$35 million-funded Omni is packing up and shutting down after struggling to make the economics of equipment rentals and physical on-demand storage work out. It’s another victim of a venture capital-subsidized business offering a convenient service at an unsustainable price.
The startup fought for a second wind after selling off its physical storage operations to competitor Clutter in May. Then sources tell me it tried to build a whitelabel software platform for letting brick-and-mortar merchants rent stuff like drills or tents as well as sell them so Omni could get out of hands-on logistics. But now the whole company is folding, with Coinbase hiring roughly 10 of Omni’s engineers.
“They realized that the core business was just challenging as architected” a source close to Omni tells TechCrunch. “The service was really great for the consumer but when they looked at what it would take to scale, that would be difficult and expensive.” Another source says Omni’s peak headcount was around 70.
The news follows TechCrunch’s report in October that Omni had laid off operations teams members and was in talks to sell its engineering team to Coinbase. Omni had internally discussed informing its retail rental partners ahead of time that it would be shutting down. Meanwhile, it frantically worked to stop team members from contacting the press about the startup’s internal troubles.
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/25/omni-shuts-down/