Autopsy: Transforming Failure into Success
Learn from 2,000 failed startups
Largest dataset of failed startups to support founders, analysts and institutions in risk mitigation and future product bets.
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Insider
“Brilliant! ‘Autopsy lessons from failed startups’ — aka ‘Catalog of Future Successful Startups.’ Well done!”
The data everyone overlooks.
We have built an extensive failure taxonomy across a variety of product and market categories in the tech industry, helping to spot patterns across markets and support future business decision-making with data.
Over the years we have built a pipeline of founders submitting their failure stories and manually curated, labeled and analyzed our database.
We've partnered with VCs, regional publications, and our dataset has been cited as part of published academic papers producing data-driven reports on startup failure and business methodology. Our work has been featured in Bloomberg, WSJ, The Next Web, and Business Insider.
Unlike Failory and startups.rip that rely on scraping public data, every company is tagged with our failure taxonomy, cross-referenced with Crunchbase data, and enriched with founder details, funding history, and geography — with coverage across the US, UK, MENA, and Asia.
Risk mitigation and product market research
What you get when you need more than a list of dead companies — structured for diligence, pattern-spotting, and new product bets.
| Focus | What you get |
|---|---|
| Extensive data | 2,000 failed startups gathered and analyzed through a mix of manual curation and public sources. |
| Targeted analysis | Deep dives including founder and VC post-mortems from Pre-seed to Series A and portfolio analysis reports with the likes of Forward Partners, Octopus Ventures, Syndicate Room, and more. |
| Regional & sector | Market-specific research across the US, UK, MENA, and Asia. |
| Institutional | Autopsy for VC investor portfolios, universities, and research orgs — surface common pitfalls across failed portfolio companies, strengthen diligence, and support academic research. |
Explore the Database
Post-mortems from companies like Digg, Blippar and hundreds more — tagged, categorized and ready for analysis.
emoov
DEADOnline real estate agent that used technology tools to help clients sell their homes, challenging traditional high-street agents. Loss-making every year since launch despite raising $23.5M.
Digg
DEADOnce valued at $160M, this social news aggregator lost its community to Reddit after alienating power users and shipping a disastrous redesign.
Blippar
DEADAugmented reality startup that raised $131.7M but burned through ~$3M/month over six years. Constant pivots in business strategy eroded investor and employee confidence.
PepperTap
DEADIndia's largest grocery delivery service at its peak, whose technology couldn't keep pace with the aggressive growth driven by promotions.
Take Eat Easy
DEADBelgian food delivery flagship crushed by UberEATS, Deliveroo, and Foodora in an intensely cash-intensive European market.
Crowdmix
DEADSocial music platform with 160 staff and offices in London and LA that never managed to ship a full product to users.
This is just a preview. 2,000 companies are waiting inside.
Pricing
Lock in early bird pricing before launch.
Individual
Founders and Builders
$49/mo Early bird price
- Tier 1 company data
- Post-mortem stories
- Primary failure tag per company
Analyst
Researchers, Analysts and Consultants
$129/mo Early bird price
- Everything in Individual, plus:
- Tier 1 + Tier 2 company data
- Full failure taxonomy (primary and secondary tags)
- Company funding data
Institution
VCs, Universities and Accelerators
$349/mo Early bird price
- Everything in Analyst, plus:
- Full dataset access (Tier 1 + 2 + 3)
- Search and filter by industry, region (US, UK, MENA, Asia)
- Bulk CSV export
- API access (depending on demand)
Get Early Access
Be the first to explore the full database at early bird pricing.