Sidechat turned acquired Yik Yak into a college-email clone, and users revolted
After a quiet acquisition, Yik Yak's app became Sidechat reskinned on shared servers; users decried the college-email sign-up and lost features.
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500 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDVia bought Citymapper in a reported washout, to feed rider data into its transit software
Weeks after raising $110M at $3.5B, Via acquired the 50-million-user trip app for cash and stock; sources said investors mostly did not recoup.
Read the caseVersed raised a $1.7M pre-seed from Google's Gradient to turn written stories into 3D RPGs
The four-month-old Dutch startup uses GPT-4 and a curated asset library to build role-playing games from text, aiming for a 2024 public launch.
Read the caseVelodyne founder David Hall, ousted as chairman, demands the SPAC's two directors resign
A year after Velodyne went public via Graf Industrial, Hall said in May 2021 he would use his roughly 52% stake to replace the board members chosen by the SPAC.
Read the caseUpgrade bought travel BNPL Uplift for $100M after it came asking for investment
Uplift asked Upgrade to join its Series D; Upgrade offered to buy instead, paying $100M in cash and stock for a firm that had raised nearly $700M.
Read the caseThrun retook Udacity's helm, cut 130 jobs and assigned every student a mentor in two weeks
After a flat 2018, Thrun's email led to layoffs, 90% cheaper course production and a mentor program aimed at lifting a 34% graduation rate.
Read the caseTribute shut down after enterprise buyers praised the product but signed no deals
The Seattle workplace-connection startup, eight years old, closed in December 2024 as its funding ran out despite big-name customers and warm leads.
Read the caseTraqo dropped logistics cameras for mid-mile freight software; founder claims INR 5 Cr
A third-time founder skipped camera hardware and automated Indian manufacturers' mid-mile freight; Inc42 reports 100+ clients, growth self-reported.
Read the caseTier and Dott agreed to merge in January 2024 to reach scale, with Dott's CEO leading
Europe's two big scooter operators combined with fresh funding and a planned €200M+ in revenue after a funding drought and layoffs at Tier.
Read the caseTewke rebuilt the light switch as a bootstrapped energy-control device (interview)
The founders say Tap packs nine sensors and on-device AI into a wall switch sold via electricians; the team is 16 staff, mostly bootstrapped.
Read the caseSyndio makes its first acquisition in nine years, buying agentic-AI startup Embrace.ai
The Seattle pay-equity software company bought Austin's Embrace.ai in June 2026 to speed up its agentic compensation platform, hiring the whole team.
Read the caseSwiggy licensed The Bowl Company and other in-house food brands to Kouzina
Swiggy handed its digital-first food brands to cloud-kitchen operator Kouzina in May 2025, after shutting Genie and as NRAI threatened action.
Read the caseStrava shut Fatmap, its 3D outdoor maps app, 20 months after buying it
In June 2024 Strava said Fatmap would close on 1 October and fold into its subscription, leaving grades, photos and guidebooks behind.
Read the caseStarform soft-launched Metalstorm in five countries and reached nearly 1M downloads
Ex-Z2 founders' Seattle studio revealed its free-to-play 5v5 aerial combat game in open beta, hitting about 1M downloads mostly by word of mouth.
Read the caseSquare Yards leans on loan arm Urban Money, 60% of revenue, ahead of an IPO (interview)
In an Inc42 interview the CFO says loan distribution now outearns real estate, taking FY26 revenue up 48% to Rs 2,086 Cr.
Read the caseSparkToro's Rand Fishkin raised $2.15M from 38 angels for a cooking-game studio, no VCs
Fishkin copied SparkToro's personal-network funding model for Snackbar Studio and published its pitch deck and legal documents for other indie teams.
Read the caseSlync raised $24M led by Goldman Sachs while its founder faced federal fraud charges
After its CEO was charged with taking $20M of the $50M it had raised, the logistics software startup replaced him and closed a $24M round.
Read the caseSeries Entertainment quietly raised $28M for its GenAI game engine and bought Pixelberry
A year after a $7.9M a16z-led seed, Series grew from 17 to 100-plus staff, bought Pixelberry and pitched its Rho Engine as the new Unity.
Read the caseSentinelOne buys Bengaluru cloud-security startup PingSafe about six months after its seed
SentinelOne agreed in January 2024 to acquire PingSafe for cash and stock to add a cloud-native application protection platform to its Singularity platform.
Read the caseSennder buys C.H. Robinson's European trucking business to double its revenue
The German digital freight forwarder agrees an all-cash deal for C.H. Robinson's European surface transportation unit, doubling revenue to a reported €1.4B.
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