You asked about Crowdfunding
8 people built something like it. 2 are gone.
That is 29% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 1 were acquired.
| Launched | What it was | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2012-01-01 | YCTilt Mobile crowdfunding: The easiest way to collect, fundraise, and sell… · tilt.com | acquired |
| 2012-06-01 | The only end-to-end crowdfunding platform built for today’s creators · backerkit.com | still up |
| 2012-06-01 | YCCelery Celery is a platform for pre-orders (www.trycelery.com). Accept… · trycelery.com | gone |
| 2013-01-01 | YCWatsi Watsi is the first global crowdfunding platform for medical… · watsi.org | still up |
| 2015-01-01 | The Human Utility seeks to eliminate water service disconnections for… · detroitwaterproject.org | still up |
| 2014-06-01 | Kickstarter for local businesses · ownerscircle.com | gone |
| 2013-01-01 | crowdfunding platform for science · experiment.com | still up |
| 2014-01-01 | YCZidisha Direct P2P lending across the international wealth divide. · zidisha.org | still up |
How this compares
The register re-probes every domain it holds. Some that answered last month stop answering. We send that list — what went quiet, and what it was — once a month. Nothing else.
How this was made. Show HN entries are every post from 2021 to 2023 with at least five points that linked to its own domain; code hosts and free hosting are excluded, because a repository outlives the effort behind it. Product Hunt entries needed 100 votes — a far higher bar, so they are the promoted top slice rather than a like-for-like sample. Both are judged by asking the domain whether it still answers: gone means it no longer resolves, refuses the connection, serves a parking page, or says plainly that it shut down. An HTTP error is not counted as gone — a server answering 404 is one somebody still pays for, and an audit of 25 gone-calls found two such sites alive with only a moved homepage. Y Combinator entries use the status YC publishes itself, which is why only those can say acquired. Squatted domains — a lapsed name now serving somebody else's site — are not detected, so these figures run slightly low.