Egyptian B2B startup TradeHub has officially shut down operations and returned all remaining capital to investors, 18 months after raising a <head>.4 million pre-seed round, co-founder Ahmed Gaber announced on LinkedIn earlier this week.The startup, which was founded in late December 2023 by Ahmed Gaber and Ahmed Atef, initially launched as a cross-border B2B marketplace aimed at simplifying exports and helping local manufacturers access international markets. The company later pivoted to become a B2B sales automation SaaS tool but was unable to achieve product-market fit despite extensive validation and experimentation efforts.TradeHub secured its <head>.4 million pre-seed funding round in February 2024 from notable investors including Concept Ventures, TLcom Capital, and Armyn Capital, along with several angel investors. It’s unclear how much of that funding was spent before the shutdown. The decision to wind down came after the founders determined they no longer had sufficient conviction in pursuing another pivot.“By the time we explored multiple directions and learned from our experiments, we no longer had strong enough conviction in a third idea that justified the risk of continuing,” Gaber explained in his LinkedIn post. “Continuing just for the sake of ‘trying something else’ didn’t feel responsible to us.”Gaber, who previously co-founded the region’s leading logistics startup Bosta, reflected on the decision as a sign of maturity rather than failure. “I’ve come to learn that knowing when to let go is just as important as knowing when to push forward,” he wrote. His co-founder Ahmed Atef is a former software developer at Meta.The TradeHub platform originally allowed buyers to create tenders and seek quotes while enabling manufacturers to showcase their factories and products. The company had ambitious goals to empower 10,000 manufacturing enterprises by the end of 2024.This shutdown adds to a growing list of MENA startups that have wound down operations in recent years despite raising significant funding rounds. The decision to return remaining capital to investors, while uncommon, demonstrates what Gaber described as a “responsible” approach to startup failure.Gaber announced he plans to take several months to recharge after nine years of continuous startup work, having co-founded Bosta in 2015 before immediately diving into TradeHub.The investors, including Concept Ventures, TLcom Capital, and Armyn Capital, have reportedly continued to support the founders even after the shutdown announcement, according to Gaber’s statement.AuthorRecent Posts Post Views: 3,293