
The End of Elliot - forthwall
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V3Sfm2ZNLxFjNFSExKxGkjZ3BRVBVIaAdvrdf8S5W44/edit
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PragmaticPulp
For those who don’t know, Elliot was a startup Shopify competitor. They gained
notoriety through relentless Twitter self-promotion, trash-talking Shopify
non-stop and promising an e-commerce revolution when their platform launched.

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.

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rvz
What an incredible journey. All that hype for absolutely nothing.

Grade A Vapourware.

