First Round — portfolio autopsies

Pioneering US digital bank acquired by BBVA for 117 million dollars in 2014 and quietly killed seven years later when the acquirer decided it no longer fit the strategy.

Enterprise content marketing platform that raised $74M and was acquired by Seismic below last round valuation.

Social product discovery for 11M users — Instagram Shopping and Pinterest Shopping provided native product tagging that eliminated the need for a separate social shopping app

35 million recipe lovers lost all their saved meals when Whirlpool pulled the plug.

DTC eyewear pioneer that went public at $6B — then discovered retail stores cost as much as the old retail model

The millennial Costco raised $500M and filed bankruptcy the same year it went public

Non-invasive glucose monitor startup that couldn't solve the hard physics problem it was built on.

Argentina's BCRA regulations and a parent company pivot ended Simple before it could prove its model.

Pay-per-mile car insurance for people who barely drive. The drivers who signed up barely drove — and barely paid.

The largest fleet of Earth imaging satellites — SPAC'd at $2.8B, now a penny stock struggling for survival

Laid off everyone in 2019, rebuilt alone, then couldn't raise the $20M it needed to win.

The original neo-bank — killed not by the market but by the acquirer.

Pioneered the beauty subscription box at $485M. Sephora copied it. Sold for $1 to Walgreens in 2021.

A social shopping feed of 30M products that could not convert browsing into buying

The adaptive learning giant that raised $105M promising AI-powered personalisation and sold for $25M

A $118M drone empire that collapsed overnight with zero severance.

The original content discovery app — killed by eBay's acquisition and then its own founders' buyback

The original gig economy marketplace — saved by IKEA after a near-fatal pivot nearly destroyed it.

The flash sale home décor unicorn that Bed Bath & Beyond bought for less than its last funding round

The $38M home cleaning marketplace killed by worker misclassification lawsuits before it could scale

Home cleaning marketplace killed by worker misclassification lawsuits

Design flash-sale site pivoted four times and ran out of identity

Dave Morin's "thoughtful" private social network raised $60M to fix Facebook. Sold to Kakao for a nominal sum. Shut down in 2018.

The design flash-sale unicorn that raised $336M, grew to 2,000 employees in 18 months — and sold the whole thing for $15M

Supreme Court killed the antenna startup the broadcast networks feared

The virtual DJ room that built the internet's most social music experience — and was shut down by music licensing costs

The $60M education tablet that tried to replace the college backpack and found the iPad had already won

Built the social layer for barcodes, then discovered nobody was going to scan anything.

The music social network with 23M users that let you stream any song for free — destroyed by record label licensing terms that charged $0.25 per stream before Spotify existed