Untitled Partners
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Untitled Partners was a New York startup founded in 2008 by Jordan Cooper and Andy Lawrence that offered fractional ownership of fine art. The company planned to aggregate demand around artworks in the roughly $70 billion art market and let customers cooperatively purchase and own the art they loved, buying through existing art-market channels.
02 / Untitled Partners FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Untitled Partners was destroyed by catastrophic timing. It raised its seed round just as the 2008 financial crisis hit and launched in November 2008 as the art market crashed, with discretionary luxury spending collapsing even among buyers who could still afford the product. The founders had expected the art market's low correlation with equities to protect them, but underestimated the correction's magnitude. With revenue a prerequisite for any follow-on round in the deflated fundraising environment, the company could not generate sales and chose to shut down fast rather than burn the remaining capital. The founders also acknowledged execution mistakes, including a bad early marketing hire and slow adaptation to the changed landscape.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Untitled Partners was founded by Jordan Cooper, an associate at General Catalyst, and Andy Lawrence to enable fractional ownership of fine art.
- Seed round
The company closed a $560,000 seed round from a small group of angel investors; the day the round closed, the Dow stood at 12,063.
- Launch
The company launched as the art market was crashing; on launch day the Dow had fallen to about 7,550 and the Wall Street Journal ran a feature on surviving the art market crash.
- Shutdown
After failing to generate sales in a frozen luxury market, the company shut down on March 9, 2009, having spent about half of its $560,000 raise in nine months, and returned almost 50% of the capital to its investors.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Untitled Partners raised about $560,000 in a seed round from angel investors.
- 02
The company spent roughly half of the raised capital in nine months of operation.
- 03
The company shut down on March 9, 2009 and returned almost 50% of the capital to its investors.