I'm trying to innovate in the same field that Bubbleshare was in. I only learned about them recently via reading old techcrunch posts. What killed them? Did they go through a prolonged period of difficulty?
Disclaimer: I was not involved, but several people that were are friends. These friends did not inform my answer here, which is just my opinion based on many sources.
BubbleShare was a Toronto tech darling started by the always brilliant Albert Lai. They were WAY ahead of their time.
All I'm comfortable sharing here is that they received buyout Offer A, which Albert rejected in favour of doubling down for a better deal. Unfortunately fortune did not smile and BubbleShare ultimately accepted Offer B, which was significantly smaller than Offer A.
The site was sold to Kaboose, which is a Canadian family content company. As usually happens when startups are acquired, the key talent left (Albert started Kontagent) and innovation on the site halted.
I'm not an analyst, but these things usually distill down to "too early / too early / too late". I'm not sure that people were ever lining up to pay them money to use the service, and that might give you pause before going down the same road. Many products are cool but aren't solving a problem causing paying customers real pain.
