Postmortems
Tech & Startup Failure Postmortems
Strategic analyses of major tech and startup failures — what actually went wrong, what the warning signs were in hindsight, and what lessons survive for future operators. Analytical breakdown without schadenfreude.
Tech & Innovation
Postmortem · 8 min
Blockbuster
Postmortem of Blockbuster — the $5B video rental chain that declined to acquire Netflix for $50M in 2000 and filed for bankruptcy in 2010.
Postmortem · 7 min
Juicero
Postmortem of Juicero — the $400 Wi-Fi-connected juicer that raised $120M before Bloomberg revealed the packs could be squeezed by hand. The canonical Silicon Valley waste case study.
Postmortem · 9 min
Nokia
Postmortem of Nokia's mobile collapse — from 40% global market share to sale to Microsoft for $7B. Root causes, timeline, and strategic lessons.
Postmortem · 8 min
Theranos
Postmortem of Theranos — Elizabeth Holmes's blood testing startup that peaked at $9B valuation before being exposed as fraud. Timeline, root causes, lessons.
Markets & Finance
Postmortem · 9 min
Enron
Postmortem of Enron — the Houston energy trader whose 2001 bankruptcy was the largest in US history at the time and produced lasting reforms (Sarbanes-Oxley).
Postmortem · 9 min
Lehman Brothers
Postmortem of Lehman Brothers — the 158-year-old investment bank whose September 2008 bankruptcy triggered the global financial crisis. Root causes, timeline, lessons.
Blockchain & Web3
Postmortem · 9 min
FTX
Postmortem of the FTX collapse — Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange that went from $32B valuation to bankruptcy in November 2022. Root causes, warning signs, and lessons.
Postmortem · 8 min
Mt. Gox
Postmortem of Mt. Gox — the Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange that handled 70% of global BTC volume before collapsing in 2014 with 850,000 BTC missing.
Postmortem · 8 min
Terra/Luna
Postmortem of the Terra/Luna collapse — Do Kwon's algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem that lost $60B in market value in 4 days in May 2022. Root causes, warning signs, lessons.
Growth Hacking
Fintech & Digital Payments
Venture Capital & Startups
Companies That Succeeded Instead
All Case StudiesCase Study
Anthropic
How Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives, built Claude into a credible competitor to GPT through safety-positioned research, dual-cloud strategy, and enterprise-first GTM.
Case Study
Hugging Face
How Hugging Face pivoted from a chatbot startup to become the dominant open-source ML platform — Transformers library, model hub, and the default infrastructure for the open AI ecosystem.
Case Study
OpenAI
How OpenAI transformed from a non-profit research lab into the highest-valued AI startup in history through ChatGPT, the Microsoft partnership, and an aggressive consumer-AI go-to-market.
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