Boston's innovation ecosystem is, by plenty of accounts, thriving. Crunchbase News reported just earlier this month that over the summer months, Greater Boston surpassed both San Francisco and New York in seed-stage dollar volume. Our local colleges and universities make us rich in talent, and a slew of accelerator programs—including decade-old giants like MassChallenge and Techstars—are just some of the systems that nurture early development.
But, as every startup founder knows, launching a business is risky. The best-laid plans can still fall through, whether that be from lack of funding, an engineering design flaw or even the intricacies of the American health insurance system.
For a feature we're calling "Inno Autopsy," we're looking at local shuttered startups to learn about how failure can help push the innovation community forward. We pored through our own archives and counted up seven startups that have shuttered since October last year.
Here's what happened:
Transatomic Power Systems
Shuttered almost exactly a year ago, Transatomic Power Systems (TPC) was the brainchild of nuclear engineers Dr. Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, who began the research behind the company while they were still graduate students at MIT. The pair was “incredibly drawn” to the idea of a molten salts reactor (MSR), which is a nuclear fission reactor where the fuel is a molten salt mixture. “We believe in nuclear energy and were extremely excited about the safety benefits of molten salts reactor,” Dewan told BostInno at the time.
But it wasn't meant to be. A labor-intensive redesign and a subsequent lack of fundraising spelled the end for TPC. Dewan and her team didn't simply letting their work die away, though. Instead, they embraced failure and decided to put all of TPC's research in the public domain—they wouldn't profit from this move, but scientists could use and improve on the methods they'd developed. Read our Inno Autopsy feature on TPC's shutdown here.
Sophia
This MIT-born startup was an alumnus of Techstars and MIT delta v, and it had a grand vision: to match people with therapists and circumvent the barriers to traditional therapy. The startup's platform facilitated these matches between patients with therapists by giving both parties detailed questionnaires on different aspects like needs, logistics, insurance, personality types and treatment styles. Yet a traditional barrier still proved to be a dooming factor: health insurance.
“Insurance is a nightmare in this space,” co-founder and founding CEO Eva Breitenbach told BostInno in January. “It was logistically complicated; it felt problematic to provide a service that was not accessible to a large chunk of people." Breitenbach left the startup to become a product manager at Boston-based meditation and wellness platform 10% Happier, where she sees promise in including therapy in employee assistance programs.
Jibo
The robotics startup once graced the cover of TIME magazine. Last November, it shut down for good, as our sister publication the Boston Business Journal reported at the time. The Robot Report, an industry publication, reported that Jibo had sold its intellectual property assets to New York-based SQN Venture Partners. The publication cited an anonymous Jibo executive and patent records that indicate Jibo transferred ownership of its IP to SQN in June last year.
Founded in 2012, the company had raised more than $3.5 million during a 2014 Indiegogo campaign and went on to collect about $70 million in institutional venture capital from firms like Flybridge Capital Partners, CRV and Fenox Venture Capital. The robot, Jibo, was envisioned as an interactive home assistant and retailed for $899.
Just Add Cooking
Just Add Cooking, a five-year-old meal kit service sourcing ingredients from New England markets, ceased operations on Nov. 5, 2018. It had sought funding from investors earlier in the year, telling BostInno in April that the startup had an ongoing seed round seeking $1 million and that it had secured a $500,000 investment from an undisclosed angel group. The funding didn't come through, though. In October, the company explored an alternative way to raise funding by launching a WeFunder crowdfunding campaign to raise a target of $300,000. The plan was to use the investment to expand the service in the Northeast and introduce a second-generation, highly personalized meal solution platform powered by artificial intelligence.
The company's last voicemail: "We’re so grateful to you, our customers, who have helped us support our mission of creating a new food system in New England through our local food delivery service."
Aria Insights (formerly CyPhy Works)
After 11 years on the market, Danvers-based drone company CyPhy Works rebranded to Aria Insights in January. Two months later, it ceased operations completely, according to the Robot Report. Since late 2008, Aria Insights had worked to address the technical challenges of persistent flight. Its drones could fly for six to 12 days as well as collect data on the environment they were surveying. But clients wanted more than data gathering—they wanted analysis and clear answers, BostInno reported in January.
Not all of Aria Insights' work is lost to the ether. Earlier this month, FLIR Systems acquired the company's intellectual property and certain operating assets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. One FLIR executive explained to the Boston Business Journal that the assets would be crucial to the company’s long-term strategy, as they're related to Aria’s so-called “tethered” drones, which are connected to the ground with a cable and can stay aloft much longer than drones powered by batteries.
420 Suites
Launched as a marijuana-friendly hotel chain in the summer of 2018, 420 Suites abruptly shuttered in February this year as a result of Massachusetts' shifting regulatory environment around cannabis-related businesses.
As reported by the Boston Globe, 420 Suites would have offered cannabis-themed products like hemp-infused shampoo, a glossary of local marijuana dispensaries and chauffeured transportation to and from local dispensaries. But in October last year, the Cannabis Control Commission decided to defer granting licenses to social consumption sites like cafes and theaters—including establishments like 420 Suites.
The company is a spinoff of corporate rental firm Northeast Suites. A spokesperson for the firm told BostInno in April that “the project has been put on the back burner,” but 420 Suites' website indicated that the brand had been discontinued entirely.
CozyKin
The Boston-based child care provider claimed in May to be the largest infant childcare service in Massachusetts. It had just raised a $6 million Series A round—after winning significant investor attention at MassChallenge and Unpitch in years prior—and had plans to expand into New York City in the spring. Then, it abruptly announced in emails to employees and clients that it would shut down by the end of October, the Boston Globe reported. The company told Boston 25 News the move was due to "financial reasons" but declined to elaborate.
CozyKin did not respond to multiple requests for comment earlier this month. The last BostInno heard from its team was an automatic reply to the Beat: "CozyKin currently has limited operational staff as we work to close the company. Emails urgent in nature will be responded to as soon as possible. This mailbox will only be monitored until November 8th, 2019."
