The Runway Ventures

Get the weekly newsletter to help you learn from startup mistakes and become a better founder.

Every Sunday, we analyse and share:

• 1 failed startup ☠️
• 2 costly mistakes made ⚠️
• 3 lessons learned for founders 🧠

90% of startups fail because founders made mistakes. Don't be one of them.

Subscribe for free here 👉🏻 www.therunway.ventures

Founder

beehiiv

beehiiv empowers you to create, monetize, and grow your newsletter with an all-in-one publishing suite.

(right team, great product, crazy execution)

Angel Investor

Fathom - AI Meeting Assistant

Fathom records, transcribes, highlights, and summarizes your meetings so you can focus on the conversation.

(proud user of Fathom)

X10 Media

X10 Media, a regional influencer agency established over 7 years ago before Influencer Marketing became part of the mainstay, holds a network of over 3,000 Influencers with a combined 30 million network reach in Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia.

The agency has served over 1,000 brands including Pepsi, Singtel, Capitaland, LVMH, Warner Music, Owndays, Casetify among others.

With its proprietary Leadgram technology and data-driven insights, X10 Media empowers brands to achieve exceptional results through influencer campaigns.

X10 media currently owns 3 business units — Faves, X10 Ventures & TheSpokenTribe, that span regionally across 3 countries in Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia.

🌏 Faves (micro-influencer marketing arm) runs a combined network of 10 million reach in Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia.

🌏 X10 Ventures (technology arm) empowers brands with our proprietary technology.

• Leadgram was launched as a first-of-its-kind software in Asia to deepen social media campaign ROI & sales/traffic conversions for brands & companies.
• We retarget consumers that engages on influencers/brand content to create conversations leading to higher call to actions.

🌏 The Spoken Tribe (LinkedIn marketing arm) brings professional voices to endorse companies and brands through the word-of-mouth recommendations.

👉🏻 With a commitment to excellence and innovation, X10 Media continues to drive impactful influencer marketing solutions for brands. Visit www.x10.media to learn more.

CTO (Acquired by TSL Media Group)

Admond Lee

On a mission to make data science accessible to everyone through consulting & corporate training.

Data science consulting and analytics services for startups, SMEs, and marketing agencies.

✅ Previous projects include:

• AI & marketing consulting
• Web analytics & data visualisation
• Web scraping & marketing analytics
• Crypto price prediction model using deep learning with millions of sentiment data points


✅ Corporate & Institutional Training (Data Science / Analytics):

• SPH, DBS, MINDEF, Singtel, NTU, NUS, UTAR, Decoded


▶️ Learn more at www.admondlee.com

Consulting Data Scientist | Corporate Trainer

chatted.ai

Get AI insights from data in seconds and make informed decisions 10x faster.

1. Upload your data
2. Ask questions
3. Get actionable insights

That's it.

❌ No more formulas
❌ No more pivot table
❌ No more learning how to code
❌ No more waiting for your reports

✅ Just ask.

Sign up for free here 👉🏻 chatted.ai

... and start chatting today 🧠

YouTube

Making videos focusing on data science, programming, and tech stuff in general.

👉🏻 Link to channel: youtube.com/@admond1994

Content Creator

Staq

At Staq, we are building the universal API to help fintech companies securely access financial data from SMEs in a quick and easy way across Southeast Asia.

We are reimagining the technical infrastructure to drive financial inclusion for businesses in Southeast Asia.

Our mission is to empower you to build amazing financial products for businesses with more visibility and informed decisions. 

With Staq:
• You can easily and securely access financial data from businesses for SME lending, user identity verification, compliance and KYC etc. 
• Businesses can instantly share their data instead of sifting through tedious UX from multiple banks to extract bank statements. 

Headquartered in Singapore, Staq is backed by Entrepreneur First, the leading startup incubator in the world.

Co-Founder / CTO

Entrepreneur First

Entrepreneur First is the place where the ambitious come together to build globally important technology companies.

