Techstars — portfolio autopsies

Canada most-funded bookkeeping startup raised $113M then gave 35,000 small business customers 5 days notice before shutting down in December 2024.

Edge AI pioneer for industrial cameras that spent 17 years searching for a scalable market.

Google/Nest acquired Revolv for $50M then shut the servers in 2016, permanently bricking 300 smart home hubs that customers had paid $300 for

Simple Energy built an electric scooter with a claimed 236-kilometre range to challenge Ola Electric — and shut down in 2023 after raising 24 million dollars and finding it could not match the manufacturing scale or distribution reach of better-funded rivals.

The edtech startup that renamed itself twice and still couldn't crack university LMS procurement

Andreessen Horowitz-backed premium remote work vacation rental startup raised $20M and shut down when it could not turn beautiful cabins into a profitable business.

The AutoML unicorn that automated its own irrelevance

Sweden's food waste marketplace had the mission but Too Good To Go had the execution.

Cloud security OG with 400 customers sold to F5 for $68M then quietly killed in 18 months.

The B2B bike-share that served every campus — until COVID emptied every campus simultaneously.

Sidewalk robot startup absorbed by Nuro before reaching commercial scale.

The meal kit company Albertsons acquired for $200M to fight Amazon in grocery — shut down the subscription service 2 years later when the grocery synergy never materialised

The corporate learning platform that got absorbed before it could prove its model.

Vienna's most loved CI/CD startup reached 50K developers then sold to escape GitHub's inevitable encroachment.

A smart home hub acquired by Nest for $50M and deliberately bricked by remote software update 18 months later — users' $300 devices were permanently disabled without consent.

Turning every window into a traffic sensor was brilliant until privacy lawyers got involved.