Lots of startups fail for timing reasons. There seem to be alot of startups that maybe just started at the wrong time. One example is QBotix that provided robotics for the solar industry, probably not much of a market a few years ago, but in the coming few years that should explode.
Actually for QBotix it was the other way around: the robot was designed to reduce the cost of solar trackers (instead of a motor on each tracker you had one robot that moved around to adjust each tracker). The problem was that the cost of PV fell so far that it was cheaper just to deploy more, use a fixed frame, and not worry that your panels were never really pointed directly at the sun.
I had hoped to read the QBotix page to see what they said but like others I got a 503.