Founder in Residence (EFSG10)

Medium

Contributing Writer | Towards Data Science

Co-Founder & CTO @ Staq | Data Scientist

I’m a physicist turned data scientist, now a founder building The Runway Ventures — a weekly newsletter to help people learn from startup failures to become the top 1% founders.

I spent the first 3 years of my career helping companies solve business problems as a data scientist. Meantime, I was also a corporate trainer, speaker, and writer in data science. Then, I spent the next 3 years building startups. 1 failed, 1 acquired.

🧗🏻 This is how I got here:

• Got my degree in Physics from Nanyang Technological University.

• Started as a data scientist at SME (Titansoft), then MNC (Micron) before joining a startup (Hackwagon).

• Quit my job during COVID (wild timing), joined an incubator, found a co-founder, and built my 1st startup (Staq). Spent 1.5 years building Staq but we failed. Despite our mistakes, we learned a lot.

• Was very lost after my 1st startup’s failure. Spent the next 2 months doing self-reflection and exploring my curiosity.

• Started my 2nd startup building Leadgram at an influencer marketing agency (X10 Media). 8 months later, we got acquired by The Smart Local (TSL) Media Group.

***

After 3 years of building startups, I'm convinced that mistakes are the best teachers to become a better founder. For any startup, there are many ways to succeed, but only a few ways to die.

That’s why I started The Runway Ventures. 

Every Sunday, I analyse and share 1 failed startup story, 2 mistakes made, and 3 lessons learned with actionable tips to help you learn from startup failures.

Real life case studies, with key takeaways you can apply in your business.

No theories or BS.

99% of startups failed because founders made mistakes.

You’ll learn why and how startups failed to become the top 1% founder.

🤝🏻 Join us here (it’s free!): www.therunway.ventures

🔗 FB: @admond1994
🔗 Twitter: @admond1994
🔗 Instagram: @admond1994

💍 She said YES!!!

After being together for more than 5 years, today, I proposed to her.

I still remember when I started my first startup. I was working as a food delivery rider part-time. I was broke af. I had nothing, literally nothing — except fire in my belly to make something people want.

It was the darkest period in my life. Yet, she supported me wholeheartedly throughout the time. She loved me unconditionally.

During that period, I told myself, “I want to marry her. I better don’t fxck this up.”

5 years later, here we are.

I’m sharing this with you because I really want to share the joy and happiness with you. 

You’ve been reading failed startup stories from me, and most startups failed because the founders made the wrong decisions.

Well, guess what?

💟 The most important decision of your life is to decide who you marry — your life partner. 

I’m glad I’ve found mine.

JSESSIONID

li_at

Helping you become the top 1% founder by learning from startup failures | 2x founder | 1 exit | Founder @ The Runway Ventures 🚀

$1.4B unicorn faked 4.8x revenue. $40B wiped in 3 days. CEO diverted funds to personal accounts.

Southeast Asia's fraud epidemic just hit critical mass — and 99% of founders are still blind to it.

I've written 90+ failed startup stories. But these 5 fraud cases shocked Southeast Asia:

eFishery (Indonesia's agritech unicorn):
• Claimed $752M revenue → Actually $157M
• Showed $16M profit → Actually $35M loss
• 6 years of dual-book accounting before whistleblower exposed it

LUNA/UST (Terraform Labs):
• $119 peak → $0 in 72 hours
• $40B market cap evaporated
• Millions lost life savings globally

Investree (P2P lending):
• CEO allegedly diverted company funds to personal account
• NPL hit 16% (reg limit: 5%)
• License revoked October 2024

The pattern is brutal: Fake metrics → Fake growth → Dead startup.

Singapore just dropped from #1 to #10 in global fraud resilience. Malaysia fell 52 places. Indonesia ranks dead last in Southeast Asia.

Your dashboards are lying to you. That 30% MoM growth? Could be bots. Those 10,000 signups? Might be fraud farms. Your growth might be fiction.

Nov 19-20, I'm at What the Fraud Summit (hosted by Sumsub) in Singapore. Because knowing these patterns before they hit you is worth more than your next funding round.

