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                Jason Goldberg’s ecommerce company, Fab.com, was once valued at $1B. Three years later, it was one of the biggest startup flops in history.
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                    Issue #142
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                    Sunday, January 17, 2021
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                <h2 style="font-size: 30px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 25px;">
                 <strong>
                  How one of the world’s fastest-growing startups burned through $300m
                 </strong>
                </h2>
                <p style="color: #737373; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; line-height: 120%; margin: 0; padding-bottom: 10px;">
                 Jason Goldberg’s ecommerce company, Fab.com, was once valued at $1B. Three years later, it was one of the biggest startup flops in history.
                </p>
                <p style="font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 120%; margin: 0; padding-bottom: 24px;">
                 <strong>
                  BY
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                   Zachary Crockett
                  </a>
                 </strong>
                </p>
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                 <br/>
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                 <em>
                  <strong>
                   Note:
                  </strong>
                 </em>
                 <em>
                  This story was originally published on our blog in 2017. It has been updated to reflect recent changes.
                 </em>
                </p>
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               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 On an overcast day in November 2014, Jason Goldberg sat at his desk in NYC, poring over the term sheet to sell his company, Fab.com.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 This moment was meant to be the culmination of years of hard work — countless late nights spent strategizing, analyzing financials, and meeting with investors.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Fab had raised
                 <strong>
                  $336m
                 </strong>
                 since rebranding itself as an ecommerce platform in 2011. At one point, it had been a unicorn, valued at
                 <strong>
                  $1B.
                 </strong>
                 It had 750 employees on multiple continents, a schmaltzy HQ in New York, and an enormous warehouse stocked with millions of products.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Now, the company was selling for less than
                 <strong>
                  one-tenth
                 </strong>
                 of its original valuation.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 As a serial entrepreneur, Goldberg had experienced ups and downs before. But this was different. This was a screw-up of massive proportions.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 <em>
                  How had it all gone so wrong?
                 </em>
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Fab’s rise and fall is a case study in the perils of over-funding. But it’s also a story about a serial entrepreneur who has refused to give up in the wake of failure.
                </p>
                <h4 style="font-size: 17px; height: 100%; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 8px;">
                 <strong>
                  The ‘geeky kid on the block’
                 </strong>
                </h4>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Growing up in Rockville, Maryland, a DC suburb, Goldberg was always the “first kid in the neighborhood to get the newest computer when it came out.” He spent his early days programming on an Atari 400 with his dad.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Later, as an undergrad at Emory University, he was drawn to a different field of machinery: politics.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 In 1991, Goldberg took a hiatus from college to work on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 When Clinton won, Goldberg was hired as a special assistant to the president’s chief of staff, Erskine Bowles. He was there when the internet was first implemented at the White House in 1994 — and he witnessed, firsthand, the gold rush of opportunities it ushered in.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 At the height of the dot-com bubble in 1998, he packed his bags for California, where he simultaneously earned an MBA at Stanford and developed digital strategies for AOL Time Warner and T-Mobile.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Then, he decided to strike out on his own.
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
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               <td>
                <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">
                 <img alt="" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fsailthru-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fcomposer%252Fimages%252Fsailthru-prod-6ks%252Ffab_gold_20210116225651.jpg/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzYWlsdGhydS1tZSJ9:1l16WO:TGv7xvsBFUHpjAvgkUDCa0rgl4lmuPB0tkKbzwvCW-k" style="height: auto; max-width: 600px; padding-top: 10px; width: 100%;" width="600"/>
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                <p style="color: #5f696c; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 8px 5px 20px;">
                 Jason Goldberg in 2016 (Facebook)
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 By 2002, Goldberg felt he had the requisite tools to found his own startup.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 After 2 years of planning, he and his close friend, Phillip Bogle, moved to Seattle and launched
                 <strong>
                  Jobster
                 </strong>
                 , a B2B job referral site.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “Reid Hoffman [of LinkedIn] and I had very similar ideas at the same time,” Goldberg told
                 <em>
                  The Hustle
                 </em>
                 in 2017. “His approach was to build out a consumer network — a ‘who knows who knows who’ that could be monetized. We were focused on the enterprise side.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 At first, Jobster was a big hit.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 The company
                 <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                  <u style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none; underline: none;">
                   raised
                  </u>
                 </a>
                 <strong>
                  $52.5m
                 </strong>
                 from investors and was cited as one of Seattle’s fastest-growing companies. In an unorthodox move for a young startup, Goldberg used the new capital to buy out a series of other companies and began scaling the team at lightning speed.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 But a big problem belied the company’s veneer of success.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “We were so focused on growth that the product itself suffered,” Goldberg said. “We were good at selling a vision, but we weren’t able to deliver on the products we promised.”
