Micro tl;dr: Build a company with a successful business model, and then pivot away from it, plus get concerned about someone trying to replicate your success in Europe and prematurely enter that market.
In fact, there is a connection to HN. I recall it was on HN that the founder was commenting on a story on undergoing major pivot and securing funding.
They wanted to become an ecomm giant. But every sale they ran originally was fairly small-batch. One step up from an etsy store. You can't really scale that up. They decided they wanted to go big, and to do so meant holding inventory and selling more mass-produced things.