A photographer-focused camera gear startup born out Y Combinator that raised close to $6 million over its lifespan, Lumoid, has officially shuttered per a Facebook post from CEO and founder Aarthi Ramamurthy. This is the culmination of a months-long process according to the Facebook post, with much of Lumoid’s IP and assets having been liquidated in the past several weeks.
While the company website is still online as of publication, gear rental services cannot be completed as its inventory is shown as being out of stock when a user attempts to rent equipment.
An article on technology industry website TechCrunch describes a failed deal with Best Buy that contributed to the company’s end.
The deal was initially revealed this past summer and promised Best Buy customers the ability to rent camera gear in store. When the company could not obtain the necessary funding to scale their services to accommodate Best Buy’s demand, Ramamurthy decided to end operations.
In her interview with TechCrunch, Lumoid CEO Aarthi Ramamurthy said: “While this is not the outcome we wanted obviously, I’m glad we were able to build Lumoid and scale it to thousands of customers, ship hundreds of thousands of Lumoid gear, and learn so much from the process of building the company.”
As for the future of the entrepreneur founder of Lumoid, Ramamurthy is moving on to work for the Facebook Payments team, joining the social media giant after a string of entrepreneurial ventures. She describes her first week at the social media giant as being a whirlwind and her feelings about the closure of Lumoid as being bittersweet.
Ramamurthy met several members of the Facebook payments team during a Women in Product conference and began talks with them shortly after that.
In terms of other gear rental services, consumers have LensRentals/LensProToGo and Borrow Lenses.