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td>
                <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">
                 <img alt="" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fsailthru-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fcomposer%252Fimages%252Fsailthru-prod-6ks%252Fjobster_20210116225716.jpg/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzYWlsdGhydS1tZSJ9:1l16WO:TGv7xvsBFUHpjAvgkUDCa0rgl4lmuPB0tkKbzwvCW-k" style="height: auto; max-width: 600px; padding-top: 10px; width: 100%;" width="600"/>
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                <p style="color: #5f696c; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 8px 5px 20px;">
                 A screenshot of Jobster.com, circa 2008 (Wayback Machine)
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 As Jobster struggled to figure out its business model, Goldberg had to lay off ~40% of the company and slash costs. In 2007, he stepped down as CEO. Eventually, the company sold for “pennies on the dollar.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Once heralded as Seattle’s next big tech titan, Goldberg had become the city’s pariah-in-residence.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “The blame was all mine,” he said. “I really learned that no amount of marketing or sales could make up for not getting the product right.”
                </p>
                <h4 style="font-size: 17px; height: 100%; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 8px;">
                 <strong>
                  On to the next one
                 </strong>
                </h4>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 After Jobster, Goldberg found himself marooned in Seattle.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “The city didn’t have a developed culture that [it] was OK to fail,” he said. “I was very vocal about failure, and it didn’t go over well there.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 So, he took off for New York.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Goldberg wasted little time getting back on the horse. In early 2008, he founded
                 <strong>
                  Socialmedian
                 </strong>
                 — a personalized news filter that aggregated news stories from around the web and organized them into categories.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 This time, instead of seeking a massive infusion of capital, Goldberg relied on a relatively small
                 <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                  <u style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none; underline: none;">
                   seed round
                  </u>
                 </a>
                 of
                 <strong>
                  $560k
                 </strong>
                 .
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 When Lehman Brothers collapsed, sparking an international financial crisis, Goldberg anxiously called 3 companies who’d previously offered to buy him out and told them the company was up for sale.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 The best offer came from Germany-based social network Xing: $4m in cash, and an earn-out valued at up to $3.5m. Goldberg took the deal.
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td>
                <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">
                 <img alt="" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fsailthru-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fcomposer%252Fimages%252Fsailthru-prod-6ks%252Fseattle_nyc_20210116225744.jpg/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzYWlsdGhydS1tZSJ9:1l16WO:TGv7xvsBFUHpjAvgkUDCa0rgl4lmuPB0tkKbzwvCW-k" style="height: auto; max-width: 600px; padding-top: 10px; width: 100%;" width="600"/>
                </a>
                <p style="color: #5f696c; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 8px 5px 20px;">
                 Goldberg found better luck in NYC than in Seattle (Pixabay)
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “Socialmedian was everything Jobster wasn’t,” he says. “It was about keeping things small and focusing on the product. And in the end, it worked out for us.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 As part of the deal, Goldberg relocated to Germany and joined Xing as a VP. Eventually, he was promoted to CTO and helped boost the company’s share price from $30 to $70.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 He’d gotten his mojo back — or so it seemed.
                </p>
                <h4 style="font-size: 17px; height: 100%; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 8px;">
                 <strong>
                  The big fail
                 </strong>
                </h4>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 By 2010, the serial entrepreneur was again ready to strike out on his own.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 So, he teamed up with a designer named Bradford Shellhammer and launched
                 <strong>
                  Fabulis
                 </strong>
                 , a social network for gay men.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Between January and December of that year, the company raised
                 <strong>
                  $2m
                 </strong>
                 in funding from investors. But a year in, Goldberg realized the company wasn’t catching on like he thought it would.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “My philosophy was that if you can’t do something in a year, you should just throw it out and do something else,” he says. “You can’t iterate your way to a business model.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Over dinner, Goldberg and Shellhammer stepped back to reassess their direction, asking themselves 3 questions:
                </p>
                <ol style="font-size: 16px;">
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  What are we most passionate about?
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  It is something we can be the best at?
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  What is a big untapped market we can add value to?
                 </li>
                </ol>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 On a dinner napkin, the duo sketched out the
                 <strong>
                  one thing
                 </strong>
                 at the intersection of these 3 questions: design.
