You can be on Entrepreneur’s cover!

Lady Gaga's Startup Just Went Out of Business Backplane was Gaga's vision for an online social network, a place where her fans could come and connect.

By Hilary Brueck

entrepreneur daily

This story originally appeared on Fortune Magazine

Courtesy of Intel

It's a good thing Lady Gaga didn't quit her day job.

The celeb's startup for building online communities, Backplane, has burned through $18.9 million in funding in five years and is now out of business, TechCrunch reports.

Backplane was Gaga's vision for an online social network, a place where her so-called "little monsters" (that is, Gaga fans) could come and connect.

The startup fetched an original $40 million valuation back in 2011, Vanity Fair reports.

But the Fame Monster's bubble has since burst.

Backplane launched a single product, LittleMonsters.com, which was born out of Lady Gaga's fan website. The monsters site was billed as a high-end social media and photo sharing network:

The LittleMonsters.com page as it appeared in March 2015
Image credit: via Wayback Machine

Lady Gaga poured $1 million of her own cash into the launch, with Google Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Google's Eric Schmidt also funding the endeavor.

But since the LittleMonsters.com launch, the company's seen little success. Now backplane has defaulted on its loans, forcing the company to go belly up, TechCrunch says. A group of investors has bought the company's assets, everything from the patents to the office space, and is planning to restart the business, TechCrunch adds.

Gaga's fumble comes just as many venture capitalists are tightening their own purse strings, slowing the era of billion-dollar tech startup valuations.

But Lady Gaga's days in Silicon Valley aren't over yet. The star recently partnered with Intel and Vox Media via her Born This Way Foundation for the new "Hack Harassment" project that will work to quell cyberbullying and sexual harassment on the Internet.

Hilary Brueck has been a contributing writer to Fortune since 2015.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Business News

Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison for Multibillion-Dollar Crypto Fraud

Southern District of New York Judge Lewis Kaplan said that the loss amount to the victims of Bankman-Fried's crimes surpassed $550 million.

Side Hustle

This Mom Started a Side Hustle After a 'Shocking' Realization in the Toy Aisle. Her Product Was in Macy's Within the Year — Seeing Nearly $350,000 in Sales.

Elenor Mak, now founder of Jilly Bing, didn't plan to start a business — but the search for a doll that looked like her daughter inspired her to do just that.

Growing a Business

To Achieve Sustainable Success, You Need to Stop Focusing on Disruption. Here's Why — and What You Must Focus on Instead.

Instead of zeroing in solely on disruptive innovation, embrace a pragmatic approach to innovation, recognizing and leveraging the potential within ongoing industry shifts.

Marketing

5 Ways to Get on the Media's Good Side (and Stay There)

When you're trying to make a name and a mark for yourself and your business, it's really important to get on the media's good side — and stay there.

Business News

Mark Zuckerberg Told Meta Engineers to 'Figure Out' Snapchat's Privacy Protections: 'We Have No Analytics on Them'

Recently unsealed court documents detail "Project Ghostbusters," Meta's project to work around Snapchat's end-to-end encryption to intercept data.