My Experience Working at a Failed $1.2 Billion Startup
The sad reality of modern business
In 2020, I was given an opportunity to mend my broken life.
After attempting to start my own business, and failing, I was $40,000 in debt with no job to pay it.
The hand that pulled me up was a promising startup with a $1.2 billion valuation, on the verge of going public.
Ironically, it was getting ready for an epic fall — with the world watching.
Sometimes life lends you a helping hand. But even the strongest will fall without a leg to stand on. Here’s how a promising company failed spectacularly, despite doing everything right.
As seen from my front-row seat…
“Adore” was a brainchild of Apple.
Although failure is nothing to be ashamed of, out of respect, I’ve changed the names of the company and its employees in this story. 💡
But, being a publicly traded company, it may become obvious.
We’ll call it “Adore” — a revolutionary concept in retail shopping.
Adore was founded in 2014 on the premise of people-first shopping, by two high-level Apple executives.
We’ll call them Jon and Tim:
Jon Swanson: a retail guru who worked directly with Steve Jobs to come up with the concept of the chic Apple retail stores you see today.
Tim Cruiter: a graphic design specialist who created the iconic jumping lamp video you see at the beginning of all Pixar movies.
Together, the dynamic duo carried out their vision:
“What if you could combine the convenience of online shopping with the confidence of the conventional brick-and-mortar store experience.”
Adore merged conventional retail with online shopping, with the revolutionary concept of the ‘mobile store experience’.
Just 7 years after its inception, Adore delivered ‘joy through life-changing mobile retail experiences’ across 70+ cities and 4 countries — including the US, Canada, and the UK.
With world domination on the horizon, and on the cusp of becoming a publicly traded company, being hired on the ground floor was exciting.
Originally, I was hired as an “Adore Expert”.
It was an entry-level sales job offering a living wage with full benefits. And, involved travelling around town to deliver cell phones and help customers set them up. Essentially, it was the Apple store experience brought directly to your doorstep.
But as the company rapidly expanded, I was promoted to Virtual Learning Facilitator — an HR role welcoming new employees to the company through a 2-week onboarding.
This role acted as a turning point for me, as it gave me many valuable skills that would serve me later in life. Not to mention, direct insight into the company’s business strategy.
It was here where I began seeing cracks in the company’s foundation. Even though on the surface, everything was going swimmingly.
Even to investors.
The business model was sound.
Looking back, it’s hard to tell exactly where things went wrong — even after my stock options went from a sizeable chunk of cash to precisely $0.
The business model was solid — and it was (seemingly) executed well.
But the money trail ended in a blaze of glory, shortly after Jon and Tim’s sprint toward public funding…
Here’s the business model in a nutshell: 🥜👇
Currently, buying cell phones is tedious. You basically have 2 options:
Purchase it online: not understanding what plan you need or how to use your device
Go into a store: which can be a hassle, not to mention stressful
Adore showed up as a free add-on service for major telecommunications players. When ordering online, customers had the option to:
Have their phone delivered in 1–2 weeks via UPS or Canada Post.
Or, have a human come to their home the same day (sometimes same hour) to help set up their phone (transfer their contacts, move the SIM card over, etc.) and show them how to use it.
For most customers, the choice was simple.
And, when an Adore Expert showed up to deliver the phone, they brought with them additional products, promotions, and the ability to upgrade services.
Bringing the store to consumers — for free.
Here’s how Adore made money: 💰 🤝
Adore’s partners loved sending Experts out to customers’ homes, as they helped improve customer satisfaction, average sale, and reduced the percentage of returned devices.
Telecommunications companies have notoriously bad customer satisfaction ratings, with the average Net Promoter Score (NPS) sitting at around 30 out of 100. Adore held a consistent average NPS of 80, worldwide. 💡
In return for the free service, Adore made money through:
A flat fee per delivery
Commission on warranties and add-ons sold
A proprietary scheduling system (“The Adore App”), allowed for same-day, even same-hour deliveries.
It’s what set Adore apart.
They also treated their employees well, offering:
A living wage
Stock options
Health benefits
Sales incentives
Experts worked 4-day work weeks and set their own schedules.
Being hired on the ground floor felt like being an early employee at Uber, Netflix, or Tesla. We salivated at the idea of the company’s stocks spiking in the future.
These were exciting times.
Thousands of employees were onboarded with a smile.
Prior to working for Adore, I spent nearly a decade in the retail space. Suffice it to say, I was ready for a change.
But, after taking a leap of faith and falling flat on my face, I needed a lifeline. So, in the spring of 2019, I swallowed my pride and started applying for retail sales jobs.
As is one of the unspoken laws of the universe, it often gives you exactly what you want only after accepting what you need. At this time in my life, I wanted to work for myself. But, I needed a job to repay my debt and climb back to a $0 bank balance.
And the universe listened.
A few months after being hired as an Adore Expert, I was presented with the opportunity to become a Virtual Learning Facilitator. In other words, a Zoom onboarding instructor.
This job allowed me to continue working through the pandemic from the comfort of my home. It also taught me invaluable lessons about running your own business.
I was involved in everything — brainstorming meetings, learning strategies, as well as course development for the onboarding program.
