Fast, the high-flying US-based checkout app start-up founded and led by Australian entrepreneur Domm Holland, shut its doors after burning through tens of millions of dollars in cash a month.

Announcing the closure via a tweet, the company said it had “pave[d] a way” in the e-commerce industry, but did not identify the cause of the near-immediate shutdown. “Sometimes trailblazers don’t make it all the way to the mountaintop,” it said.

Based primarily in San Francisco, Fast sold “one-click checkout” software to online merchants. It raised $165 million from investors – including payment operator Stripe – since it was founded in 2019, according to funding website Crunchbase.

But experts have raised questions about the management of the fintech company, especially the manner in which growth was managed by CEO Domm Holland.

The problems may have been compounded by a common issue in start-ups, said Colin Kinner, a Brisbane-based start-up mentor and investor: a strong marketing push to highlight the business proposition, “with no substance underneath it.”

“There is an expression, ‘build a wave and then find a way to put water under it,’” he said. “I think a lot of companies do an excellent job of building a wave [of interest in their business], and Fast has done that extremely well. But my concern with companies that overstate their business is that there is little substance to it.”

Professor Colin McLeod, a Melbourne professor in commercialising new technology in start-ups, said that it appears Fast’s management failed to sufficiently develop its technology to effectively match its business proposition.

“Fast took the world by storm because everyone is trying to make payments more simple,” he said. “But it seems there was a gap between its plans to build the technology and their ability to generate enough funds.”

The company was reportedly seeked a buyer after failing to raise more funding, amid concerns about low revenue. It had most recently been backed by venture capital firms Index Ventures and Addition, who tipped in more than $100 million in January 2021.

But it only generated $790,000 in revenue last year, despite adding 400 new employees and burning through $13 million a month, according to technology industry publication The Information.

Mr Holland was the CEO of two other companies before Fast, both based in Australia. He was responsible for the launch of Tow, a start-up promising to be the “Uber of towing”, in Brisbane in 2014. The company had a contract with Queensland Police to tow vehicles related to its anti-hooning legislation, but was liquidated in 2018.

Fast raised over $100 million before it finally closed business.

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