Startups Alex Samson Founded: Exits and Failures

I bootstrapped a product R&D studio and scaled it to international operations: a remote engineering team of 50 people across 12 time zones that built 100+ tech products from idea to Series A for startups and corporates. Closed an acquihire deal and relocated to Bali.

Hiring and onboarding automation. Two clients and no market fit; the product was acquired by a fast-growing software company (150+ people) in sports and entertainment.

Remote party streaming during the COVID lockdowns. The market went away when they ended.

Open-source license manager. It failed for lack of leadership.

Online smartphone robbery and theft insurance. Some revenue, small market.

Grew out of the intranet we built for Merz. Intranet SaaS for teams: a social network, documents, messenger and tasks. Some revenue and an award, no market fit.

SaaS GIS for interactive crowdsourcing projects: city maps where residents and city officials mark places, built on OpenStreetMap. The first pilot ran in 2012. Five clients, no market fit.

A B2B service that delivered insurance policies to customers' phones: Apple Passbook, plus Android and BlackBerry through PassWallet. It sent renewal and location reminders, and gave insurers a template builder and install reports. It started as a project for a leading national insurer, one of the first to put policies in Passbook, and installs ran several times above forecast.

A freelance agency in web design, software development and online marketing for small businesses, which I founded in high school and ran through university.

As a university student, I built an early e-commerce leader in pet supplies from the ground up to 4,000 SKUs and a team of 9. I managed all operations from engineering to sales, scaling the business to an exit.

A marketplace of direct sales products, connecting buyers with sellers in cities, which I launched at 15. My first e-commerce experience and $50 from banner ads, before I closed it to focus on exams.