Startups.RIP - Rebuild 1,738+ dead YC startups with AI
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Startups often fail because of timing, not ideas. Startups.RIP is a wiki of 1,700+ YC startups that shut down or got acquired. Our AI research agent writes a detailed post-mortem (what they built, why they failed, what's changed since) and a rebuild playbook with implementation-ready technical specs you can drop straight into your AI coding agent. Every failed startup is a validated market with unfinished business. Shortcut the idea maze. Start with what almost worked.
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Startups.RIP
Hey Product Hunt, I'm Oscar, the maker of Startup.RIP 👋
The best startup ideas aren't always new. They're remixes that entered a market at the right time.
Lyrebird (S17) built AI voice cloning in 2017 and folded. Years later, ElevenLabs hit $11B valuation on the same idea. Multiple YC companies tried prediction markets before regulatory changes enabled Kalshi to go mainstream. It pays to learn from startup history.
Startups.RIP is a database of 1,700+ YC startups that died or got acquired. Our AI deeply researches post-mortem for each one — what they built, why they failed, what's changed — and generates a rebuild playbook with implementation-ready specs you can drop into Claude Code, Codex, or your coding AI of choice.
As covered by Forbes: dozens of YC fintech startups that took teams of engineers years to build can now be shipped in an afternoon using AI.
The first 32 reports are free. Pro ($20/mo) unlocks everything. We're giving 25% off the Pro subscription to our first 100 supporters (use the code PHLAUNCH). We also offer a 50% BUILDER discount for anyone who builds and ships a project inspired by an idea they found on Startups.RIP.
The product is still rough around the edges, so any feedback is much appreciated. Drop a comment; I read everything.
What failed YC startup would you rebuild with AI today?
@sfoscar Oo!! I had this idea once maybe a year ago on a random work, just never worked on it. Seeing it launch here and gather so many points is satisfying :) I feel very happy for you!
Startups.RIP
@ambikaiyer29 Thank you! Haha I've felt the same on many half baked projects. If I like the idea but don't have time to ship it, I at least want to see someone bring it to life so I can use it 👍
@sfoscar Agreed, i do that 30% of the time I would say, but need to get better :)
Loved the idea and the name, all the best for the launch. Small feedback it would be great if u could add TL;DR for each startup.
Awshar AI
@gamifykaran yes karan i also think so
Startups.RIP
@gamifykaran great idea! we will for sure add this. thx for suggesting 🙏
Interesting dataset. Looking at failed startups is always useful.
But I’m not fully convinced by the framing that “every failed startup is a validated market.” Many of them failed because the market simply wasn’t there, or the economics never worked. Timing matters, but sometimes the idea itself was flawed.
Also curious how the AI determines why a startup failed. Post-mortems are messy and often speculative even for humans who were inside the company.
Still, the archive itself sounds valuable. A structured database of 1,700 YC shutdowns could be a great learning resource for founders if the analysis stays grounded in real signals and not just narrative.
Startups.RIP
@niksmac You're right, that was probably too strong a statement. I was mostly thinking of startups that hit PMF (in YC's words, "made something people wanted") but still failed. Many were over-capitalised for the size of the market they were in, so while it might not have made sense as a venture-backed co, it could be a great bootstrapped business.
Re: economics, AI changes the landscape too. E.g. Atrium (W18) tried to do a tech-enabled law firm, but most of the work still had to be done by expensive lawyers. Years later, startups like Harvey, Legora (W24), and Crosby were able to benefit from offloading legal work to LLMs.
Our specialised Deep Research agent prioritises any post-mortem / retrospective-like commentary from the founders themselves (blog posts, tweets, podcast interviews, etc.) We try to ground the claims in primary accounts as much as possible and note speculations.
Appreciate you checking us out!
Cyris
I always loved browsing this site before I even launched my first product. Absolute gold mine for when you have founders-block
Startups.RIP
@krishnam_goel So glad it helped! If your next project is inspired in part or whole by the ideas on Startups.RIP, please let me know! We'd love to feature you 😁
Cyris
Startups.RIP
@krishnam_goel that amazing! learning from the prior attempts at solving the same / similar problem will save you a bunch of headache down the road. congrats on your launch 🎉
lol at Delve being the first featured company hahaha. This is cool to see though. Love that it does so much of the heavy lifting... it's not an aggregated graveyard, more like a treasure trove + AI planning so you can avoid any pitfalls
Startups.RIP
@chris_u_han thx for the kind words! "treasure trove" is a great way to put it, I hope Startups.RIP can inspire people who are looking for their project to tackle!
My Financé
It seems like I should be able to filter out acquisitions. I.e optimizely isn’t really dead, it just isn’t public or still a startup.
Startups.RIP
@catt_marroll Good point! We'll add a filter for status (inactive or acquired). We currently only filter by batch & industry.
This provides a great dataset for anyone looking to learn from companies that didn't end up succeeding. One question, if a company was acquired instead of shutting-down, does Starups.rip provide information on what worked and how it went through the steps to get acquired?
Startups.RIP
@bill_mccormick09 Hey Bill, currently we don't separate it out into its own section, but that information may be embedded in the rest of the report on the startup's history and timeline. It might be good to call this out more explicitly in the text or UI. Is there a particular acquired startup you would be most interested in? I can send it to you when it's ready. Thanks for the suggestion!
@sfoscar Nothing I can think of now but, I appreciate the offer. After looking at the site again, a nice feature for the future could be to add another filter that shows the company's "fate". You could filter by, died on the vine, acquired, transitioned to another industry, etc. I think that would be helpful for people performing market research into before creating a company to show what has happened to previous companies in the same field.
My Financé
Hah I love that delve is at the top of the list. RIP indeed..
My Financé
also wow i just went into the details page, i didnt realize how thorough these are! https://startups.rip/company/delve, very impressive, include references at the end. damn.
Startups.RIP
@catt_marroll Thanks for checking it out! We designed out Deep Research agent to pull from many sources & ground factual claims to get the full picture about a company. That's easy for notable companies covered by media outlets, but for some older & more obscure ones, it has to pull from old tweets, blog posts, YT videos, etc. Each report takes ~20 minutes to generate, with most of that time on research. It's still not perfect and we'll continue to improve the research & report generation pipeline based on user feedback :)
minimalist phone: creating folders
Some of them might work if the product + strategy were done properly.
Startups.RIP
@busmark_w_nika I think so too! Many people take away the wrong lessons from startups lessons "oh that has been tried before & didn't work" when in reality markets evolve, consumer behaviours evolve, the underlying tech & infra evolves, etc. not to mention the team's execution, of course.
Brila
Love the 50% BUILDER discount – so if I read about a dead fintech startup and immediately ship the same thing, you'll give me a discount on the tool I used to get the idea. That's a beautiful loop. Does anyone actually do this or is it mostly people doom-scrolling YC obituaries 😆
Startups.RIP
@ikalimullin We just shipped builder discount today so no one has taken me up on it yet. But we wanted to find some way to reward the builders & doers. It's just a small incentive, but sometimes that's all it takes to break out of analysis paralysis :)
Is there one company you'd want to see someone reimagine for the AI era? Maybe something you'd want to use yourself?