Inside the implosion at the checkout startup Fast, as told by leaked screenshots, former employees, and investors

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Inside the implosion at the checkout startup Fast, as told by leaked screenshots, former employees, and investors

Matt Turner,Jordan Parker Erb

Sun, April 10, 2022, 9:17 PM·5 min read

Hi, I'm Matt Turner, the editor-in-chief of business at Insider. Welcome back to Insider Weekly, a roundup of some of our top stories.

On the agenda today:

Investors, former employees, and leaked audio take us inside the implosion of the Stripe-backed startup Fast.
The second Cold War has begun and could upend the current balance of power.
Sitting on record amounts of home equity, Americans are selling Wall Street stakes in their homes.
A leaked memo shows The New York Times has issued a Twitter "reset" for its staff.

Let me know what you think of all our stories at [email protected].

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Inside Fast's fall from grace

Domm Holland is standing on a stage, the background are purple LED squares with a sign that says "web summit." He's wearing a grey blazer, white tshirt and black pants, his hands are animated as he speaks.

Fast CEO Domm Holland often prided himself on making "fast" decisions, one employee told Insider.Harry Murphy/Getty Images

That was Fast.

OK, OK, I apologize, it's a bad joke. Still, the rapid demise of the online-checkout startup Fast, which had raised more than $100 million, has been a hot topic this week in Silicon Valley and beyond. As recently as February, the company was talking about doubling its head count from 390 to close to 800 by the end of the year. Instead, the number will go to zero.

The majority of startups fail, of course. Fast was operating in an increasingly competitive sector. "There are only so many checkout solutions that the world can handle," one VC told Insider. And in the aftermath of Fast's sudden closure, one investor said he'd back its founder and CEO Domm Holland again if he had the chance.

But Fast's lavish spending and Holland's brazen persona have made the startup's demise especially striking, especially against a backdrop of fintechs getting pummeled in the public markets.

Kylie Robison, who's been covering this implosion all week, takes us inside her reporting:

US households have built up $26 trillion in home equity, the largest share of the overall housing stock since the 1980s.The New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet.