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Prosper grew up. So did the crowd.
Prosper started with people lending to people. More than $32 billion in personal loans later, its story turns on who supplies the money - and who carries the risk.
Focus Academy gives good science a local address
A lab bench can prove a technology works. Focus Academy helps international founders work out who will buy it, what evidence they need, and where to build their business.
Wabi Wants Your Group Chat to Get a Life
The company behind prompt-built mini-apps has a new bet: put an AI assistant where friends already make plans, and let the software appear when they need it.
Opal Electronics wants to make your next favorite thing
A webcam was the opening act. Opal’s wager is that a small, opinionated electronics company can make everyday devices worth caring about - provided the software keeps up.
N3TWORK Studios raised $46 million to give players the keys
The makers behind Legendary: Game of Heroes carried a proven mobile-game business into blockchain gaming. Their experiment asks whether owning the hero can make the game worth returning to.
Trumaker wants you well dressed. Shopping is optional.
A tape measure, a personal stylist and a remembered fit: Trumaker built its menswear service around the man who would rather be doing something else.
Zeus Living made moving easy. Staying solvent was harder.
A furnished home, working Wi-Fi, and permission to change your plans. Zeus Living sold a persuasive answer to the modern housing problem - then discovered the cost of keeping that promise.
NextRoll wants your ads to talk to each other
The company behind AdRoll grew by bringing retargeting to smaller businesses. Its next bet is that marketers need their channels, data and sales teams to agree on what actually works.
OQO put a PC in your pocket. The bill was $1,899.
OQO made Windows small enough to carry in a coat pocket. Its rise and closure reveal the awkward economics of making a familiar machine radically smaller.
Mem0 wants AI to remember you. The trick is knowing what to forget.
A chatbot that forgot its users sent two founders toward a different business: selling memory to the people building AI. Mem0’s wager is that useful context should survive a conversation - and a change of model.
Skip built a better scooter. The street had other plans.
A scooter startup founded by hardware veterans bet on sturdy machines and good manners at City Hall. Its short life reveals how much of a transport business happens after the ride ends.
Good&Co and the cost of asking too much, too soon
Good&Co turned personality quizzes into a bet on better hiring. Its own product history offers an equally useful lesson: people need to see the value before they surrender their money, their time, or their team.
Vetted wants to end your 27-tab shopping habit
Buying a toaster should not require a small research department. Vetted turns reviews, prices, and the internet’s arguments into shopping advice - and its own history explains why that is harder than it sounds.
ArcTouch found the money in free apps
When App Store prices collapsed, two former college roommates changed who they charged. Their company now builds the apps behind airline journeys, fashion loyalty programs, and connected machines.
Perplexity and the price of an answer
An AI search company made the footnote its calling card. Now it is asking a harder question: who should pay when the internet does your homework?
Adteractive and the Price of Free
Adteractive turned online attention into customers for advertisers. Its history exposes the awkward distance between a lead that can be counted and a customer who actually wants to be there.
Grayce and the Job Nobody Applied For
A family crisis can turn an employee into a care coordinator overnight. Grayce built a business around sharing that second job, then referred its clients to Cariloop in 2025.
The Office Supply Store That Put a Conscience in the Cart
Alex Szabo built a store where a binder could come with a small environmental argument. Its real product was a way to make greener purchasing feel like ordinary purchasing.
The Studio That Counted Every Day of a Game Character
Knocknock Games sold game development by the project, then published an unusually candid view of the work behind its own mobile shooter. The arithmetic is more revealing than the pitch.
Two Chairs and the Problem of the First Chair
It began with a belief in the therapy room. Then the room disappeared, and Two Chairs had to find out which parts of good care could travel.
The Grid Sold the Website That Would Design Itself. Then People Tried to Use It.
A startup offered to remove the fiddly work from making a website. Its customers discovered that choosing less also meant controlling less - and that an elegant promise could become a very long wait.
The Moms Who Sold the Neighborhood
Plum District turned neighborhood mothers into deal scouts for other mothers. The idea traveled fast; the cost of keeping it local caught up faster.
The company that knew who passed the link
RadiumOne made a business of the private paths a link takes between friends. The signal worked for advertisers; the economics were less forgiving.
The Search Agency That Bet Everything on One Box - Then the Box Learned to Talk
Victorious won by narrowing its world to search. Now that Google results are becoming conversations, the agency is testing whether a disciplined old bet can survive a very strange new interface.
Atrium Knew Exactly How It Might Fail
The Twitch co-founder raised $75.5 million to make startup law predictable. The warning that undid the experiment was hiding in plain sight - in his own interview.
Rezo Is Betting the Best Drug Targets Hide Between Proteins
Drug discovery usually isolates a culprit. Rezo maps the whole criminal network - then asks which handshake can be broken with a small molecule.
The Printerless Printer Who Said Yes
VIVAS began by selling banners before it owned a printer. Fourteen years later, the San Francisco shop still runs on the same scarce material: a willingness to take the call, solve the physical problem and get the thing on the wall.
Nectar Made a Business of Explaining Tomorrow Before It Arrived
A boutique PR firm found its edge in the awkward gap between a technical breakthrough and a story ordinary people can repeat. Then it learned that publicity alone was not enough.
The PR Firm That Made an Old Town New by Giving It to the Dogs
Carmel-by-the-Sea had charm, rivals and almost nothing new to announce. Graham & Associates found the story hiding under the restaurant table - then built a 21-year award trail around the same discipline: make the familiar newly interesting.
The PR Agency That Starts With the Audience, Not the Announcement
SutherlandGold has spent more than two decades making complicated companies legible. Its trick is simple to say and hard to execute: begin with the people who need to care, then build the story backward.