSSCROLL TO ENTER THE FOUNDER LAB COLLECTION / 001
229
STORIES IN THE ARCHIVE
41.
FROM INDIA
188
FROM THE WORLD
MOST COMMON RECORDED CAUSES
13Broken unit economics
13Ran out of cash
11Big-co pullout
01 / THE BONNET

Never left the drawing board.

Died before they became startups. Ambition without an ignition.

9 EXHIBITS01
02 / THE DASHBOARD

A pulse. Not a promise.

Still running, with a documented, dated distress event. Still operating as of source date; not a verdict.

4 EXHIBITS02

Dashboard Live Feed — auto-pulled, unchecked

UNVERIFIED

Hacker News stories matching insolvency, going concern, layoffs or missed payroll. Not reviewed, not part of the sourced entries above.

Connecting to the wire…

03 / THE DICKEY · THE BOOT

Here lies the next lesson.

The main graveyard. Big dreams, hard endings, and something worth remembering.

216 EXHIBITS03
DATA SOURCES
  • Y Combinator directory mirror (yc-oss) — unofficial, updated daily; status “Inactive” only. SOURCE-LISTED.
  • Wikipedia — text and facts used under CC BY-SA, attributed per record.
  • Hacker News API — Live Wire and Dashboard feed. UNVERIFIED.
  • Failory cemetery and Failory founder interviews — public crawling allowed by robots, but no bulk reuse licence found; basic facts only, our own short descriptions. SOURCE-LISTED.
  • SaaS Heaven (saasheaven.space) — MIT licence, attributed.
  • Wikidata (CC0) with linked Wikipedia articles — Open Data Inbox only, separate from The Boot. UNVERIFIED.
  • News reports — exact article linked per record.
  • Curated entries — hand-checked news and primary sources, linked per record.
  • Student submissions — UNVERIFIED until reviewed.
Historical import: 154 imported · 225 gross · 216 after dedupe
  • Failory cemetery: 62 unique (70 gross)
  • Failory founder interview: 61 unique
  • Wikipedia: 52 unique
  • Inc42: 19 unique
  • TechCrunch: 7 unique (8 gross)
  • Reuters: 3 unique
  • Rest of World: 1 unique
  • CNBC-TV18: 1 unique
  • Economic Times: 1 unique
  • Entrackr: 1 unique
  • OfficeChai: 1 unique
  • Times of India: 1 unique
  • The Verge: 1 unique
  • Business Wire: 1 unique
  • Business Insider: 1 unique
  • SaaS Heaven founder post-mortem (MIT): 1 unique
  • Healthcare Dive: 1 unique
  • Founder post-mortem: 1 unique
216 recordsLoading the full archive…
216 records · page 1 of 9

Fresh arrivals — pending verification

UNVERIFIED

No fresh arrivals yet. The next story could be yours.

LIVE WIRE

The last signals.

Keyword-matched discovery, not verified shutdown news: Hacker News titles containing explicit shutdown or closure terms, shown as UNVERIFIED candidates. Never added to The Boot automatically.

INCOMING TRANSMISSION

Connecting to the wire…

OPEN DATA INBOX

Listed as dissolved. Not yet reviewed.

Every company Wikidata (CC0) records with a dissolution date and an English Wikipedia article, refreshed slice by slice across the full result set and live for recent dissolutions. Shown exactly as listed: name, country, founded and dissolved years. “Dissolved” there can also mean merged, acquired or renamed; no cause is recorded and none is guessed. Records are never dropped once seen. Kept separate from The Boot and badged UNVERIFIED until reviewed.

CHECKING WIKIDATA…
Bundled snapshot: 13 Oct 2026 · 0 records
Stored refresh: 0 records · latest slice update never
Full pass completed: not yet — slices refresh hourly
Live recent check: running…
Loading open data…
REVIEW DESK · AI-POWERED

Is it really a startup ending?

Student reviewers: give a Wikidata record (e.g. Q12345 or its link). We fetch its facts and linked Wikipedia article (or use the article text you paste), and Lovable AI judges whether it is a startup shutdown, extracts closure details with verbatim quotes, and flags likely duplicates across the museum. Quotes are checked against the article text; unmatched quotes are marked. Results are AI assessments, UNVERIFIED, and never added to The Boot automatically.

ADD TO THE ARCHIVE

Every ending
has a lesson.

Know a startup that belongs here?
Leave its story for the next founder.

PENDING VERIFICATION

Submissions are public and remain unverified until reviewed.

METHODOLOGY

How we label every record.

VERIFIED

We checked a primary or reputable source. The link is on the plaque.

SOURCE-LISTED

A directory lists it (e.g. “Inactive per YC directory”). Cause unknown, recorded as “Not recorded”. Not called failed or bankrupt. Historical sources (Failory, SaaS Heaven) are dated, source-listed evidence, not independent current-status verification, and count as UNVERIFIED for the verified filter.

UNVERIFIED

Auto-fetched (Hacker News, Wikidata open data inbox) or a student submission not yet checked.