The End of Elliot
docs.google.com
docs.google.com
They really had mastered the art of Twitter promotion. I would see friends of friends recommend that people follow Elliot and their founders several times per week. They were frequently held up as examples of founders doing things the right way and tackling big problems.
They officially launched last week after hyping the company since 2017, but the site didn’t work. The CEO tried to blame a DDoS attack, but later announced that their launch date was pushed back to December.
A few days later, the CEO posted a screenshot of his resignation letter from the Notes app of his iPhone. Shortly afterward, the company announced that they were shutting down via an e-mail to their waitlist. The shutdown email vaguely alluded to the CEO’s personal problems, but stopped short of a real explanation.
This is a disappointing outcome for everyone, including those of us who like to cheer scrappy startups along from the sidelines. It’s a good reminder that PR, charisma, and confidence are necessary but not sufficient to launch a startup in today’s environment. It’s hard to believe that Elliot raised $3.7 million from dozens of investors, yet no one noticed that they didn’t have a functional product or even a team that could execute the product. Even their business model didn’t make sense, with fee structures so low that they would never become a sustainable, scalable business until they were processing on the order of billions of dollars of shopping purchases through their platform.
People have joked that this is the Fyre Festival of eCommerce, given how much PR they did and how no one was willing to accept that it was doomed as they approached their launch date. It’s fascinating to see how quickly the company imploded as soon as it made contact with the real world. At minimum, I would expect investors to appoint another CEO to turn the IP into something useful if they were actually that close to launching. The fact that they let it implode completely suggests that the company had much deeper problems.
Grade A Vapourware.