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td>
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                 <img alt="" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fsailthru-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fcomposer%252Fimages%252Fsailthru-prod-6ks%252Fnapkin_20210116225812.jpg/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzYWlsdGhydS1tZSJ9:1l16WO:TGv7xvsBFUHpjAvgkUDCa0rgl4lmuPB0tkKbzwvCW-k" style="height: auto; max-width: 600px; padding-top: 10px; width: 100%;" width="600"/>
                </a>
                <p style="color: #5f696c; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 8px 5px 20px;">
                 The dinner napkin brainstorm that led to the creation of Fab.com (recreation of image via Goldberg)
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 One week after that brainstorm, Goldberg shut down Fabulis, letting his investors know he was doubling down on a new concept — a curated, design-focused ecommerce platform called
                 <strong>
                  Fab.com.
                 </strong>
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 The idea was to curate eye-catching goods from boutique designers and offer flash sales centered around daily design inspirations.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Under their model, Goldberg and Shellhammer sold limited amounts of inventory at a discount for one- or 2-day periods, testing the waters for larger bulk orders. They thrived on offering items people couldn’t find anywhere else —  everything from throw pillows to a $1,775 martini glass chandelier.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 On June 9, 2011, the website went live. And in very short order, its proof of concept was validated:
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td>
                <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">
                 <img alt="" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fsailthru-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fcomposer%252Fimages%252Fsailthru-prod-6ks%252Ffab_growth_20210116225834.jpg/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzYWlsdGhydS1tZSJ9:1l16WO:TGv7xvsBFUHpjAvgkUDCa0rgl4lmuPB0tkKbzwvCW-k" style="height: auto; max-width: 600px; padding-top: 10px; width: 100%;" width="600"/>
                </a>
                <p style="color: #5f696c; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 8px 5px 20px;">
                 The Hustle
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Fab reached
                 <strong>
                  1m users in just 5 months
                 </strong>
                 — faster than goliaths like Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon. The company began to generate
                 <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                  <u style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none; underline: none;">
                   buzz
                  </u>
                 </a>
                 as one of the “fastest-growing startups in the world.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 The sales rose in tandem with user growth: its first year, Fab’s revenue increased by 6x, from
                 <strong>
                  $18m to $112m
                 </strong>
                 .
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Investors were attracted like moths to a lantern. By the end of 2012, Fab raised nearly $170m and was valued at upwards of
                 <strong>
                  $500m
                 </strong>
                 :
                </p>
                <ul style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 12px;">
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  August 2011:
                  <strong>
                   $7.7m
                  </strong>
                  (led by Menlo Ventures)
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  December 2011:
                  <strong>
                   $40m
                  </strong>
                  (led by Andreessen Horowitz)
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  July 2012:
                  <strong>
                   $105m
                  </strong>
                  (led by Atomico)
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  Nov 2012:
                  <strong>
                   $15m
                  </strong>
                  (led by VTB Capital)
                 </li>
                </ul>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 The company basked in the limelight.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Goldberg traveled around Europe, where he gave a
                 <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                  <u style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none; underline: none;">
                   presentation
                  </u>
                 </a>
                 titled “From Zero to Hero in 9 Months.” He invested in a 2-story office space in NYC and a massive inventory warehouse in New Jersey. The team grew to more than 750 employees.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 And then, everything came crashing down.
                </p>
                <h4 style="font-size: 17px; height: 100%; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 8px;">
                 <strong>
                  Fatal mistakes
                 </strong>
                </h4>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Behind the scenes, Fab’s board members weren’t happy.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 The company was spending astronomical sums of money on logistics, inventory, and expansion— some
                 <strong>
                  $14m per month
                 </strong>
                 at its peak. Goldberg had also fallen shy of the company’s $140m annual sales goal for 2012.
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td>
                <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">
                 <img alt="" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fsailthru-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fcomposer%252Fimages%252Fsailthru-prod-6ks%252Fshell_gold_20210116225907.jpg/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzYWlsdGhydS1tZSJ9:1l16WO:TGv7xvsBFUHpjAvgkUDCa0rgl4lmuPB0tkKbzwvCW-k" style="height: auto; max-width: 600px; padding-top: 10px; width: 100%;" width="600"/>
                </a>
                <p style="color: #5f696c; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 8px 5px 20px;">
                 Bradford Shellhammer (left) and Jason Goldberg (right) at an event in NYC in 2013 New York City (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 In early 2013, Goldberg was
                 <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                  <u style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none; underline: none;">
                   presented
                  </u>
                 </a>
                 2 options by his board:
                </p>
                <ol style="font-size: 16px;">
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  <strong>
                   Focus on the US market only
                  </strong>
                  , and target profitability around $150m in sales, or
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  <strong>
                   Push for 100% YoY growth
                  </strong>
                  and expand fast globally
                 </li>
                </ol>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 The vote was unanimously in favor of option No. 2.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 That summer, Fab raised a $165m Series D, bulking up its total investments to
                 <strong>
                  $330m+
                 </strong>
                 , and valuing the company at
                 <strong>
                  $900m+
                 </strong>
                 .