2 days learning defense beats 1 fraud scandal destroying everything.

Register here → https://lnkd.in/gN_TXqju
Use code ADMOND15 for 15% off.

P.S. If you think fraud only hits "other" startups, you're already a target.

Sumsub

$60M run rate. 5M+ downloads. #2 in Indonesia. Dead overnight.

Perfect metrics couldn't save Sorabel when they only had 6 months of runway.

Picture this: Indonesian husband-wife duo starts selling clothes from their garage in 2014. By 2019, they're sitting on 800 employees, 58% gross margins, and investors lining up for Series C.

But here's what should've terrified everyone:

They NEVER had more than 6 months runway. Even after raising $27M from Gobi Partners and Alpha JWC.

Every month was a race to raise more cash before the music stopped.

They even cracked the trust problem that kills most e-commerce in Southeast Asia. "Try First, Pay Later" — couriers wait 15 minutes while customers try on clothes at home. Only pay for what you keep.

Like a fitting room at your doorstep. Genius, right?

The numbers backed it up — $5M monthly revenue, 2.4x growth after rebrand, and they'd captured 9% of Indonesia's women's fashion e-commerce market.

CEO Jeffrey Yuwono was talking about becoming the Zara of Southeast Asia. Everything looked unstoppable.

March 2020: COVID hits. Investors can't fly to Jakarta. Term sheets pulled overnight. Fashion demand drops 50-70%. Their middle-class customers — the ones buying trendy clothes — all getting laid off.

July 2020: Game over. 800 jobs gone. Dreams dead.

Did COVID kill them, or were they already dying?

Tonight at 8pm, I'm publishing the full Sorabel autopsy. The 2 critical mistakes. The warning signs. Every lesson you need to know.

Subscribe now to get it when it drops → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. Innovation without unit economics is just expensive suicide.

400 HSBC employees lost their jobs. $150.5 million burned.

All because HSBC tried to out-fintech the fintechs.

Zing launched in January 2024 with massive firepower:
• 20+ currencies with fees as low as $0.20
• Partnership with Visa for global debit cards
• Plans to conquer Europe

They even hit 30,000 users in 6 months. Management was celebrating.

Meanwhile, Revolut gained 1.1 million users. That's 37x more. With 100x less resources.

The brutal math nobody at HSBC wanted to see:

Wise spent 14 years perfecting cross-border infrastructure. HSBC spent 2 years copying it. Then wondered why they couldn't compete.

When the new CEO took over in September, he took one look at the numbers. 400 jobs gone. Customers pushed back to traditional banking. Game over.

HSBC built a "me-too" product in a market that didn't need another player.

They thought their banking infrastructure would be their advantage. Instead, it was their anchor. Too slow. Too heavy. Too late.

Corporate ventures fail when they copy startups instead of playing to their actual strengths.

Zing tried to out-Revolut Revolut. They never stood a chance.

The full Zing autopsy reveals the 2 deadly mistakes every corporate innovator needs to avoid (before burning $150M like HSBC did) → https://lnkd.in/g7aNmWuu

P.S. If your corporate innovation lab is building "the Uber of X" or "the Netflix of Y" — you're already dead. You just don't know it yet.

I spent 1.5 years building a startup nobody wanted. Burned through our runway copying a UK unicorn. Died with 2 months left.

My first startup failure taught me the most expensive lesson of my life.

2022: We launched Staq at Entrepreneur First. Universal API for SME financial data. Digital lenders loved the demo. Big names in our pilot tests. Everything looked perfect on paper.

Reality check: Zero paid contracts.

We fell in love with Codat's model. Their solution. Their success. We wanted to be "the Codat of Southeast Asia."

Fatal mistake.

Here's what actually killed us:

We had zero domain expertise in lending. Never felt the problem ourselves. Never worked in fintech. Just two guys who thought we could copy-paste a UK success story to SEA.

The brutal truth? Our customers didn't need an API. They needed simple automation. But we were too busy building our "comprehensive developer-friendly solution" to notice.

