They were offered 25k funding by The Capital Factory, received mentorship from super-angel Naval Ravikant, and had coverage all over the media like WSJ.
The reason the team didn't proceed is because of personel issues among the team which had they planned better would have no been an issue.
So how's this not a startup? All that would have needed to happen to make it a legal "business" are some documents signed by everyone (which were already prepared)
I hate this confusion between a startup BUSINESS and a learning/teambuilding exercise - this is not a startup, it's a coding project.