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 And under pressure from board members and advisors, Goldberg set out to rapidly build out the company’s international presence. This resulted in several key mistakes:
                </p>
                <ol style="font-size: 16px;">
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  Spending $60m-$100m on 3 “clone” competitors and making a premature push into the European market
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  Expanding inventory from 1k items to 11k+ items, and losing the “curation edge” that made it special
                 </li>
                </ol>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “At first, hardly anything on Fab was on Amazon,” Goldberg told us in 2017. “By 2013, 80-90% of the products we sold were on Amazon — with lower prices and free 2-day shipping.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “I remember we were all sitting around doing a preview of our products, and my team was like, ‘This is not inspiring at all,’” he continued. “Our best-selling product was a T-shirt with a giant picture of an animal on it. Just crappy stuff. And I thought, ‘Is this really going to work out?’”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 By October of 2013, Fab had burned through
                 <strong>
                  $200m of its $336m
                 </strong>
                 in funding.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 In a letter to his team, Goldberg expressed major concerns.
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td>
                <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">
                 <img alt="" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fsailthru-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fcomposer%252Fimages%252Fsailthru-prod-6ks%252F200m_letter_20210116225930.jpg/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzYWlsdGhydS1tZSJ9:1l16WO:TGv7xvsBFUHpjAvgkUDCa0rgl4lmuPB0tkKbzwvCW-k" style="height: auto; max-width: 600px; padding-top: 10px; width: 100%;" width="600"/>
                </a>
                <p style="color: #5f696c; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 8px 5px 20px;">
                 An excerpt from a letter circulated by Goldberg to Fab staff (Business Insider)
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “We have a serious problem,” he wrote. “We spent $200m in the past 2 years… and we have not proven out our business model. We are the most heavily funded startup in NYC in our life cycle and we have spent ⅔ of the cash… Holy shit this is a big deal.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 In the letter, he expanded on several mistakes he’d made:
                </p>
                <ul style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 12px;">
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  I guided us to go too fast.
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  I enabled us to lose our core focus.
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  I didn't insist on honing in on our target customer.
                 </li>
                 <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                  I spent too much on marketing before we got the consumer value proposition right.
                 </li>
                </ul>
                <h4 style="font-size: 17px; height: 100%; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 8px;">
                 <strong>
                  An unfortunate exit
                 </strong>
                </h4>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Goldberg’s co-founder, Shellhammer, a “quirky guy, who set the style of the company,” eventually grew unhappy and departed on mutual terms.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 By December 2013, only 150 of Fab’s 700 employees remained.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “It was death by 1,000 cuts,” says Goldberg. “It was many of the same problems from before: We grew too fast, went international too fast, built out of warehouses too fast.”
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td>
                <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">
                 <img alt="" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fsailthru-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fcomposer%252Fimages%252Fsailthru-prod-6ks%252Ffab_office_20210116225952.jpg/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzYWlsdGhydS1tZSJ9:1l16WO:TGv7xvsBFUHpjAvgkUDCa0rgl4lmuPB0tkKbzwvCW-k" style="height: auto; max-width: 600px; padding-top: 10px; width: 100%;" width="600"/>
                </a>
                <p style="color: #5f696c; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 8px 5px 20px;">
                 The Fab.com office in Berlin, Germany, in 2013 (Jens Kalaene via Getty Images)
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 The next year was focused on damage control.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “There was a point in 2014 where we had a chart that showed we’d reduced the burn rate from $11m to $1m a month,” says Goldberg. “One of the board members turned to me and said, ‘This is the best chart I’ve ever seen at this company.’ That was tough.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 By June 2014, Goldberg had begun working on another project within Fab — a new ecommerce company called
                 <strong>
                  Hem
                 </strong>
                 , which would focus on “original, high-end home goods,” which made up
                 <strong>
                  ~40%
                 </strong>
                 of Fab’s product listings.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 He decided to invest what was left of Fab’s funding — about $80m — into Hem, and sell off Fab’s remaining assets.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 In early 2015, he finalized a deal with PCH Innovations to sell for a
                 <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                  <u style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none; underline: none;">
                   reported
                  </u>
                 </a>
                 <strong>
                  $15m
                 </strong>
                 — a fraction of Fab’s one-time $1B valuation.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 A year later, Hem would sell for even less. Goldberg’s unicorn was dead.
