HauteDay
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
HauteDay, founded in 2014 by Dan Lin and Michael Witz, was a gamified fashion shopping startup backed by Y Combinator's Summer 2014 batch. Billed as 'Gaming Meets Women's Shopping,' the site ran daily fashion theme contests: the community submitted and voted on product finds, and the winning item was designated a 'People's Choice' pick. The company planned to make money from advertising and affiliate links.
02 / HauteDay FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
No postmortem or founder statement explaining HauteDay's closure was found. The Y Combinator company database marks HauteDay as dead; its $120K seed funding from Y Combinator was never followed by another round.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
HauteDay was founded in 2014 by Dan Lin and Michael Witz; it joined Y Combinator's Summer 2014 batch.
- Seed funding
HauteDay raised $120K in seed funding from Y Combinator in August 2014.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Dan Lin and Michael Witz founded HauteDay in 2014 and joined Y Combinator's Summer 2014 batch with a gamified fashion shopping concept.
- 02
The company raised $120K in seed funding from Y Combinator in August 2014, planning to monetize via advertising and affiliate links.
- 03
The Y Combinator company database marks HauteDay as dead.