Team Apart
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
Some sections are still being researched1 / 4
Sections to complete：05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Team Apart was a Y Combinator-funded startup building a real-time, browser-based collaboration tool for remote teams. Its persistent online meeting rooms combined video/audio chat with a shared notepad, whiteboard for freehand drawing, and images — all updated live for participants. Funded by Y Combinator in August 2008 and built by a three-person team split between Seattle and Santa Cruz, it launched a free public beta in August 2009 targeting distributed workgroups at small companies. Its founders later went on to found Outreach, the billion-dollar Seattle sales automation company.
02 / Team Apart FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Team Apart launched free into a crowded web-conferencing market dominated by WebEx, GoToMeeting and Microsoft, and never found a paying business around its collaboration trifecta. The service quietly faded and the founders moved on — founding the sales automation giant Outreach a few years later. No public shutdown announcement exists; the venture simply ended.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- YC funding
Team Apart is funded by Y Combinator in August 2008 and starts building a real-time web collaboration tool.
- Public beta
The company launches a free public beta of its persistent meeting rooms with video chat, notepad and whiteboard.
- Shutdown
Team Apart shuts down; its founders go on to co-found Outreach in Seattle a few years later.
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 / AFTERMATH
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.