You asked about SMS

18 people built something like it. 4 are gone.

That is 24% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 1 were acquired.

Matching
19
Gone
24%
Median life
Acquired
1

Matching launches

checked 7 hours ago · 250 probed today
LaunchedWhat it wasToday
2012-06-01
Voice AI Agents for customer engagement, including WhatsApp, SMS &… · plivo.com
still up
2022-01-03
haroldthehabittracker.com
still up
2019-01-01
The SMS revenue platform for e-commerce merchants · postscript.io
still up
2022-02-18
getshoutout.com
still up
2021-10-31
smsgte.org
still up
2022-01-26
clerk.chat
still up
2014-06-01
Marketing automation for event promoters (email, sms, ads, CRM) · hive.co
still up
2020-01-01
Termii is an AI-native reliability infrastructure company. · termii.com
still up
2021-03-03
phasedust.com
gone~37mo
2023-04-25
aicoachbud.com
gone
2024-06-01
Omnichannel AI agents that engage leads across SMS, voice, and email · apten.ai
still up
2023-01-01
Frictionless payments via SMS · onetext.com
still up
2023-01-29
smstoslack.app
moved
2023-06-01
Send texts your customers actually want over RCS · smobi.com
still up
2023-06-01
AI Voice and SMS Agents for Healthcare · wattsonhealth.com
still up
2015-01-01
Create automated messages -- email, iOS/Android push, SMS and web… · outbound.io
acquired
2017-01-01
MailChimp for SMS · getrileynow.com
gone
2024-06-01
API & SDK for RCS (the next-generation of texting) · pinnacle.sh
still up
2022-01-01
The best SMS/RCS API for startups · sendo.dev
gone

How this compares

Where they launched

share gone · line is the 23% average
  1. Product Hunt 30%
  2. Show HN 367%
  3. Y Combinator 1118%

Y Combinator reports its own outcomes, including acquisitions. The other two are judged by asking the domain, so they are not measured the same way and are never averaged together.

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.