A Long, Strange Trip for the ‘Uber for Nurses’Read more

June 18, 2022 7:00 AM PDT

Megan Auringer started as a project manager at construction startup Katerra in January 2018, the same month it announced an $865 million fundraising round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, the world’s largest private tech investor. Over the next few years, the company kept collecting checks from venture capitalists, while Auringer collected free items branded with Katerra’s logo. The beautiful branding of the Katerra rain jackets, water bottles, backpacks, T-shirts, and vests “made it feel and look like a really well put together company,” she said.

After the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last June and announced it would shut down operations, Katerra kept Auringer and about two dozen of her co-workers employed in its Phoenix office while laying off hundreds of others. The laid-off employees left behind discarded Katerra-branded items everywhere. ”People didn’t want to be reminded,” she said.

Startup employees across the tech world are bracing for similar fates. Sequoia Capital is coaching startups about “survival” amid a “crucible moment” as rising interest rates batter growth stocks and startup valuations. Once high-flying startups such as delivery app Gorillas and financial tech firms Bolt and Klarna have slashed hundreds of jobs. One-click–checkout startup Fast, which doled out piles of hats and tees to employees and potential customers to raise awareness for its service, went out of business this spring after raising more than $100 million.

Past tech slumps and scandal-driven fallouts have had obvious, serious implications for employees: forced relocations, lost medical insurance and shattered dreams of riches. But the rapid wind-downs, messy bankruptcies and failed acquisitions have also presented a more innocuous question to startup workers: What do you do with that closet full of swag leftover from your dream startup?

Access on the go
View stories on our mobile app and tune into our weekly podcast.
Join live video Q&A’s
Deep-dive into topics like startups and autonomous vehicles with our top reporters and other executives.
Enjoy a clutter-free experience
Read without any banner ads.
Instacart CEO Fidji Simo. Photo by Getty.
Exclusive startups Finance
Growth Wanes at Instacart, Gopuff
Grocery upstarts Instacart and Gopuff haven’t been able to deliver two things at once this year: growth and profits.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo by Bloomberg
semiconductors ai
Why Nvidia Aids Cloud Rivals of AWS, Google and Microsoft
Nvidia’s business of selling chips for artificial intelligence is going gangbusters, but the company faces a looming problem.
CareRev co-founder Will Patterson stepped down as CEO last week. Art by Clark Miller
Exclusive startups venture capital
A Long, Strange Trip for the ‘Uber for Nurses’
Will Patterson was on a hot streak. As the co-founder and CEO of CareRev—a gig-work platform sometimes described as an “Uber for nurses”—he saw his company’s business surge during the pandemic as hospitals and clinics scrambled to find healthcare workers.
Tim Cook. Photo by Bloomberg
Exclusive apple ar/vr
Apple’s Learning Curve: How Headset’s Design Caused Production Challenges
If Apple unveils its long-awaited mixed-reality headset next week as expected, it will represent the company’s riskiest gamble on a new product since the iPhone.
Adam D'Angelo photograph by Ko Sasaki. Art by Clark Miller
The 1:1 ai
Adam D’Angelo’s Endless Quest to Answer Everything
Adam D’Angelo is basking in an “ endless summer ” of artificial intelligence. A few weeks before he and 350 industry peers released a bizarre, one-line statement warning that AI could herald a nuclear-level extinction event, the 38-year-old co-founder of Quora told me he actually sees more upside in AI than downside.
PRO
Introducing The Information’s Generative AI Database
OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched six months ago, igniting a boom in generative artificial intelligence.