Atlas Venture — portfolio autopsies

Data-driven express bus startup raised $11M from Ford and shut down after partnership talks failed

UK's fan-to-fan ticket marketplace raised $35M, was acquired by Ticketmaster, then shut down when Ticketmaster decided it competed with itself.

The mobile esports SPAC unicorn — discovered that real-money gaming has regulatory and CAC problems that don't scale.

Uber paid $1.1B for on-demand alcohol delivery in 2021. Shut it down in 2024 because Uber Eats already did the same thing.

The payment platform that let businesses pay any invoice with a credit card — then filed for Chapter 11 as interest rate rises made the arbitrage impossible

The AutoML unicorn that automated its own irrelevance

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

Engineered bacteria as living medicines — a beautiful scientific idea that the clinic could not validate

The anti-obesity biotech that discovered a novel MetAP2 enzyme pathway, advanced to Phase 3, and dissolved after two fatal clinical safety events.

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

France's YouTube. YouTube arrived. Vivendi owns the ruins.