                </p>
                <h4 style="font-size: 17px; height: 100%; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 8px;">
                 <strong>
                  Starting over
                 </strong>
                </h4>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 What does an entrepreneur do after burning through $330m+?
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “My personality is that I always want to make everyone happy,” Goldberg said in 2017. “I let down our investors, and it was a terrible feeling.”
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 At the same time, Goldberg said this “make everyone happy” attitude led to strong bonds with his investors that last to this day.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “Give some of those early investors a call and ask him what they think of Jason Goldberg,” he said. “I’m sure they would invest in a Jason Goldberg company again.”
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td>
                <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">
                 <img alt="" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fsailthru-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fcomposer%252Fimages%252Fsailthru-prod-6ks%252Ftc_goldfinal_20210116230037.jpg/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzYWlsdGhydS1tZSJ9:1l16WO:TGv7xvsBFUHpjAvgkUDCa0rgl4lmuPB0tkKbzwvCW-k" style="height: auto; max-width: 600px; padding-top: 10px; width: 100%;" width="600"/>
                </a>
                <p style="color: #5f696c; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 8px 5px 20px;">
                 Goldberg at 2014 TechCrunch Disrupt Europe/London (Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
               <td class="h2020 ignore-defaults" style="padding: 0px 10px;">
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Goldberg’s track record since Fab backs that up.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 In 2016, he raised
                 <strong>
                  $3m
                 </strong>
                 from investors (including some of the same investors who’d bet on Fab) to
                 <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                  <u style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none; underline: none;">
                   launch
                  </u>
                 </a>
                 a social messaging app called Pepo. That same year, he launched a blockchain technology platform (OST) and molded Pepo into an app to help makers in the crypto space.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 He was thwarted again — this time, by the hardships of COVID-19.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 So, he
                 <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                  <u style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none; underline: none;">
                   raised
                  </u>
                 </a>
                 <strong>
                  $2.2m
                 </strong>
                 to build out an all-in-one
                 <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                  <u style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none; underline: none;">
                   platform
                  </u>
                 </a>
                 to help fitness instructors start online businesses.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 Fittingly, he called it Moxie — a word that connotes a “fighting spirit” and a refusal to give up in the face of adversity.
                </p>
                <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                 “I’m not the kind of person who is going to bury my head in the sand, lie on the beach, and tune out,” he said. “I want to build stuff.”
                </p>
               </td>
              </tr>
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                   <h2 style="font-size: 20px; font-weight: 800; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0 0px;">
                    <strong>
                     SimpliSafe is offering free cameras to keep your home protected in 2021
                    </strong>
                   </h2>
                   <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                    <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                     Get a free security camera with any new system here.
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                    <strong>
                     What SimpliSafe does:
                    </strong>
                    <em>
                     Everything.
                    </em>
                    We’re talkin’...
                   </p>
                   <ul style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 12px;">
                    <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                     Professionally monitored security
                    </li>
                    <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                     <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                      24/7 HD video monitoring
                     </a>
                    </li>
                    <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                     Protection against everything from intruders to fire, water, and natural disasters
                    </li>
                    <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                     Recognize people, not pets
                    </li>
                   </ul>
                   <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                    <strong>
                     What SimpliSafe doesn’t do:
                    </strong>
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                    <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                     Cost more, since SimpliSafe cuts out the middleman and traditional markups
                    </li>
                    <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                     Take up space, thanks to
                     <a style="color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                      discreet sensors
                     </a>
                    </li>
                    <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                     Lock you into a contract
                    </li>
                    <li style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 0 0 0 15px; padding: 0px;">
                     Require timely setup (it’s all wireless)
                    </li>
                   </ul>
                   <p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 140%; margin: 5px 0px 10px;">
                    <strong>
                     Why we trust SimpliSafe:
                    </strong>
                    They were just named
                    <a style="-webkit-text-fill-color: #d62829; color: #d62829; text-decoration: none;">
                     Best Overall Home Security of 2020
                    </a>
                    by U.S. News &amp; World Report… and Oct. 20 Editor’s Choice by PCMag and CNET… need we continue?
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                    Get your free camera →
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