In 2015, Teespring was on a tear. After graduating from Y Combinator in the Winter 2013 batch the company rode a wave of rapid viral growth resulting

6 Lessons From The Rise and Fall of Teespring

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2025-01-08 23:30:04

In 2015, Teespring was on a tear. After graduating from Y Combinator in the Winter 2013 batch the company rode a wave of rapid viral growth resulting in 2 major fundraises in 2014 (its Series A, led by A16Z, and its Series B, led by Khosla Ventures).

The company’s premise was simple: anyone, anywhere could create and sell customized merchandise without having to do any payment processing, printing, or shipping. All you need is creativity and Teespring handled the rest. It was a perfect pitch for investors too: Teespring empowered the long tail of content creators just as YouTube, Twitch, and Shopify did before it. And the business boomed: in 2015, Sam Altman included it in a basket of mid-stage startups that he bet would be worth >$27B in aggregate by January 1, 2020.

Yet just 2 years later, having all but run out of money, it restructured — then quietly sold in 2022 to Amaze for an unannounced sum.