Hiptype
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Hiptype was a San Francisco B2B analytics startup from Y Combinator's Summer 2012 batch, founded by James Levy and Sohail Prasad. It billed itself as "Google Analytics for e-books": publishers added a script or plugin to their e-books to collect anonymized demographic and reading-behavior data — how many readers finished a book, where drop-off points were, and how many bought after sampling — plus targeted in-book advertising and automated marketing-campaign optimization. It raised $192,000 from Y Combinator and private investors in August 2012.
02 / Hiptype FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors
Apple iBooks update removed analytics support Hiptype depended on; Amazon and Barnes & Noble progress stalled; major ebook platforms directed them to app platforms instead—platform lockout killed the model.
Apple iBooks update disabled JS/analytics features Hiptype embedded in ebooks.
Amazon and Barnes & Noble would not enable comparable ebook analytics support.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
Hiptype ebook-analytics startup shut down in late December 2013 after platform support collapsed; founders had moved on (CEO to Urban Airship, CTO to Zynga per article).
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
Launched in July 2012 as 'Google Analytics for e-books' for publishers and authors.
- 02
Raised $192,000 in August 2012 from Y Combinator and private investors.
- 03
Shut down in late December 2012: an Apple iBooks update disabled the code features Hiptype relied on, and Amazon and Barnes & Noble would not grant similar data access.
- 04
The business was acquired in March 2013 at a reported $0 valuation, per Wellfound.