Greylock Partners — portfolio autopsies

Andreessen Horowitz-backed Swedish startup let you gift retailer rewards through Facebook and discovered that digital gifting is not a habit.

The BI unicorn that spent $800M to build a category already owned by Tableau and Salesforce.

Salesforce paid $750M for collaborative documents — then acquired Slack for $27.7B and absorbed Quip's features into the Slack ecosystem, discontinuing Quip as a standalone product

Drobo built a beloved RAID storage system for creatives and SMBs. Cloud storage made it obsolete. Bankrupt 2023.

Yahoo paid $1.1B for Tumblr — Automattic later bought it for $3M after the NSFW ban destroyed the community

Half a million smart home users bricked overnight by a surprise $5/month paywall.

Modern card issuing API that IPO'd at $15B — then Block contract renewal exposed 70% customer concentration

The 3D spatial data platform that SPAC'd at $2.9B in 2021 and saw 90% of shareholder value evaporate by 2023

Cross-border payments for SMBs SPAC'd at $3.3B — stock fell 70% as global growth slowed

Tech-enabled real estate brokerage. Rate rises killed transactions. 800 layoffs.

Robo-advisor unicorn. UBS agreed to buy it for $1.4B. Deal collapsed. CEO resigned.

Daily deals pioneer rejected Google's $6B offer. Stock fell 97%. CEO fired via shareholder letter. From 12,000 employees to under 500.

Errol Damelin built a £1B payday lender on 5,853% APR loans. FCA capped rates in 2015. Wonga wrote off £220M in unaffordable loans. Filed administration August 2018 after compensation claim surge.

Dutch container CI pioneer acquired by Oracle for a song, then slowly deprecated into nothingness.

The farm-to-phone meal delivery startup that discovered vertical integration is a cost trap at small scale.

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

Once the world's largest renewable energy company at $9B market cap — bankrupt after CEO Ahmad Chatila built a $12B acquisition spree on leveraged debt

Ex-Hulu CEO raised $100M to build premium YouTube. Charged $3/month for early access to YouTube videos. YouTube made the creators say no. Sold for pennies.

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

Pioneered in-store mobile rewards, only to discover walking in isn't the same as buying.

Kevin Rose raised $45M for social news and declined a $200M Google offer. Digg v4 redesign in 2010 destroyed the community overnight. Users fled to Reddit. Sold for approximately $500K in 2012.

Gowalla built the better check-in app. Foursquare built the better network. Facebook acquired Gowalla for the team.

Claimed to out-index Google on day one — returned meaningless results and died in two years.