Thrive Capital — portfolio autopsies

Brazil's design-forward furniture marketplace raised $25M but could not overcome the brutal logistics of delivering large items across a continent.

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.

Mortgage and banking technology SaaS company that went public at a 4.3 billion dollar valuation and watched revenues collapse 80 percent when US mortgage origination plummeted.

Pre-prepped dinner kits couldn't out-innovate the industry's systemic churn problem.

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

Anonymous confessional social network raised $61M from Sequoia. Peaked at 25M monthly users in 2014. Reddit and TikTok absorbed the use case. Shut September 2022.

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

The open-source darling of DTC retail quietly abandoned by its corporate acquirer.

Australia's DTC mattress and furniture brand. Post-COVID furniture demand collapsed.

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

The FTC blocked Harry's $1.37B acquisition by Edgewell — forcing the brand to compete alone at a scale it wasn't built for

Swedish indie-creator marketplace acquired by Shopify and shuttered a year later.

A construction data platform for big landlords that never scaled beyond early adopters.

Sidewalk robot startup absorbed by Nuro before reaching commercial scale.

Shopping inside Instagram. Instagram built it themselves.

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

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

The YC-backed tutor marketplace that could not survive its own unit economics