Wish: What Went Wrong (Company Still Operating)
Cheap products from China with 3-week shipping create a race to the bottom that destroys brand trust.
Wish (ContextLogic) is a E-commerce company founded in 2010 in USA. It raised $1.7B and in 2024 it saw its valuation fall sharply; no company liquidation is documented. This page records the distress event, its causes and the lessons, kept separate from true failures in our statistics.
What happened to Wish (ContextLogic)?
Wish (ContextLogic) did not shut down as a company. In 2024 it saw its valuation fall sharply (funding raised: $1.7B — money raised, not money lost). Peak valuation: $14B (IPO). Key lesson: Cheap products from China with 3-week shipping create a race to the bottom that destroys brand trust.
2010 → 2024
$1.7B
E-commerce
USA
IdeaProof AI Failure Score
What Happened: The Timeline
2010
ContextLogic (Wish) founded by Peter Szulczewski
Dec 2020
IPO at $14B valuation
2021
Google/Apple remove Wish from ad platforms over counterfeit goods
2023
Revenue collapses to <$500M from $2.5B peak
2024
Acquired by Qoo10 for $173M — 99% below IPO value
Root Causes
Wish became one of the most downloaded shopping apps globally by offering extremely cheap products shipped directly from Chinese manufacturers. The company went public in December 2020 at a $14B valuation. But the marketplace was plagued by poor product quality, misleading listings, and 2-4 week shipping times. Apple and Google removed Wish from their ad platforms due to counterfeit goods. Revenue collapsed from $2.5B in 2020 to under $500M by 2023. The company was acquired by Qoo10 for $173M in 2024 — a 99% drop from its IPO valuation.
Causal Chain
Interpretive pattern, not company-specific evidence: this chain is derived from the recorded failure reason and may apply to many companies with the same reason.Timeline dates, funding numbers and filings are facts (see methodology); root / proximate / terminal attribution is judgement based on public evidence.
Quality Reputation
- Slow Shipping
- Platform Bans
- Temu/Shein Competition
2021: Google/Apple remove Wish from ad platforms over counterfeit goods
2024: Acquired by Qoo10 for $173M — 99% below IPO value
Base rates
A single failure is an anecdote. These base rates give you the denominator — how common this outcome is across all startups matching Wish (ContextLogic)'s profile. Sources are third-party; we do not restate them as our own claims.
of new US employer businesses survive past their 10th year (Bureau of Labor Statistics BED series).
US Bureau of Labor Statistics — BED (2024)Sources & Confidence
Every data point is tagged with its source type and our confidence in it. How we grade sources.
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Related Failures
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