By early 2023, we had 2 months of runway left. Desperate acquire-hire talks. Deal fell through in April 2023.

Game over.

The lessons that cost me everything:
• No founder-market fit = slow death
• Falling in love with solutions = ignoring real problems
• Copying successful models = missing local context

If you're building something you've never experienced, struggling to get paid contracts while everyone "loves" your product — you might be building the wrong thing.

Here's how my first startup failed after 1.5 years (full story) → https://lnkd.in/gsfAAkcg

P.S. The hardest part? Admitting we spent 1.5 years solving a problem that didn't exist. Don't wait that long.

Codat

3 million cupcakes sold in year one. $2.5M acquisition. Then 80 employees lost their jobs overnight.

Twelve Cupcakes sold millions. Then underpaid workers for years. Now they're dead.

Celebrity founders Daniel Ong (radio DJ) and Jaime Teo (Miss Singapore Universe) turned a home baking hobby into an empire. 17 outlets in Singapore. 40+ stores across Asia. Lines out the door every morning.

Behind the counter? Chaos.

While customers queued for Red Velvet cupcakes, staff were getting underpaid.

The shocking timeline:
• 2016: Founders divorced, sold to India's Dhunseri Group for $2.5M
• 2021: Both founders fined $65,000 each for underpaying foreign workers
• 2023: Company lost $463K (ballooned to $1.1M loss in 2024)
• Oct 29, 2025: All outlets shut. Staff informed via WhatsApp at 8pm

One employee posted: "We never received payment for our last month of labor. How to feed our families without receiving a salary?"

Get this: Workers promised S$2,200-2,600 on paper. Actually paid S$200-1,200 less.

For years. While the cupcakes kept selling.

From 3 million cupcakes to provisional liquidation. From celebrity founders to labour law violations. From sweet success to bitter collapse.

Tonight at 8pm, I'm publishing the full autopsy. The 2 critical mistakes that killed them. Every red flag the founders ignored.

Subscribe before it hits → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. They sold 3 million cupcakes but couldn't pay 80 salaries. Do the math.

PPS - 80 affected employees are still actively looking for new job opportunities. Please reach out to Geraldine Eroles and other employees if you have suitable roles for them 🙏🏻

Please reach me at grldn.eroles@gmail.com

$53 million in customer funds. Vanished. Coinbase was about to drop $40M at a $400M valuation.

Then Zipmex collapsed overnight.

Marcus Lim had already exited OneFlare. Akalarp Yimwilai was Thailand's regulatory heavyweight — Georgetown master's, public admin doctorate, plugged into the Ministry of Finance.

Perfect split. Marcus raised money. Akalarp got licenses.

By August 2021, they'd pulled in $41M from Krungsri Finnovate (Bank of Ayudhya/MUFG), B Capital, Plan B Media. The "Coinbase of Southeast Asia" was crushing it.

Users loved the 10-14% yields on ZipUp+. Move your crypto from Thailand to Singapore entity. Zipmex lends it to Babel Finance and Celsius. You get fat returns.

Except nobody told users their money was actually sitting with leveraged crypto funds.

June 2022: Celsius freezes withdrawals.
Five days later: Babel halts redemptions.
Zipmex exposure: $48M with Babel, $5M with Celsius.

July 20: Zipmex freezes all withdrawals.

The rescue attempt was even worse. V Ventures promised $100M to buy 90% of Zipmex. They missed the first payment. Then the second. Then the third. Then they walked.

Court recovery plan: 5.1% back to creditors.
Straight liquidation: 1.6%.

February 2025: Akalarp gets 5 years in prison for fraud. Thai SEC reported that he moved customer funds offshore before updating terms & conditions.

The entire "regulated, licensed, safe" crypto exchange was just a funnel to risky lenders. When Terra blew up and took down 3AC, the dominoes fell fast.

Tonight 8pm: The full Zipmex autopsy drops. Every red flag. Every warning sign. The exact playbook of how "regulated" platforms blow up customer money.

