Lerer Ventures — portfolio autopsies

Hollywood's prestige beauty curator couldn't build a sustainable D2C moat against Sephora and Goop

Canada most-funded bookkeeping startup raised $113M then gave 35,000 small business customers 5 days notice before shutting down in December 2024.

The vacation rental marketplace that Airbnb outspent and outlisted before Roomorama could scale

Fashion rental subscription acquired Lord and Taylor department stores and collapsed in the pandemic

Microsoft acquired Sunrise for $100M for its beautiful calendar design — then shut Sunrise 12 months later and launched Outlook Mobile with the same features

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.

Enterprise content marketing platform that raised $74M and was acquired by Seismic below last round valuation.

AI scheduling assistant Amy/Andrew that raised $44M and was quietly acquired and shuttered.

A $53M-funded event marketing platform absorbed into a competitor after COVID broke the market.

SPAC'd at $1.6B, traded down 94% as pandemic pet adoption proved a one-time spike.

Digital media's biggest SPAC at $1.5B. BuzzFeed News shut 18 months later. Stock down 95%.

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

Free lab management for 150,000 scientists couldn't survive a corporate acquirer's monetization demands.

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

The mid-market HR platform raised $158M at a $300M valuation before selling to a PEO in a widely considered distressed exit.

Luxury retail's favorite clienteling app got absorbed by Stripe and quietly disappeared.

DTC mattress unicorn IPO'd at $575M in 2020 after raising $339M—then was taken private in 2022 at $6.90/share, down 79% from its IPO price, after years of losses proved the model unworkable.

The AI scheduling assistant that came before LLMs — and watched AI scheduling become a free feature of every email client.

Pioneered the beauty subscription box at $485M. Sephora copied it. Sold for $1 to Walgreens in 2021.

Twitter's first creator bet, quietly killed six years after the $30M acquisition.

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

The radical transparency fashion brand that was opaque about its own culture — exposed during the racial justice moment of 2020

Sidewalk robot startup absorbed by Nuro before reaching commercial scale.

The meal kit company Albertsons acquired for $200M to fight Amazon in grocery — shut down the subscription service 2 years later when the grocery synergy never materialised

API monitoring pioneer undersold by Postman's freemium wave and acquired below investor expectations.

The "Tinder for jobs" app was acquired by Monster Worldwide in 2016 and shut down 11 months later when Monster itself was acquired by Randstad.

A construction communication app swallowed by WeWork before it could outrun Procore.

The most beautiful visual storytelling app that no one could figure out how to monetise

The photo backup startup that lost its users' irreplaceable memories on the way down

Google bought the best music curation on the internet, then quietly deleted it.

The atomic news app that broke stories into digestible facts — shut down when social media made that a feature, not a business

Branch was invite-only public conversations between thought leaders. Facebook acquired it. Shut it down within months.

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