I’m thankful for this role as it gave me valuable work experience:
Software knowledge
Email communication
Graphic design theory
Everything I felt I had missed by forgoing college in my younger years.
These skills, in addition to the confidence to appear on camera, have been integral in launching my YouTube channel. Which, laid the foundation for me to eventually quit my 9-5 to write full-time.
👉 And, has come full circle as I prepare to launch my Writing Dashboard — a tool built using many of the skills I learned at Adore. 🎁
The final day of each onboarding sprint often ended in happy tears, as employees felt as though they had found a home — just as I did when I was first hired.
But, like all good things in life, the good vibes eventually came to an end…
The first sign of distress.
When I was first hired by the company, my experience was amazing.
The interview process was fun, intuitive, and they seemed to want to hire creative people —not salespeople.
Although the business’ success relied on sales, the emphasis was on the vision:
“To deliver joy through life-changing mobile retail experiences.”
Training was thorough and forward-thinking. We even had a module dedicated to honouring your intuition. It gave us a sense of ownership over our roles.
We were flown across the country for training, had a say in feedback, and felt like we were making a difference. I had multiple points of contact and everyone got back to me quickly and enthusiastically.
The vibe was wholesome and authentic.
Although the aim was to make money, it always seemed secondary. Providing an amazing service was at the top of the list.
During onboarding, Jon and Tim regularly attended Zoom calls to answer questions from new employees. It’s rare for CEOs to meet new employees in such a fashion — but they seemed to genuinely enjoy it.
Honestly, everything seemed to be going well.
But in late 2021, things began to change… 📉
After announcing that Adore would go public, leadership changed. The focus moved from the core values to how to maximize sales. Communication softened and we were left to figure things out on our own.
The training wheels were being removed.
It became harder to get direction from those above me and new employees began reaching out to me, saying that their jobs were nothing like we made them out to be.
Managers began to be hired externally, with a focus on money.
Instead of the creative types who wanted to pursue a life of passion, we began to hire salespeople.
It was with this new focus on raising our numbers, that the structure of what made Adore special, began to crumble.
Hundreds of employees were laid off via Zoom.
Just like that.
One of the trending topics in early 2022 was mass Zoom firings. One story in particular went viral after a CEO fired 900 employees on a single call.
As much as, to me, Adore was special, it became just another headline.
On June. 30th, 2022, “Vice Motherboard” ran a story titled: “Watch the Moment that CEO of Delivery Startup [Adore] Fires Hundreds of People.”
It outlined a leaked video of Jon Swanson effectively shutting down operations in Canada and the UK, laying off all current employees.
They called it a “notice of redundancy”.
In plain speak, the company wasn’t making enough to pay its employees.
Amongst many things, what I initially loved about Adore, was its core values. We called customers “Adorers” and used language such as ‘offering solutions’ as opposed to selling add-ons.
But, like anything, a company is only as strong as its weakest link. And obviously, the people-first focus wasn’t making enough money.
Looking back, there were warning signs. And the sprint to expansion was likely a race to beat the clock — before money ran out.
Finally, Adore filed for bankruptcy.
3 months after going public, Adore filed for bankruptcy. Like any large-scale fall, it happened in waves:
First, some key players left
Then, communication took a dive
Lastly, the company culture crumbled
6 months after leaving Adore, I received a letter in the mail from a Law firm — it was about my stocks.
Adore had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. My stocks were worth next to nothing, and I’d have to take legal action to collect them.
I had high hopes for those stocks — thinking one day they would be worth something. But, they weren’t. Not anymore.
I sighed and thought, ‘It’s too bad’.
A company once worth $1.2 billion, down the drain.
Fortunately/unfortunately, at the time, I was straddled between the sensible decision of keeping my 9-5 and quitting to write full-time.
Ultimately, I made the decision to leave and just 3 months later, Adore was bankrupt. I felt terrible for the employees who had lost their jobs.
But, for me, it turned out to be the right decision.
Final thoughts: is empathy scalable?
Although I’m much happier now, with complete autonomy over my schedule, Adore will always hold a special place in my heart.
It focused on empathy, acceptance, and treated their employees right. But, its sudden plummet into bankruptcy has always left me wondering,
“Do you need to be cutthroat to succeed?”
You often hear stories of the largest and most successful companies mistreating their employees. So, it was refreshing to be on the ground floor of what felt like a positive change.
Unfortunately, that floor let out and the ship began to sink before seeing where it could take us. But, I’m hopeful this was an isolated instance.
And, companies can still be built on positive core values. 🤞
You’re invited to join Writer’s Hub! 💌
Hey, I’m Hudson! I created Writer’s Hub to help you make money as a writer. To have posts just like this one sent directly to you, become a free or paid subscriber. 🙋♂️✍️
This is a fascinating story to read. Thank you for sharing your experience, Hudson! I think it’s so awesome that you showed how the failed business effort still resulted in positive growth for you.
I really hope we can have examples soon of some financially successful companies built on similarly positive energy to “Adore.” It sounds like things started going downhill when new management abandoned the core values you all started with. It’s a hard balance to be financially focused and empathy focused.
Empathy matters. If employees are not treated well, their morale suffers, and that leads to people slacking off as far as perfomance and or leaving. People won't stay where they aren't valued.