Subscribe now → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. 14% yields in crypto? That money wasn't sitting in a vault. It was funding degens trading 10x leverage. You were the exit liquidity.

16 sushi restaurants. $21M in debt. $15.3M in fines.

Australia's biggest worker exploitation scandal just exposed how a "successful" chain was actually a house of cards.

Sushi Bay looked unstoppable. Korean immigrant Rebecca Shin built a conveyor-belt empire across NSW, Canberra, and Darwin. Customers loved the fresh, fast sushi. Investors saw steady expansion.

Behind the scenes? 163 migrant workers getting robbed.

The Federal Court just dropped the hammer:
• $653,129 stolen from staff wages
• Falsified records to hide the theft
• Workers forced to "pay back" their own wages
• Record $15.3M penalty (biggest in Australian history)

Here's the math: They saved maybe $600K by underpaying staff. The penalty? 25x that amount.

Everything collapsed when 2 former workers lodged complaints to the Fair Work Ombudsman about underpayment.

March 2022: Fair Work Ombudsman strikes.
February 2023: Court-ordered liquidations begin.
April 2023: 15 outlets dead.

The collapse was brutal:
• Multiple stores liquidated for unpaid taxes
• $21M total debt left behind
• Only 1 ghost store remains

Tonight at 8pm, I'm revealing the full Sushi Bay autopsy. Why nobody saw it coming. The 2 fatal mistakes that killed a 20-year empire.

The graveyard is full of "successful" chains built on exploitation.

Don't let yours be next.

Subscribe now to get the complete breakdown → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. Bad actors get caught. It just sometimes takes 20 years.

80 employees. 8pm WhatsApp: "You're fired. No final paycheck."

Twelve Cupcakes just collapsed overnight.

Celebrity founders Daniel Ong (radio DJ) and Jaime Teo (Miss Singapore Universe) built 40+ stores across Asia. Sold for $2.5M.

October 29, 2025. All staff got the same message:

"Employment terminated immediately. No payment until liquidation. Maybe 6 months."

One worker posted: "How to feed our families without receiving a salary?"

The ugly truth? Workers were being underpaid since 2013. Staff were promised S$2,200-2,600 but paid S$200-1,200 less.

Founders got fined $65,000 each for labor violations.
The company? Another $119,500.

From 3 million cupcakes sold to 80 families without paychecks overnight.

I just published the full Twelve Cupcakes autopsy — how Singapore's sweetest success story became its most bitter collapse.

Full breakdown → https://lnkd.in/gx_VpNes

PS - Video credit to The Business Times and Chloe Lim.

PPS - 80 affected employees are still actively looking for new job opportunities. Please reach out to Geraldine Eroles and other employees if you have suitable roles for them 🙏🏻

December 2022. 2 months of runway left. My fintech startup Staq was dying.

The shame was suffocating. The fear paralysing. Every morning I'd wake up thinking maybe I'm just not cut out for this founder thing.

We built a universal API for SME financial data. Had pilots with digital lenders. VC conversations happening.

But we were already dead.

Wrong team. Fell in love with the solution, not the problem. Didn't validate fast enough. Skipped the most basic step — actually talking to users who desperately needed what we were building.

By April 2023, Staq was officially gone.

I could've avoided ALL of it if I'd just learned from other founders' mistakes first. But nobody was talking about them.

That's exactly why Startup Fxckups exists.

On 27 Nov at 7pm, hosted by SUNRATE, I'm bringing founders who aren't afraid to show you their scars:

Willis Wee built Tech in Asia into Southeast Asia's most influential tech media. Got acquired by SPH for 8 figures. 

Joel Wong scaled Social Jet Singapore - Influencer Marketing Agency to 7-figure revenue with 250+ campaigns and 1,500 creators. 

No polished stories. No fake wisdom.

Just real founders sharing:
• The wrong hires that cost them months
• The pivots that burned through runway
• The "obvious" signals they completely missed
• The expensive lessons they paid for in blood

50 seats only.

