Paul Buchheit — portfolio autopsies

Hipmunk built a better flight search and was acquired by Concur — then SAP decided a beloved flight search app was not part of its enterprise travel platform strategy

Fashion rental subscription acquired Lord and Taylor department stores and collapsed in the pandemic

GPT-4's legal breakthrough sold itself to the Westlaw empire for $650 million.

Free lab management for 150,000 scientists couldn't survive a corporate acquirer's monetization demands.

A clever savings-sharing model for corporate travel — that needed travelers to exist.

A beloved construction blueprint app sold for $875M then quietly dismantled by Autodesk.

A/B testing pioneer sold for a fraction of its valuation after free tools ate the market

Kickstarter record. Pioneered the smartwatch. Apple Watch launched. Sold to Fitbit for $40M in 2016.

Justin Kan's errand app sold for $10M then killed—proof that on-demand everything doesn't pencil out.

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

The social aggregator that invented the Like button — Facebook bought it, used the idea, killed the product.

Justin Kan's Y Combinator errand startup — outpaced by TaskRabbit before reaching critical mass.

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