Why I shut down my startup (And why it made sense)

The idea

Back in October 2025, I started working on a project called Kribb. The idea came from a pretty well known problem: finding student accommodation is extremely annoying and tedious process. It’s fragmented, slow, and usually involves using spreadsheets, whatsapp groupchats, and property sites that don’t really talk to each other. I wanted to build something that made the whole process feel simpler and more collaborative, with AI integration ofc.

What started as a casual “this would be cool” idea quickly turned into a full on project. Over the following months, I built out an MVP. Kribb became a cross platform mobile app where students could swipe through properties, match with places they liked, and coordinate decisions with their flatmates in shared groups chats. There was even an AI feature to help generate enquiries to landlords, which removed some of the friction of reaching out.

From a product perspective, it worked. People who used it enjoyed it. The interface felt natural, the experience was smooth, and it solved a problem that students clearly recognised. On the surface, it looked like the kind of thing that could turn into a real startup.

The problem

The problem was that I had built it for the wrong side of the market.

As I started speaking to letting agencies and property managers, the people who actually control listings and revenue in this space, the enthusiasm just was not there. With the help of my friend Alessio, I managed to get into a few conversations and calls, which were incredibly useful, but also pretty sobering. The general response was something like: “students already figure it out, duh”. Whether they were using spreadsheets, WhatsApp, or existing platforms like Rightmove, the current system was “good enough” from their perspective.

That was the turning point. It became clear that while students might enjoy a better experience, the businesses that would need to support or pay for the product did not feel any real urgency to change. Without that pressure, there is no strong incentive for adoption, and without adoption on both sides, a B2B2C product like this struggles to exist.

More problems

There were also deeper structural issues. Property data is fragmented across different agencies, which makes aggregation difficult. On top of that, there are legal considerations around listings, ownership, and verification that add another layer of complexity. None of these problems are impossible to solve, but they require access, relationships, and resources that I simply did not have.

Even if those problems were solved, scaling would introduce another major challenge: supply.

The Scaling Problem

In the UK market, platforms like Rightmove dominate because they have the largest inventory of listings. That creates a strong network effect. Even if Kribb offered a significantly better user experience, students would quickly notice that it does not have the same volume of properties.

At that point, the decision becomes simple for them: better UX versus more options. Most people will choose more options.

That means even a “successful” version of Kribb would constantly struggle with retention of users unless it could match or exceed the supply side of existing platforms. And building that level of inventory requires deep industry integration, long term partnerships, and significant leverage, none of which are easy to get as a new entrant.

The Market Reality (more problems)

Another issue became obvious when looking at specific UK student cities. In some areas, the problem is not that students struggle to find good tools to search, it is that there simply are not enough properties available.

Demand exceeds supply to the point where letting agencies are able to fill properties regardless of platform or user experience. From their perspective, everything is already working. Properties get rented out quickly anyway, so there is no need to adopt a new system or optimise the process.

This completely undermines the core problem Kribb was trying to solve. If the market clears itself due to excess demand, improving discovery does not create enough value to matter.

External Perspective (THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT, the final shot)

Around this time, I also spoke with someone from Future Worlds, a startup accelerator at the University of Southampton. One of the key pieces of advice I got was to properly analyse both the users and the customers, and to think seriously about whether the effort required to bridge that gap was actually worth it. That conversation reinforced what I was already starting to suspect.

The Decision

Stepping back, I had to look at my situation realistically. I am a student with limited time, a lot of other interests, and no significant capital or industry connections. Continuing to push forward with something that had a high probability of failure, especially given the structural challenges, did not feel like a good trade off.

So I made the decision to stop.

Shutting it down was not dramatic. It was a fairly rational conclusion based on what I had learned. The product itself was not the issue. If anything, building it was one of the most valuable parts of the experience. I got hands on experience with gesture driven interfaces, state management, and even some interesting problems around map based search and spatial data. More importantly, I learned how easy it is to build something that users like but nobody will pay for.

What Changed

I still think there is a gap in the market for a better student accommodation experience. That belief has not really changed. What has changed is my understanding of what it would take to actually fill that gap.

It is not just a design or engineering problem, it is an industry problem. Solving it properly would require partnerships, access to data, legal clarity, and capital. Without those, even a well built product struggles to survive.

Closing Thoughts

Kribb now sits as a portfolio project, which I am completely fine with. It represents a complete cycle: an idea, a build, real user feedback, market validation, and ultimately, a decision to stop.

If there is one thing I would take from this, it is that validation should come before building, especially in anything resembling a B2B2C model. It is very easy to get excited about a product and start coding, but if the people who are supposed to pay do not care, the rest does not really matter.

In that sense, shutting it down was not a failure. It was just the outcome of understanding the problem more clearly.