Garry Tan — portfolio autopsies

The Amazon brand aggregator raised $225M from General Atlantic to buy and scale FBA brands and quietly wound down when the aggregator model revealed structural unit-economic failures.

The iBuying startup that held $10B in homes when mortgage rates doubled

iBuyer pioneer that went public at $18B via SPAC and saw its stock fall 97% as rate hikes destroyed the model.

Creator economy platform hit $4B valuation — then laid off twice, cut valuation by half, and watched Substack steal the newsletter writers

The product analytics startup valued at $900M in 2021 — acquired by Contentsquare for ~$200M in 2023 as Amplitude and PostHog ate the market from both ends

iBuying pioneer. Fed rate rises doubled mortgage rates. Opendoor lost $1B in a quarter.

Mexico's electric scooter unicorn hopeful. It ran out of money before running out of sidewalks.

$364M couldn't make exploitative lending ethical — regulators noticed.

Parking app swallowed by its own merger after Google entered the space.

Influencer-curated quarterly boxes couldn't generate enough recurring revenue to survive.

Ten-dollar restaurant food in 10 minutes required kitchen density that could never pencil out

The anonymous sharing app that hit #1 in the App Store — and shut down 15 months later because anonymity enables cruelty at scale

Frontback was a social app for sharing selfies from front and back cameras simultaneously.

16 million downloads via viral spam tricks, then a $60M exit before the music stopped.