Felicis Ventures — portfolio autopsies

London's taxi-hailing app raised $100M but was crushed by Uber's war chest and merged into MyTaxi.

The iBuying startup that held $10B in homes when mortgage rates doubled

iBuyer pioneer that went public at $18B via SPAC and saw its stock fall 97% as rate hikes destroyed the model.

Discount marketplace IPO'd at $14B then sold for $173M three years later

Amazon for the price-sensitive: $1 items shipped free, no questions asked

Unilever paid $1B for subscription razors — then sold the business 7 years later for approximately 15 cents on the dollar

Hotel delivery robot pioneer outlasted the hype but not the competition.

Walmart bought the DTC menswear pioneer for $310M in 2017 — and sold it for $75M in 2023

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

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

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

Pay-per-mile car insurance for people who barely drive. The drivers who signed up barely drove — and barely paid.

iBuying pioneer. Fed rate rises doubled mortgage rates. Opendoor lost $1B in a quarter.

Went public at $2.1B on voice AI promise, lost 90% of value within a year.

Non-invasive glucose monitor startup that couldn't solve the hard physics problem it was built on.

The largest fleet of Earth imaging satellites — SPAC'd at $2.8B, now a penny stock struggling for survival

The $176M AGI startup backed by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — acquired by Amazon for the engineers, not the AI.

Even $70M and elite backers couldn't let location data compete with Google's monopoly.

The EHR startup valued at $1.5B, sold for $100M, then fined $145M for helping Purdue Pharma promote opioids

A $118M drone empire that collapsed overnight with zero severance.

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

The startup intelligence platform that knew everything about other companies failing — except how to stop its own slow bleed

YC co-founder of today's YC President built "post by email" blogging. Twitter acquired it to improve posting UX. Shut it 13 months later.