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Crunchbase News has covered delivery companies repeatedly over the past year. With Instacart ramping up for grocery delivery in its competition with Amazon and Softbank betting $535 million on food delivery company DoorDash. However, the delivery world, as some have found, is not as lucrative as it might seem. Shyp is the latest victim in the sphere. As CEO Kevin Gibbon wrote in an , the company is shutting down operations, effective immediately.

Shyp was founded in 2013 by Kevin Gibbon, Jack Smith, and Joshua Scott with the goal of solving everyone鈥檚 dislike of shipping things by building an app that would do it for them. Customers would , and type in the address details. Shyp would pick up the items, pack them, and send them through the most cost effective carrier. The service costed a .

Investors liked the idea, too. In September of 2013, the company raised a from along with , Homebrew, and . That seed round was followed by a by Shervin Pishevar with in July 2014.

After only a few months of operation in San Francisco, the company looked outward to new markets. Its efforts to expand were furthered by its led by , which brought its total funding to $62.1 million. The company expanded, , but the company鈥檚 push for market growth was unsustainable.

鈥淧eople close to me and the business began to warn that chasing consumers was the wrong strategy… I didn鈥檛 listen,鈥� CEO Kevin Gibbon wrote in his post announcing the shutdown. He went on to say that he had mistakenly led the team toward advancing the app’s features to attract more individual consumers.

The startup looked for other avenues to bring in continuous revenue, and it ended up integrating in 2015, allowing sellers to use the app for shipments. Later in 2016, the company began partnering with small businesses. While building out those partnerships, Gibbon explained that the company took on too much.

鈥淲e decided to keep the popular-but-unprofitable parts of our business running, with small teams of their own behind them. This was a mistake鈥攎y mistake.鈥�

During the summer of 2016, Shyp scaled back its focus and ended efforts outside of San Francisco, but that wasn鈥檛 enough to keep the company afloat.

This latest casualty in the delivery service space begs the question about whether or not consumer delivery is viable. Investments in Instacart and DoorDash point to the competitive nature and heavy interest in the sector. However, heated competition has made it difficult to realize a profitable business model.

If anyone does crack the code, bully for them. In the meantime, no one has yet to fully staunch their red ink.

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