Don't believe the numbers just as is
I was leading a team which was involved in launching BNPL for a commodity product( flight tickets/train tickets), and the API we were using to cancel the tickets at the last moment from the 3rd party providers was flaky. It was supposed to cancel the tickets and provide refund back to minimize any losses we had.
It was such a hit feature that led to 250% growth in numbers within a week. I was promoted, the star. My manager was promoted too..
But I knew inside something wasn't correct, BNPL just meant people not paying then but still had to pay sometime and 250% growth was just not something I could digest.
I asked the team to switch it off for a couple of days, the whole company esp. Revenue teams were baying for my blood.
After a month, there was financial reconciliation, and we realised the API was just giving the response of successful cancellation but was never actually cancelling it.
The company lost almost 15 cr / day. No one wanted to believe this at all from top to bottom
The company never told the investors we fudged up but instead raised more funding by mentioning the 250% growth.
From then on I realised most investors are just watchmen.
They want to be on the fast deal more than being on the correct deal.
Don't believe anything on the internet that you read. Almost all GMV numbers are cooked.
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So your customers realised they could get tickets for free through your app and that’s what caused 250% growth?
Yup
I am still confused why didn't it go 2500%
Have worked at a B2B startup that raised a lot of capital
They exemplified this fact the best
GMV was basically just existing transactions between merchants that would then get punched in through the website
Against those transactions, the merchants would get a rebate of 1-2% and they were happy - all of this financed through VC capital
It was truly ridiculous. But it taught me a whole lot about how to spot crack lines in a startups.
Zilingo?
Goes on to tell how most of the startups, no matter how high salary they pay, are just "khassi" internally, and how all the metrics that youngsters mention in their resume won't hold much merit.
As someone who cooked the data on the behest of the founder, I can totally relate to this. No one will ever admit that they made a mistake and neither should they. That round of funding could be the line between years of work turning into dust. Investor certainly doesn't care if you put years of work into it.
Getting some harsh reality checks on grapevine. A lot of posts here are mind boggling and it feels like I've been living in a bubble. :p
bnpl should be called as buy now pay never.almost all bnpl companies are bleeding money since customer never returns money or wanted to.
GMV as a metric should be dead and buried.
Tbh, I believe you should not post stuff like this here. Things may backfire 😅
Imagine if anyone from your team is on this platform? It could backfire
Wow
Welcome to the club