Index Ventures — portfolio autopsies

Published its own financial autopsy showing $43K revenue, $350K/month burn, and 3 months runway — couldn't raise a $15M Series A and shut with the best product reviews of any photo app

The Portuguese luxury fashion marketplace that IPO-ed at $6 billion and filed for bankruptcy in 2023 after never finding a path to profitability despite raising over $1 billion

The photo organization startup that built a better product than Google Photos — and ran out of money before anyone noticed

London luxury home rental pioneer acquired by AccorHotels for $168M, slowly wound down as strategy shifted.

Beloved French train booking startup famous for its UX, acquired by Trainline and rebranded out of existence.

Spanish group buying platform that rode the Groupon wave to $32M raised, then slowly died as the entire daily deals category collapsed.

London luxury fashion marketplace that reached a $20B valuation and raised $1.7B before Coupang rescued it for $500M — a 97.5% value destruction.

Europe's largest P2P car rental platform absorbed and effectively killed by Getaround.

The 3D printing marketplace that raised $100M promising to put personal manufacturing online — hollowed out when industrial customers went direct

The luxury fashion marketplace that peaked at $23B and was rescued from bankruptcy by Coupang for $500M — a 98% destruction of peak value

The $17B customer service platform that tried to buy SurveyMonkey for $4.1B, got blocked by shareholders, and ended up going private at a $6.8B discount to its peak

UK P2P SMB lender IPO'd at £1.5B — stock fell 90%+ as default rates rose and the model broke

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

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

$40B fintech. Restricted GameStop trading. Congressional hearings. Stock never recovered.

London's most hyped IPO in years became its worst first-day performance in decades

Germany's P2P lending pioneer. Open Banking arrived too late. Stagnated.

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

Urban curbside pickup startup made obsolete when Walmart built the same tech in-house.

Israeli enterprise mobility platform. IBM acquired it for the technology. Product retired.

The Carnegie Mellon robotics startup that built Cozmo and Vector — beloved consumer robots that sold millions of units but could never generate the margins to survive.

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.

A $350M exit that quietly swallowed the product whole.

Europe's Netflix before Netflix arrived — then Netflix arrived.

The #GIRLBOSS fashion empire that turned an eBay side hustle into a $350M brand — and lost it all to lawsuits and a founder war

21-year-old Stanford student raised $25M from Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Silicon Valley royalty before launching. The app never achieved meaningful adoption. $25M consumed. Company dissolved 2016.

Spain's flash-sale pioneer. Acquired and absorbed by Veepee.

The anonymous sharing app that hit #1 in the App Store — and shut down 15 months later because anonymity enables cruelty at scale

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

Last.fm invented algorithmic music discovery in 2002. CBS Interactive bought it for $280M and slowly killed it.

The best photo product ever built — shut down because 55,000 users wouldn't pay enough to sustain it

The best photo app that ever existed shut down because it could not raise $500K. 55,000 users lost their photos. Co-founders published every financial document.

The internet TV startup founded by the creators of Skype — $45M from CBS, Viacom, and Warner, then shut down a year after launch when YouTube went HD