Use code "TRV20" for 20% off → https://luma.com/0774rm7j

P.S. The degree to which you're willing to be vulnerable is the degree to which you can grow. Come learn from founders who already paid the price so you don't have to.

P.P.S. Willis seldom speaks publicly nowadays. This is one of the few chances you'll get to learn from him directly.

SUNRATE

Make something people want.

Tech in Asia

Helping Brands Scale With A Full-Funnel Influencer Strategy | Ex E-Commerce Brand Builder

Social Jet Singapore - Influencer Marketing Agency

Just read ALL LinkedIn influencer's predictions for 2026, so you don't have to:

OpenAI is dead.

AGI is dead. 

Em-dash? Em-dead

Economy? dead (tomorrow)

Employees? Automated

9 to 5 - somehow also dead?

996? Kills you 

Remote work is dead.

The office is however also dead.

SEO...dead, again. 

AIO start-ups... dead upon arrival

AI Wrappers in general ... oof dead

Seat-based pricing? dead

Pricing in general. Dead - Free is the new MOAT

ARR. Dead

Sales? Replaced by AI SDRs (who are also dead)

The EU? Dead (consent collected) 

Germany? Dead even before the EU 

Stay positive 🫶

Willis Wee sold Tech in Asia for 8 figures. Now he's spilling his biggest media startup fxckups.

November 27. Our FINAL Startup Fxckups event in 2025. And we're going out with a bang.

Willis built Tech in Asia from a university project into Southeast Asia's most influential tech media platform.

Joel Wong? Scaled from dropshipping streetwear to running 250+ influencer campaigns. Generated 7-figure revenue. 

The media/agency space is brutal. One wrong hire, one bad client, one misread metric — you're dead.

These founders survived. Most don't.

Forget polished panels. This is founders telling you exactly how they fxcked up so you don't have to.

Free dinner. Free drinks. Unfiltered truth about building in media.

26 founders are joining. Only 4 spots left. When they're gone, they're gone.

This is it. Our last one. Don't miss it.

Register now → https://luma.com/0774rm7j

P.S. If you're building anything content-related or in media space, you need to hear these stories. The graveyard is full of media startups that looked unstoppable.

P.P.S Oh, and don't forget to use "TRV20" for 20% off

The day I realised my startup's success depended on me being broken – working 100-hour weeks, sacrificing everything – was the day I understood why most founders struggle with mental health.

Willis Wee sold Tech in Asia for 8 figures. Joel Wong scaled to 7 figures, then built 250+ influencer campaigns. And they're about to spill their biggest media startup fxckups.

These aren't just any founders. They're the ones who actually survived the media bloodbath.

27 November. SUNRATE Singapore. We're hosting Startup Fxckups: Media Edition — where successful founders share the disasters that almost killed them.

This isn't your polished TED talk. No scripted success stories. Just raw, unfiltered truth about what it really takes to survive in media.

Willis built Tech in Asia from a university project into Southeast Asia's most influential tech media platform. Then sold it to SPH Media for an 8-figure exit.

Joel dropped out to build a streetwear brand. Scaled to 7 figures. Then started Social Jet Singapore - Influencer Marketing Agency — now running campaigns for the region's biggest brands with 1,500+ creators.

The media/agency space is brutal if you get it wrong. One bad pivot, one wrong hire, one missed trend — game over.

And right now, with AI eating content jobs and ad costs through the roof, the margin for error is zero.

That's why we're bringing them together. To share the expensive mistakes they made so you don't have to.

What you'll get:
• Their biggest fxckups + learnings
• The exact pivots that saved their companies
• The hiring disasters that almost ended everything
• How they scaled from $0 to 7-figure revenue (and finally got acquired)

Plus open mic session — share your own fxckups and learn from others in the trenches.

Dinner and drinks included. Capped at 50 people — serious operators only.

Use code TRV20 for 20% off → https://luma.com/0774rm7j

P.S. The last Startup Fxckups sold out in 3 days. 50 seats only. Once it's gone, it's gone.

