Quibi

Quibi raised $1.75 billion - the largest pre-launch funding for a media startup - with Hollywood royalty (Jeffrey Katzenberg, Meg Whitman) and launched in April 2020. Six months later, it shut down. $1.4 billion incinerated. This is what organizational mutational meltdown looks like: changing everything simultaneously with zero validation, then discovering the market doesn't exist.

The failure was overdetermined. Quibi innovated across every dimension at once: short-form premium content (5-10 minute episodes), mobile-only viewing, proprietary Turnstyle orientation-switching technology, premium subscription pricing. Each innovation added risk; combined, they created mutational meltdown. Worse, Quibi launched into COVID-19, which eliminated the 'in-between moments' the content was designed for - commutes, waiting rooms, lunch breaks all disappeared. The company also had no roots: content was licensed not owned, distribution was mobile-only with no fallback, customer relationships started from zero. Subscribers peaked at 500,000 versus 7.4 million target. When the wind hit, there was nothing to hold it up.

The lesson: fundraising readiness doesn't mean market readiness. Quibi let capital availability trigger launch timing - a classic premature germination mistake. Massive funding creates pressure to execute on the pitch, even when assumptions are unvalidated. The right sequence is biological: validate core assumptions with minimal investment, build root systems (content ownership, distribution infrastructure, customer base), then grow visible structure with capital. Quibi inverted this: raised maximum capital, built maximum product, skipped roots entirely. Trees don't grow from the top down. Neither do companies.