FAILDEX失樂園
中文
← Back to archive

Coub

The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.

Founded2012
Some sections are still being researched1 / 4

Sections to complete：02

01 / WHAT IT BUILT

What the company did

Coub was a Moscow-based video remixing platform founded in 2012 by brothers Anton and Igor Gladkoborodov and developer Mikhail Tabunov. The idea was straightforward: each 'coub' could be up to 10 seconds of looping video paired with a full-length audio track or song, creating original audio-visual mashups - like a GIF but with sound. Users could upload videos or extract them from YouTube and Vimeo, clip them, and loop them with music. At its 2014 peak it drew 50 million unique visitors per month and worked with publishers including BuzzFeed and Business Insider; it later joined Y Combinator in 2016. In April 2022 a new team took over development and redesigned Coub.com from a conventional streaming service into a Web3 'watch-to-earn' app with an integrated NFT market.

02 / FAILURE REASONS

Pending assessment

Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.

03 / EVENT HISTORY

Events in the structured record

  1. Founded

    Coub was founded in Moscow in 2012 by brothers Anton and Igor Gladkoborodov and developer Mikhail Tabunov, launching the looped 10-second video-with-music format.

  2. Funding and scale

    Coub raised $2.5 million from Vaizra Investments (the fund headed by VK.com co-founders Lev Leviev and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili), following a $1 million round from Brothers Ventures and Phenomen Ventures; it reached 50 million unique monthly visitors.

  3. Y Combinator

    Coub joined Y Combinator in California.

  4. Web3 pivot

    After its 10th anniversary, a new team took over Coub's development in April 2022 and redesigned the platform as a Web3 watch-to-earn app with an integrated NFT market.

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.

Rebuild difficultyPending assessmentNot completed
Scoring basisNot completed
ScalabilityPending assessmentNot completed
Scoring basisNot completed

Overall assessment: Not completed

05 / CAUSAL CHAIN

How the factors connect

  1. 01

    Founded in 2012; raised approximately $3.5 million in total, a $1 million seed round plus $2.5 million in 2014.

  2. 02

    In April 2022 a new team took over and pivoted the service to Web3 watch-to-earn; no public shutdown announcement has been made.

  3. 03

    No audited loss figure was publicly disclosed.