Tingles
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
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Sections to complete：05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Tingles was an ASMR video app built by Tingles, Inc. of San Francisco, a Y Combinator Winter 2018 company. The app gathered relaxing ASMR videos — whispered reviews, bedtime stories, gentle sounds — into one place with curated playlists, aiming to help anxious people and insomniacs unwind and fall asleep. It reached 2.2 million installs on Android.
02 / Tingles FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
The app faded rather than exploded. Updates stopped after January 2021, and its rating sank to 2.3 out of 5 as users complained that once-free videos were disappearing behind a paywall while the same content was free on YouTube. In November 2022 the app was removed from Google Play entirely, and later users reported videos that would not load and support emails that went unanswered — the hallmarks of an abandoned product.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Launch
The Tingles app goes live on Google Play in March 2017, offering ASMR audio and video relaxation guides.
- Y Combinator
Tingles joins Y Combinator's Winter 2018 batch, raising a $125,000 accelerator round and later an early-stage venture round in May 2018.
- Final update
The last update to the Android app (version 3.4.1) ships on January 31, 2021; development effectively stops.
- Removed
The app is removed from Google Play on November 2, 2022, after 2.2 million installs; users report broken videos and unresponsive support.
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.