Kwiry
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Kwiry, founded in 2006 in San Francisco, was a free SMS reminder service: text any reminder to 59479 and it was saved to your online account and emailed back with related search results. It later added a viral platform letting advertisers and media partners, including TiVo and Ford, drive mobile users to the web through text codes.
02 / Kwiry FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
A free SMS utility in a pre-smartphone world: consumer usage never converted into revenue, and the later pivot to branded text campaigns with partners like TiVo and Ford did not build a sustainable business. The company was sold in 2009, and investor records classify the outcome as a bankruptcy or write-off.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Kwiry is founded in San Francisco as a free SMS-to-email reminder service.
- Product launch
The service launches publicly, letting anyone text reminders to 59479 for online retrieval.
- Acquisition
Kwiry is sold in 2009; investor records later classify the deal as a bankruptcy or write-off.
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
Free SMS reminders: text 59479, read it online
- 02
Branded campaigns with TiVo and Ford
- 03
Free users never converted to revenue
- 04
Sold in 2009; investors write it off