We continue to
provide examples of recent failed attempts.
18 – Package.com
Package.com was a
site that re-applied a system that had been tried before in Turkey by making it
a little different. Offering a different and discounted product every day, the
startup featured the products of the last three days on the homepage, and if
you put all three products in the package, it also made an effective promotion
according to that period by not charging any shipping fee. Packagete.com, which
was the result of a team of four people working for 10 months, was among the
sites that were closed before the end of a year. The fact that the single
product system has not been tried before, and that the products uploaded to the
site on a daily basis are preferred rather than the products that meet an
essential need (such as TV, computer, mobile phone or clothing) are the leading
factors that cause failure.
Lesson: Do not
start without analyzing, researching well what the customer wants, what he
really needs.
19 – Tabletseminerler.com
The site, which
is a system that every user can easily access, register online and participate
in offline seminars from experts in different fields such as sales, marketing,
social media, entrepreneurship, creativity, business life or health, received
an investment of 500 thousand TL from Hasan Aslanoba in 2013. Tablet seminars
were established by M-Gen founder Ufuk Tarhan and Emrah Kaya and developed
within Youth Holding. There are two reasons why the site failed. The first is
that the trainings are not online. The other is that the founders cannot fully focus
on the site due to their other work.
Lesson: Internet
venture is not done as a side job.
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| FAİLED STARTUPS -2 |
20 – Magazoloji.com
Founded by Tevfik
Uyar and Tuğçe Demirağ in June, magazoloji.com was positioned as a special
shopping site for those who want to buy different and more creative souvenirs.
Creative mug, t-shirt, poster / banner, game / toy, home on site
and office
products and discounted books were available. The owner of the company, Tevfik
Uyar, was a person who knew the audience he was addressing very well, with the
advantage of being among the founding editors of the monthly online science
journal Açık Bilim. However, the small target audience and the lack of
sufficient capital accumulation led the site to close due to low turnover.
Lesson: Your
target audience should not be a few people.
21 – Stilsos.com
Another trend
that emerged during a period when group sales and e-commerce sites increased
between 2010 and 2013 was social commerce initiatives. Stilsos.com was an
initiative operating in this segment, where there are startups such as Bukombin
Modasor, Netmoda and Stilgiyin.
Stilsos, which
was founded by Reyhan Baylan, who received an investment of 230 thousand
dollars from Galata Business Angels, was closed after a while. Baylan
emphasized that the business model is based on revenue partnership and the
income per member is insufficient.
The Lesson: If
you don't want your startup to go bankrupt within a year, don't start off
without raising enough capital, no matter how good your business plan is.
21 – Stils22 – Whonear
An application
released by Whonear Gökhan Örün in 2011. Based on the location information of
the people, it presented the friends who were in close distance as a
notification. The application, which was ranked in many startup competitions in
Turkey and abroad, had iOS and Android applications. The biggest problem of the
startup, which was closed in early 2013, is the lack of sufficient capital.
The Lesson: The
initial investment is important.
23 – Go220
Go220 entered the
market as a niche opportunity site at a time when opportunity sites were
concentrated. The founders of the site focused on consumer electronics were
Şevket Başev, Tansu Gülaydın, Dost Karaahmetli, Bülent Elçin and Altuğ Beşer.
The site was selling seven different products, four of which were new, every
day, and offered them for sale for 48 hours in accordance with the basic logic
of opportunity sites. Although the Go220 was in a niche segment, it had
important competitors such as Limango Tech and Teknop.
Lesson: Know the
market before you start work.
Another trend
that emerged during a period when group sales and e-commerce sites increased
between 2010 and 2013 was social commerce initiatives. Stilsos.com was an
initiative operating in this segment, where there are startups such as Bukombin
Modasor, Netmoda and Stilgiyin.
Stilsos, which
was founded by Reyhan Baylan, who received an investment of 230 thousand
dollars from Galata Business Angels, was closed after a while. Baylan
emphasized that the business model is based on revenue partnership and the
income per member is insufficient.
The Lesson: If
you don't want your startup to go bankrupt within a year, don't start off
without raising enough capital, no matter how good your business plan is.
24 – Ceidot
Céidot was
founded in 2004 at Bilkent University Teknokent, headquartered in Ankara, as
one of Turkey's largest gaming companies. Céidot's most popular game, Umaykut,
gained 3.5 million players in three years. However, it has not been able to
fully establish its revenue model. The increase in the number of players has
increased the background maintenance costs. The company sold Umaykut to Peak
Games during this period. Focusing on the aftermarket Ceiron Wars game, the
team released Ceiron Wars in 2013 after visiting the US and Russia. The game,
which was prepared in a very advanced and detailed way from its experience to
its editing, could not meet the expectations due to the problems in the
business plan and the company was closed at the end of 2013. Céidot is a
revenue model, as the founder of the company, Erkan Bayol, said.
and not being
able to fully fit the business model.
The Lesson:
Engineers can miss important parts of the job as they focus more on content and
software because of their expertise.