$15.3 million in fines. 163 migrant workers exploited. The biggest worker penalty in Australian history.

Sushi Bay went from a single Sydney outlet to 16 locations across 3 states. National brand. Packed restaurants.

Then the Federal Court found what was really happening.

$653,129 in unpaid wages. Falsified records. Workers forced to pay back part of their wages.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth:

"If you deliberately underpay migrant workers and try to cover it up with false or misleading records you will be found out and will pay a heavy price."

The price? Record-breaking penalties. $21 million in debt. Every outlet liquidated except one.

The full story reveals how cutting labor costs became a death sentence.

Read the Sushi Bay collapse → https://lnkd.in/g7V-t6F6

Every week I dissect startup failures so you don't repeat them.

Nowadays when a lawyer viewed my profile, probably the next thing would be receiving a lawyer letter from them.

Just another day of building The Runway Ventures 🤦🏻‍♂️

Which T-shirt would you wear? Design A or Design B.

I need your help.

After 2 years of building The Runway Ventures, we're finally making merch for our community. The designs are ready. But I'm stuck.

Both tested well internally. Both cost the same to produce. Both represent what we stand for — learning from mistakes to become better founders.

But I can only pick ONE.

You've been with me through ~100 startup failures. You get to decide what we wear.

Here's the deal:

Comment "A" or "B" below. Most votes wins. Takes 2 seconds. Seriously.

✌🏻

$27M raised. $5M monthly revenue. 58% gross margins.

Then Sorabel just... died.

Indonesia's #2 fashion e-commerce site. 5 million app downloads. 800 employees. Series C almost closed.

March 2020: COVID hits Jakarta.

Investors couldn't fly in for due diligence. All talks stopped overnight. Fashion demand crashed 70%.

But COVID didn't kill Sorabel.

This did: Since 2016, they never had more than 6 months of runway. Ever.

$60M GMV run rate. Warehouses in multiple cities. Philippines expansion. "Try First, Pay Later" service that customers loved.

All while living paycheck to paycheck.

When the music stopped, they had no chair.

I just published the full Sorabel autopsy. The exact moment they could've saved themselves. Why their rebrand to shed the "cheap" image actually accelerated their death.

Read what really killed Indonesia's fashion unicorn → https://lnkd.in/gMxzsWM3

P.S. They grew revenue 2.4x after rebranding. Still died 18 months later. Sometimes growth is the problem.

1️⃣ BYJU'S: $22 billion
2️⃣ eFishery: $1.4 billion
3️⃣ Builder AI: $1.5 billion
4️⃣ Terraform Labs: $60 billion
5️⃣ FashionValet.: $104.5 million
6️⃣ GoMechanic: $285 million
7️⃣ Investree: $254.5 million
8️⃣ BluSmart: $335 milion

What do these all have in common?

18,000 listings. $34M raised. Founder jailed for a month.

StayZilla was crushing it as the Airbnb of India — until they weren't.

Picture this: 2005, three passionate travellers bootstrap a homestay platform. By 2016, they're hitting 500 bookings daily across 1,200 Indian cities. Matrix Partners and Nexus Ventures write big checks.

February 2017: Operations shut down overnight.
March 2017: CEO arrested, put in jail for a month, bailed out for INR 14 lakhs.

From GodZilla to DeadZilla in 12 months.

The founder himself admitted what killed them:

"I started treasuring GMV, room-nights, and other 'vanity' metrics instead of the fundamentals of cash flow and working capital."

They burned cash educating Tier II and III cities about the internet. They launched discount campaigns that hoteliers gamed through fake bookings. They hemorrhaged money on both supply and demand.

The kicker? 60% of their "growth" during discount periods was hotels booking themselves to pocket the spread.

When they tried raising another $20M with 5 months runway left, investors walked away.

Want the full autopsy of how India's homestay pioneer became its most dramatic startup failure?

Read the complete StayZilla story → https://lnkd.in/g2KNBXVi

P.S. Their balance sheet was so bad, they laid off 210 employees and closed all branches trying to survive. Still died.

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