the reason G/O failed was due to leadership. Full Stop.

the audience that was assembled was actually impressive and the PE money was used correctly to build an interesting portfolio of sites.

From there it was an operational disaster. All the important sites they had have been acquired by better run companies which confirms that the underlying assets were pretty good, they just needed to be run by someone else.

On good authority here's a good example: They have one of the top car blogs in the world, and had zero dedicated auto ad sellers. Anyone who knows auto in advertising knows you need people in LA and Detroit full time on the agencies and OEMs.