25 – Youlike.com
Founded by Ersan
Özer, the founder of İtiraf.com, Uzman.tv and İstanbul.net sites, with seven
partners after a long-term planning, the Youlike site aimed to bring together
people with common tastes from all over the world. Founded with a capital of
300 thousand TL, the company's partners include Gittigidiyor.com's founding
partners Burak Divanlıoğlu and Serkan Borançılı, Aydonat Aysever, Levent
Gültan, Can Karatoprak and Oğuz Göker. known in the internet world. The team,
which first opened the site in New York, bought domain names such as
Youlike.com and Ulike.com for 100 thousand dollars at that time. The Istanbul
office of Youlike.com, which has English, Portuguese, Spanish and French
versions in addition to Turkish, was established and was among the top 10 in
2013 in Wired magazine's category of Europe's most remarkable initiatives.
Youlike, which was originally established as a dating site, later changed its
strategy and tried to continue as a social networking site. The team, which
also made major changes in the design of the site, threw in the towel after a
while.
Lesson: Build
your startup from scratch.
26 – Fit&color.com
Focusing only on
menswear, Fitandcolor was founded by two brothers Zeynep Kılınçoğlu and Hüsnü
Kılınçoğlu, who had careers in the banking industry. Another small investor and
consultant of the site, which received an investment of 1 million TL from
Aslanoba, was Sina Afra, known for its experience in the e-commerce sector. The
site, whose target audience is men between the ages of 20-45, had the design
and production of clothing products made in Turkey done and sold under its own
brand. The site, which had to create a brand due to the nature of the fashion
industry, was not in a position to grow rapidly due to its business model,
although it had a great price advantage compared to offline.
Course: Market
research, market research, market research…
27 – Lokum.com
Lokum.com, which
was established by Yemeksepeti in 2014 to sell local products, was selling
organic products brought from different regions of Turkey. The logistics costs
of the site, which was closed in March 2015, were very high. The high wastage
of their products was another problem. Another problem was that it appealed to
a small target audience due to its pricing policy.
Lesson: The most
difficult startups in e-commerce are those in the niche segment.
28 – Etiqadd.com
Etiqadd.com,
which started its activities in the mobile field at the end of 2011, was
founded by Göker Toptan and Aleksi Komorosano. It can be defined as a
location-based social shopping and fashion network that brings brands together
with consumers through social media and smartphones. In 2012, the site changed
its strategy by focusing on the web page. The system was based on the principle
that users had to read the barcodes on the labels of the products in order to
be on the platform. Users can see the products uploaded to the site and
discover the products of other users with the explore button. Collaboration
with 15 brands was made on the site, which includes more than 250 thousand
products. The startup, which stepped into the e-commerce market with a creative
idea, closed at the beginning of 2013. The immaturity of social shopping logic
among internet users in Turkey prevents successful ideas like Etiqadd from
being implemented.
Lesson: Your
rooster that starts crowing early…
29 – firsatkoltugu.com
After 2010, hundreds
of opportunity sites were opened. After the market reached saturation point in
Turkey, most of these sites were closed, some of them turned into normal
e-commerce sites, very few of them survived. One of the sites brought to life
by this trend was Firsatkoltugu.com, which was prepared for the travel
industry.
Discounted
tickets of bus and plane companies were sold on the site. The site, which was
established in March 2012 by Faruk Taşdemir and Mustafa Bahadır, was closed at
the end of 2012.
30 – Sportscum.com
Sporcum.com, one
of Turkey's first e-commerce sites in the field of sports and daily life, was a
site where you could find tens of thousands of products from over 70 brands.
Founded at the end of 2010, the venture received two investments from Tiger
Global and Emre Kurttepeli, the owner of Mynet. Speaking at the Webrazzi
E-Commerce Conference in 2012, Sporcum.com General Manager Ahmet Abamor said
that they spend more than 100 thousand TL on advertising and marketing per
month.
Product videos
and technical details of many products were one of the successful works of
Sporcum.com. However, the reasons such as not being able to create its own
customer base and increase the turnover caused Sporcum.com to be closed as
well.
Lesson: Marketing
comes first.
31 – Ekolay.net
Ekolay, which
started to serve as an internet provider in the late 90s, changed over time and
continued to serve as a news, entertainment and game portal. Years ago, the
site, which introduced millions of people to the internet with advertisements
by Kemal Sunallı and enabled them to get their first e-mail addresses, started
to lose its users in the face of phenomenal social media networks such as
Facebook and Twitter. Although it ended its activities as of April 2013, it was
not closed completely. Doğan Group has transformed Ekolay.net into a yellow
pages site to be more compatible with its name.
Lesson: Sometimes
change takes you away.
32 – Evim.net
Evim.net, one of
the important opportunity sites established in the home decoration vertical in
2010, became one of the sites that were closed in 2015 after five years.
Evim.net, which received an investment of 5 million dollars from the EBRD and
212 million dollars at the beginning of 2013,
It could not hold
on in the vertical market where there were strong players such as Evmanya and
Evidea. Although the site is open, it continues mostly in the form of furniture
and decoration blocks. Opportunity site – it was a combination of niche market.
Opportunity sites have lost their appeal. Its segment wasn't big enough to
handle many players.
Sources: Turkishtime, toptalent.co
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