Shipping startup Shyp is shutting down 1

An on-demand shipping startup Shyp, that was valued at over $250 million in 2015 announced it is shutting down.

According to techcrunch “The company raised $50 million in a deal led by John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins back in 2015, one of his last huge checks as a variety of firms jumped onto the on-demand space. The thesis at the time was pretty sound: look at a strip mall, and see which businesses can come to you first. Shipping was a natural one, but there was also food, and eventually groceries. Today, there are only a few left standing, with Postmates, Instacart and DoorDash among the most prominent ones. Even then, Instacart  is now under threat from Amazon, which is ramping up its own two-hour delivery after buying Whole Foods.”

The CEO Kevin Gibbon announced this in a LinkedIn blog post:

Today, with a heavy heart, we are shutting Shyp down, ending operations effective immediately. I stared at a blank screen for more than ten minutes before I could even write that sentence.

Last summer, long after many other people affiliated with the business, I realized that dramatic changes needed to be made if Shyp had any hope of surviving. We suspended operations in all markets except San Francisco, our largest and most profitable. We narrowed our focus entirely to business customers and shut off any part of our business that wasn’t generating revenue. To be clear, this seemingly obvious decision was still difficult. It was disappointing to many, adversely impacting our employees, customers, and partners.  ….

This brings us to where we are now: out of time. My early mistakes in Shyp’s business ended up being prohibitive to our survival. For that, I am sorry. I’m sorry to the world-class team who joined me on this journey—together, we boxed so many shipments that we could’ve blanketed San Francisco with cardboard 4.5 times. I’m sorry to the hundreds of thousands of customers who validated our idea by shipping enough packages to circle the earth half a million times over. I’m sorry to all of the investors and partners who have always rooted for us, and whose advice I sometimes ignored. I am grateful and humbled to have met and worked with you all.