Sampa, the 4-year-old Redmond startup led by former Microsofties Paul Gross and Marcelo Calbucci, today announced that it will shut down the service next month.

"Like many startups, we tried to change the world but didn't succeed," writes Calbucci in a blog post. "We tried to make it easy for people to share personal stories and pictures with friends and family, and although the product worked and we amassed tens of thousands of happy customers we weren't able to pay the bills to keep the service running."

Last year, Sampa raised $1 million from Seattle angel investor Geoff Entress and others. At that time, the company said it was generating less than $1,000 in advertising revenue each month.

Here's the message that the company posted on its Web site today:

Sampa is closing its service on August 17, 2009. Like many startups, we tried to change the world but didn't succeed. We tried to make it easy for people to share personal stories and pictures with friends and family, and although the product worked and we amassed tens of thousands of happy customers we weren't able to pay the bills to keep the service running.

We feel bad for all the people we disappointed, from our avid customers to our investors, including our families that have actively used the service themselves and supported us during this journey.

If you have a Sampa site, you can export it by signing in and click on the Export Site button. It will include all the important content from your site (blog posts, pictures, family tree, etc.) If you paid for a Premium or Ultimate account and you are eligible for a refund, you'll receive an email shortly.

If you want to create a baby website, we recommend you check out TotSites. If you want a family site, we recommend Cozi. Otherwise we recommend Wordpress to create a blog.

Sincerily,
The Sampa Team

Calbucci, who runs the tech news aggregation site Seattle 2.0, said in an email that there's really not a big story.

"Just the simple version of we ran out of money and the business models we tried didn’t work out," he said.

In a blog post titled "My First Failed Startup," Calbucci explains why he started the company and the impact of the failure.

"Sampa has been a rollercoaster on my life. Sometimes lifting me to new heights, sometimes dragging me on some dark tunnel for months," he said.

He continues:

"And just to be clear, Sampa *is* a failure. It failed. Period. There is no other way to describe it. It can also state clearly that I failed to make Sampa a business. What I can’t say is that I failed in life," he said. "The way I see it Sampa was one of the many battles I had and will have."

UPDATE: I just heard back from Calbucci, who tells me that he's not sure what he will do next, but he won't be working full time on Seattle 2.0.

Sampa, he said, raised a total of $1.4 million and employed two people. He said the company just couldn't find the right customers, with an inability to attract moms to set up baby sites.

"Baby Web sites are not particularly viral," he said. "It's different from a social network where the more the merrier. On a baby Web site (it) is just the tens of friends and family you want there."