Hey — It’s Nico.

Welcome to another Failory edition. This issue takes 5 minutes to read.

These are the 5 most important things:

• Forward, a health-tech startup working on medical pods, announced its closure — learn why below.

• X competitor Bluesky tops U.S. App Store with 20M+ users.

• A complete guide to Programmatic SEO from daydream.

• VCs are struggling to take companies public amid AI hype.

• Windsurf, a new AI-powered IDE, has been gaining a lot of attention — learn why below.

Let’s get into it.

This Week In Startups

🔗 Resources

A complete guide to Programmatic SEO from the startup I work at.

6 steps to user onboarding along with 10 B2B SaaS examples.

Why founders should embrace “Business-to-Many” over B2B or B2C.

Why half of A/B test results are false and how to fix it.

Greg Isenberg and Arvid Kahl share three AI startup ideas.

📰 News

Fintech startup Klarna files for US IPO.

Bling Capital secures $270M for its fourth seed-stage tech fund.

Food delivery startup Just Eat Takeaway sells Grubhub to Wonder Group for $650M.

VCs are struggling to take companies public amid AI hype.

X competitor Bluesky tops U.S. App Store with 20M+ users.

💸 Fundraising

Tessl secures $125M to develop AI for writing and maintaining code.

Agentio raises $12M to scale its Youtube creator ad marketplace.

Twenty raises $5M to build an open source CRM alternative to Salesforce.

London-based Workflow lands $3M to build AI tools for design, marketing, and product teams.

Fail(St)ory

Medical Pods

This week, Forward, an ambitious health-tech startup, announced its closure after seven years of trying to revolutionize healthcare. 

With bold promises of "doctor-in-a-box" CarePods and a subscription model for personalized medicine, Forward raised eyebrows—and $657 million in funding—only to shut down before realizing its grand vision.

What Was Forward: Founded in 2017, Forward envisioned a future where tech-driven CarePods would replace traditional doctors’ offices. These standalone pods were designed to diagnose and monitor patients using cutting-edge technology like body scanners, biometric sensors, and AI-driven apps.

The idea was simple: healthcare, but personalized and automated. Users could choose from apps tailored to their needs, like skin cancer scans, heart health monitoring, or even diabetes testing, all for $99 a month. The pods promised convenience, quick results, and the ability to consult a human doctor remotely when needed.

Each pod was a marvel of design and technology. Patients entered with a mobile device, interacted with a sleek touchscreen, and performed tests guided by a friendly AI voice. Blood pressure was measured with wireless cuffs, blood tests were done needle-free, and swabs covered everything from COVID-19 to strep. It seemed like the healthcare revolution patients and investors had been waiting for.

But for all its futuristic promises, Forward never moved beyond the prototype stage. Despite planning to launch 3,200 CarePods by the end of 2023, the company managed to deploy only five.

The Numbers:

• 📅 Founded in 2017.

• 💰 Raised over $657 million in VC funding.

• 📉 Only managed to launch 5 pods out of the 3200 they had planned.

Reasons For Failure:

• Over-Promising, Under-Delivering: Forward’s ambitious vision outpaced its ability to deliver. CarePods, while sleek and innovative, were riddled with technical failures. Automated blood draws often failed, lab test options were withdrawn, and, most glaringly, patients sometimes got trapped inside the pods. While the technology was visually impressive, one former employee summed it up: “The scanners don’t actually do much.”

• High Costs, Low Scalability: Each CarePod cost over $1 million to produce. This staggering expense made it nearly impossible to scale production, especially when paired with limited adoption by patients.

• Misjudging Market Demand: Despite its sleek design and innovative concept, Forward struggled to attract patients. The subscription model might have appealed to tech-savvy individuals, but fewer people than expected signed up for the service.

• Operational Challenges: From navigating building codes to solving logistical hurdles, Forward faced endless barriers to deploying its pods. These delays slowed progress, further compounding technical issues and leaving patients and investors disappointed.

• Tech-First, Healthcare-Second: Forward’s approach highlighted a broader challenge in the healthcare space: balancing innovation with practicality. The company’s relentless focus on AI-driven solutions often came at the expense of reliability. As one employee put it, “it was AI-fueled style over substance.”

Why It Matters:

• Prioritizing flashy tech over reliability is risky, especially in healthcare.

• Scaling without solving core issues leads to costly mistakes.

• AI hype alone can’t overcome practical challenges.

• Expensive unit economics make scaling unsustainable.

• Healthcare demands more than innovation—it requires trust and execution.

Trend

Windsurf

This week, I decided to check out Windsurf, a tool that’s been gaining traction on Twitter over the last few days. A lot of developers were calling it “a way better Cursor,” so I had to see what the fuss was about. After spending some time with it, I can confidently say it lives up to the hype.

Why It Matters:

• It is a great tool to build quick prototypes.

• Keeps you focused, with tools that adapt to your workflow.

• Affordable enough for small teams or solo developers.

• Could shake up how we think about coding assistants and automation.

What Is Windsurf: Windsurf is an AI-powered IDE built on VS Code. It’s created by Codeium, and they’ve labeled it the “first agentic IDE.” What that means is Windsurf doesn’t just assist—it works alongside you, running commands, debugging issues, and keeping you in the zone.

Its standout feature is Cascade Flow, which combines deep understanding of your codebase with a dynamic AI toolkit. Essentially, Cascade doesn’t just throw random suggestions at you; it understands what you’re working on, anticipates your needs, and offers actionable steps. This makes tasks like searching, refactoring, and debugging faster and less frustrating.

But, is it better than Cursor?

I’ve been using Cursor for a couple of months and was pretty happy with it. But last week, I decided to give Windsurf a try. After just a few days, I’m confident I won’t be switching back to Cursor anytime soon.

Here’s what makes Windsurf stand out for me:

• Intuitive for Non-Coders: My own experience with Windsurf really drove this home. Even without a strong technical background, I found it easy to use and incredibly helpful. It can run console commands, install packages, and debug issues—all tasks that would usually trip me up. The whole experience feels smooth, approachable, and genuinely empowering.

• Cascade Feature: For larger projects, Cascade is a productivity game-changer. It doesn’t just understand your codebase—it pulls relevant snippets from across files, even if you don’t tell it where to look. This makes navigating big repositories feel effortless and helps you stay focused on solving problems instead of hunting for code.

• Unlimited Model Access: Unlike Cursor, which limits how many requests you can make to the AI model, Windsurf provides unlimited messages—even in the free tier. For heavy users, this makes a huge difference.

• Pricing: Windsurf’s free tier covers most of what you’ll need, and the $10/month paid plan is still much more affordable than Cursor’s $20/month subscription. For individual developers and small teams, this balance of affordability and robust features is hard to beat.

So, what do you think?

Help Me Improve Failory

That's all of this edition.

Cheers,

Nico