FAILDEX失樂園
中文
← Back to archive

Me.me

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

Founded2015
Event year2019

01 / WHAT IT BUILT

What the company did

Me.me was a meme search engine and content aggregation website launched in December 2015 under the name Sizzle by three Bay Area software developers - Shane Walker, Fariz Chowdhurry and Jim Hefner. Conceived as a search engine specifically for memes, it aggregated memes from across the web into a searchable, tagged database with links back to sources, and later added Me.me Trends analytics and a MEMECOIN cryptocurrency concept. The company raised $1.5 million in April 2017. Despite a growing user base, it never found a sustainable business model and shut down.

02 / Me.me FAILURE REASONS

Failure reasons

Me.me failed because meme aggregation could not be turned into a viable business. Despite building a large, searchable database of memes and attracting users, the company never cracked monetization: meme content was freely available everywhere, and the rise of algorithm-driven platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Reddit gave users built-in meme discovery without needing a standalone meme search engine. The $1.5 million raised in 2017 was not enough to sustain the company, and the crypto-meme-economy experiment came too late to change the trajectory.

03 / EVENT HISTORY

Events in the structured record

  1. Launched

    Me.me launched as Sizzle in December 2015, founded by Shane Walker, Fariz Chowdhurry and Jim Hefner as a meme search engine.

  2. Rebranded

    Sizzle rebranded as Me.me after acquiring the Me.me domain at the end of 2016.

  3. Funding and features

    The company raised $1.5 million in April 2017 and launched Me.me Trends analytics plus the MEMECOIN concept.

  4. Shutdown

    Me.me shut down after failing to find a sustainable business model.

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 December 2015 (as Sizzle) by Shane Walker, Fariz Chowdhurry, Jim Hefner; meme search engine.

  2. 02

    Rebranded to Me.me end of 2016; launched Me.me Trends and MEMECOIN concept.

  3. 03

    Raised $1.5M in April 2017.

  4. 04

    Failed to monetize despite a growing user base; standalone meme search squeezed by Instagram, TikTok and Reddit.

  5. 05

    Shut down ~2019; no successful exit.

  6. 06

    No reliable loss figure disclosed; funding amounts are not losses.