Entrepreneurship & VC
Entrepreneurship & VC
Sateesh Andra
May 29, 2025
The Startup Ecosystem’s Short Memory: A Cautionary Tale
The startup world runs on ambition. And crashes on amnesia. Take Builder.ai, the AI-powered app development platform once backed by Microsoft and Qatar’s sovereign fund. For a while, it was billed as the next big thing in no-code software — raising over $500 million and soaring to a $1.3 billion valuation. Then came May 2025. Bankruptcy. Revenue was $55 million against a forecast of $220 million. Lenders seized $37 million. The “magic” gave way to math.

The Startup Ecosystem’s Short Memory: A Cautionary Tale


