HandsDown

Post-pitch story

Jenna Sereni had already co-founded the influencer-marketing company WHOSAY when she started HandsDown, a social shopping app built around recommendations from people you trust — initially aimed at moms. A Techstars Boulder graduate with $1.2 million raised, she pitched it on the show's accelerator episode in April 2023. What makes HandsDown's ending unusual is how openly Sereni told it. In a January 2024 LinkedIn post titled "Climbing to a Peak I Didn't Reach," she wrote about making "the call to stop climbing" and shuttering HandsDown in the fall of 2023 — a candid, first-person account of startup failure in an industry that rarely admits it. The app's domain is now parked, and Sereni has moved on to brand consulting and nonprofit board work. Not every post-pitch story is a triumph, but few founders have written their own ending as honestly as she did.