Too Much Money Can Kill a Startup. Here’s Proof.
Fast raised $120M to fix online checkout but crashed in a year. Learn how too much money and no product focus turned a big dream into a costly failure.
What if you had everything a startup could dream of?
Millions of dollars in the bank. The best team money could hire.
Backing from Stripe, one of the biggest names in tech.
That’s what happened to a company, Fast. Their primary goal was to make online shopping super easy by allowing people to buy anything with just one click.
They had a powerful idea and all the money to bring it to life.
But just one year after raising over $100 million, the company shut down.
It isn’t just a story about failure.
It’s a lesson for product managers, founders, and anyone building something new that too much money, too early, can hurt more than help.
So, what exactly happened?
Let's break it all down.
Be the King of Checkout - The Big Dream
It was 2020. People were at home. Everyone was shopping online. But buying stuff wasn’t always easy. You had to log in. Fill out long forms.
Type in your card again and again.
But then, Domm Holland started Fast to fix that.
Fast had one promise: One-click checkout anywhere on the internet.
No passwords. No forms. Just click a button, and you have bought it.
It wasn’t just a small tool. Fast wanted to be the go-to button for online shopping, like how Google is the go-to for search.
They wanted to be bigger than PayPal. Bigger than Apple Pay.
They were dreaming big. And investors loved it.
Here’s how the money came in:
2019: $2.5 million to start
2020: $20 million from top investors
That’s over $120 million total.
They had the money. They had the idea. And they were ready to go big.
But they forgot to answer: Do people want this right now?
When Money Becomes the Main Focus
On the outside, Fast looked like it was winning.
They grew from 10 people to almost 500.
They sponsored an NBA team.
They partnered with NASCAR and even put an NFT logo on a race car.
They ran ads during the Super Bowl.
Fast became so good at marketing and hiring.
But they weren’t good at fixing the product. The one-click checkout button, the whole reason the company existed, was buggy.
Store owners found it hard to add to their websites.
Shoppers didn’t feel the magic that Fast promised them.
The Money Fog
You see! Having too much money can mess with how a company thinks.
It creates what some people call a reality distortion field. In simple words, money made the team believe things were better than they were.
Here’s how it played out at Fast:
1. Big Goals, No Time
When a company raises over $100 million, investors don’t want lagging or steady.
They want big wins fast. So, the team focused on building more features and chasing big goals rather than perfecting the basic product.
2. Too Many People, Too Soon
They hired 400+ people before the product was ready.
But hiring more people didn’t fix the core issues. They made things worse.
Teams couldn’t talk clearly.
The code got messy.
People worked on the wrong problems.
It’s like building a big house on shaky ground.
The more you add, the more it wobbles.
3. Hype Over Results
Fast spent way more money than it earned.
In 2021, they made $600,000 in revenue.
But they spent $10 million every month.
That means for every $1 the company earned, it spent $166.
That was a clear sign of a deeper problem: They were great at getting attention but not great at building something people truly needed.
All that money made it easy to ignore user's feedback until it was too late.
The Fall of Fast
In early 2022, everything changed. The days of easy money were over.
Investors no longer wanted fast growth that came from big spending.
They wanted smart spending and real profits, but Fast had a big problem. They were burning $10 million every month but only making $600,000 a year.
No one wanted to invest in that anymore. April 5, 2022. It was over. CEO Domm Holland announced that Fast was shutting down. Here’s the tweet:
Every employee lost their job. The dream of becoming the checkout king ended overnight. Later, Affirm bought some of Fast’s tech and hired a few engineers.
But it was a fire sale - a last-minute rescue with little value left.
The $120 million they raised? The hype? The big promises?
All gone.
Three Big Lessons for Product Managers
Lesson 1: Don’t Just Spend. Think Before You Build
As a PM, you help connect the business team, the tech team, and the user. So when the company gets a lot of money, don’t just hurry to build more stuff. Stop and ask:
How much will it cost us to grow 10x?
Are users even sticking around after signing up?
Should we hire more people or fix what’s broken first?
Getting money from investors doesn’t mean your product is working.
It just means they believe it might. You still have to prove it.
Fast had all the money. What they didn’t have was a wise plan for using it.
Lesson 2: Build a Small Team First
You don’t need a huge team right away. You need a small, better team that cares about making the product better.
If you are still figuring out what users want:
Start with 1 PM, 1 designer, and 3–5 engineers.
Talk to users.
Fix the basics.
If your product is working and ready to grow:
Then, hire more people to help scale it up.
Fast did it backward. They hired hundreds of people before the product was ready, and that made it harder, not easier, to improve the product.
Lesson 3: Focus on Real Results, Not Just Appearances
Some numbers may look impressive. But raising millions, getting in the news, growing your team... those are vanity metrics.
They make you feel good but don’t mean your product is helping people.
Instead, pick real metrics like:
How many people successfully checked out using our product?
How many stores are still using it after 3 months?
How many users come back every week?
Make this your North Star: the one number that shows you are creating real value.
If Fast had focused on successful checkouts instead of flashy ads, it might have saved the product before it was too late.
The Bottom Line
Money is just a tool. It helps you build, but it’s not the thing you are trying to build. The real goal is to make something people want.
And build a business that can last. Fast had the money. But they lost sight of the goal. And in the end, they lost it all. Sometimes, having less forces you to be smart.
Too much money, too soon? That can be just as dangerous.
Great PMs know when to say “no”. They stay focused on what matters:
→ Building real value
→ Solving real problems
→ Making smart choices
That’s what separates a great product from an expensive mistake.
That is it for this one…see you next week
Until then
—Sid