Fair

Car subscription / leasingUSA

New to Unitard

💀 Dead / Bankrupt

Peak $1.2 BillionToday

~-99%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
2018
📈
Peak valuation
$1.2 Billion ’18
💔
Became a Unitard
2019
💸
Last valuation
Wiped out

Capital raised

$566M

Total raised

$510K/day

Raised per day

Total raised averaged per day over approximately 3.0 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology

Funding: Tracxn/Crunchbase

Current status

Wound down its core car-subscription business in 2020 and sold remaining assets to Shift for ~$19M in 2022

The rise & fall

7 moments · 2016–2022

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2016

Founded

Scott Painter's app for flexible used-car leases — no fixed term, walk away anytime.

TechCrunch

2018

Takes over Uber's driver leasing

A popular program renting cars to Uber drivers by the week becomes Fair's growth engine.

TechCrunch

2018

The peak: $1.2B on SoftBank money$1.2B

A SoftBank-backed megaround caps ~$500M of equity — plus billions available in debt — to fund the fleet.

Bloomberg

Oct 2019

40% of staff cut — the CFO too

The capital-intensive model buckles fast; a year after the megaround, nearly half the company is gone.

TechCrunch

2019

From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2019

Glassdoor reviews from the October 2019 layoff are brutal: staff described an operation so chaotic it couldn't locate most of its own cars, lavish perks at a fintech that couldn't manage its money, and laid-off employees losing their health benefits seven days later.

2020

Winds down — joins the Unitard Club 💔

The flagship weekly-rental program for Uber drivers shuts; the car-subscription dream ends with it.

TechCrunch

2022

Sold for scraps: ~$19M to Shift$19M

$566M of equity raised; the remaining dealer-listing assets fetch about $19M — a near-total loss for SoftBank.

Bloomberg

$1.19Bof peak value erased · 3 years

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Fair was a SoftBank-backed startup that let consumers lease used cars through an app, and ran a popular program renting cars to Uber drivers by the week. It hit a ~$1.2B valuation after a ~$500M equity round in 2018, but its capital-intensive model unraveled fast: it cut 40% of staff and its CFO in 2019, wound down the Uber-driver program in 2020, and sold the remains to Shift for ~$19M in 2022.

Source: TechCrunch / Fortune / Bloomberg (SoftBank-backed car-subscription startup valued at ~$1.2B after raising ~$500M of equity plus billions in debt; laid off 40% of staff in 2019, wound down its flagship weekly-rental program for Uber drivers in 2020, and sold its remaining dealer-listing assets to Shift Technologies for ~$19M in 2022 — a near-total loss for SoftBank)