In 2000, after the burst of the dot-com bubble in the United States, a man called Philip J. Kaplan launched a website called “F****d Company” (the name a parody of “Fast Company”, obviously), that listed troubled and/or failing US – mostly Silicon Valley – tech companies.
F****d Company these days exists only as a holding page, but the concept has been re-established in Africa to chronicle the damage done to the continent’s burgeoning tech startup ecosystem by the global capital shortage.
Startup Graveyard Africa is documenting the number of African tech ventures that have shut up shop since the global crisis hit. And the list includes some serious names – in various shapes or forms, Sendy, Copia, MarketForce, and WhereIsMyTransport.
We wrote this article over a year ago on the struggle faced by African tech startups (and indeed made a “graveyard list” of our own), but since then the global “funding winter” has really bitten hard, with funding plummeting back to 2020/2021 levels, or worse.
That prompted Kelvin Gobo, the founder of Startup Graveyard Africa, and a software developer, to launch Startup Graveyard Africa. Rather than F****d Company, he told Disrupt Africa he was actually inspired by Killed By Google, a page detailing products and services discontinued or put out of business by the global tech giant.
“That inspired the first version of the website. I found as many startups as I could that had been reportedly shut down, put the website together over a weekend, and launched it on December 11, 2023,” he said.
“Based on the feedback and subsequent deliberation, I decided to expand the site into more than just a list of startups that have failed. I wanted to look into each startup and understand why they failed. This is why the site exists – to document the journeys of failed startups in Africa and offer valuable insights to founders, entrepreneurs, investors, and tech enthusiasts. Through this resource, people can learn and build more sustainable solutions for the African continent.”
A worthy goal, for sure, but most people within the ecosystem are hoping that VC will steadily increase this year, and that the space can emerge from the doldrums, consigning the need for a page like Startup Graveyard Africa, much like F****d Company, to history.
