Y Combinator — portfolio autopsies

Amsterdam performance management startup acquired by Kahoot! and absorbed into its learning platform.

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

Hipmunk built a better flight search and was acquired by Concur — then SAP decided a beloved flight search app was not part of its enterprise travel platform strategy

The Colombian super-app that SoftBank valued at 3.5 billion dollars and that has been burning cash for a decade

Polish beacon IoT pioneer faded as location-aware retail never materialized at scale

Collaborative online divorce for couples who wanted to split without litigation

The biological platform company that would program cells like software. The cells didn't scale like software.

From $7B direct listing darling to 90% market cap wipeout

Quantum computing's SPAC poster child: overpromised qubits, underdelivered revenue.

GPT-4's legal breakthrough sold itself to the Westlaw empire for $650 million.

Built for teams too small for the big players — then the big players came for them anyway.

The smart battery that made old smoke detectors intelligent—beaten to death by a $12 Wyze sensor.

YC pedigree, $25M raised, and a founder misconduct scandal that no CFO service could clean up.

The Airbnb for science experiments ran out of runway before labs ran out of needs.

The product analytics startup valued at $900M in 2021 — acquired by Contentsquare for ~$200M in 2023 as Amplitude and PostHog ate the market from both ends

Latin America's super-app. Raised $2B. Laid off 6% and restructured.

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

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

Mexico's electric scooter unicorn hopeful. It ran out of money before running out of sidewalks.

The $64M interactive textbook startup that reimagined the book and found publishers too slow to follow

A clever savings-sharing model for corporate travel — that needed travelers to exist.

Slack bought Screenhero for video calling, stripped it, and then partnered with Zoom anyway.

The YC e-commerce product data API — absorbed by Diffbot before reaching critical mass.

When Google Sheets adds your startup's features for free, your runway disappears.

Personalized gut health — until the FBI arrived

$364M couldn't make exploitative lending ethical — regulators noticed.

A beloved construction blueprint app sold for $875M then quietly dismantled by Autodesk.

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

Blockchain identity for everyone — until no one wanted it.

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

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

Ten-dollar restaurant food in 10 minutes required kitchen density that could never pencil out

YC-backed peer car sales ran on manual labor that could never be automated cheaply enough to survive.

The fastest-growing HR software startup in history — until it was exposed for letting employees sell insurance without licenses, triggering a $4.5B valuation collapse.

Kickstarter record. Pioneered the smartwatch. Apple Watch launched. Sold to Fitbit for $40M in 2016.

Justin Kan's errand app sold for $10M then killed—proof that on-demand everything doesn't pencil out.

The $38M home cleaning marketplace killed by worker misclassification lawsuits before it could scale

Home cleaning marketplace killed by worker misclassification lawsuits

The crowdfunded privacy-first social network — a beautiful idea that the mainstream never adopted.

Justin Kan's Y Combinator errand startup — outpaced by TaskRabbit before reaching critical mass.

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

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.

The location-sharing app that arrived before smartphones were ready for it.