Andrew Pierno
Andrew Pierno

i start businesses. they mostly fail,

but it's fun to watch. ↓

83 from scratch · 5 made money · 2 sold
+11 b2b saas bought via xo.capital · 9 sold · 2 still running

YouTube
@thefactoryexp
TikTok
@andrewpierno
X
@andrewpierno
LinkedIn
/in/andrewpierno
Newsletter
blog.andrewpierno.com

My Startup Graveyard

hover any tile · 80 named · 3 anonymous
★ Sold$ Made money↓ Lost $◆ Bought🚧 Active🟢 Still running† Dead

Side Project

💧

thewatertest.com

The world's first at-home microplastics testing kit

by munilabs.ai

See what's in your tap water. We use fluorescence microscopy to reveal microplastics invisible to the naked eye.

As seen on Reddit
r/LosAngeles

"I've now tested tap water for microplastics in 20+ locations across West LA. Here's the contamination map."

109k views390 upvotes
r/PlasticFreeLiving

"I refuse to pay $600 to test my tap water for microplastics, so I built a fluorescence scope in my garage"

35k views141 upvotes
Water qualityMicroplasticsPublic healthmunilabs.ai
SampleFilterStainScopeResults

Patents

Billing data aggregation and forecasting system

US20240296485A1 · 2023

Auto-segmentation with rule assignment

US20190370559A1 · 2019

Learning to switch, tune, and retrain AI models

US20190373165A1 · 2019

Detecting changes in object size over long time scales

US20190370560A1 · 2019

xo.capital

Co-Founder · Sep 2020 – Sep 2025 · Santa Monica, CA

We bought and operated B2B SaaS companies. Wound down 2025. The portfolio is in the graveyard above (purple ◆).

11
Acquisitions
~$3.5M
Deployed
2
YC Companies
xo.capital

Post-Mortems

thecompiler.io

thecompiler.io

Killing this project

102
Visitors
233
Page Views
72%
Bounce Rate
noco.io — AI App Builder

noco.io — AI App Builder

March 2025 – Nov 2025

110
Users
0
Successful Builds
$5k
Total Cost