What did they do with that money? They just raised it last year. I feel like this goes outside of just being a bad economy.

Edit: they were giving hundreds of dollars of product away for free. I found a link to a previous article.

https://www.wired.com/story/flip-viral-video-app-shopping-fr...

Customer acquisition always has a cost. Nothing wrong there. Advertising, handing out products or handing out cash. The fine article mentions 16.5 million users. Even if that's somehow inflated, that had a cost. Was this customer acquisition worthwhile, the right strategy? Who knows. Was it profitable? clearly not.

Growth and engagement.

I’m sure that during its heyday plenty of product managers, marketers and engineers boasted about lines going up.

Unfortunately it turns out there is no magic bank where you can drop all that engagement and get real money for it. These guys found out the hard way.

I don't see how giving away stuff is a good business plan. I guess they gave it all away and are now forced to close.

TikTok sellers do a lot of that, but they didn't even launch the shop until they were viral for a few years. You can't shortcut network effect.

> “What’s the catch?” the company’s FAQ page said. “Honestly, there isn’t one. You post, you watch, you shop — and Flip rewards you for it. Rewards get you free products. Creator Earnings get you real money you can cash out. That’s really it.”

The catch is they're riding on a train of free money and it's not legally mandated that people keep paying them.

How is working in a company that closes up? Anyone any experience ?