The $48M VC-Backed Failure That Powered the Comeback
The Story
In 2018 Yossi launched Gettacar, “an online platform where folks could shop for a used, reasonably priced car and get it delivered the next day” (Source 2). His own framing on the founding logic: “I didn’t have that much clarity yet, but I knew we could do better. I couldn’t see myself continue to deliver this type of experience for the next 20 years.” (Source 2).
The capital stack: “Gettacar landed on Technical.ly’s RealLIST Startups list in 2020… The company went on to raise $48 million in venture capital and counted at least 150 employees split between the Philadelphia region and Tel Aviv.” (Source 2). His own bio describes it as “$50M+ from investors including 3L Capital, Luxor Capital, Headline, and Torch” (Source 3).
The growth arc, in his own words: “We grew the company, we raised a second round of funding of $18 and a half million. We raised a third round of funding of $25 million. Each of those rounds was at a $75 million and a $200 and $215 million valuation respectively.” (Source 1).
Peak: “2021, we did close to 90 million a year in sales. We had 200 employees… We had sold about 3,000 cars and we had our own reconditioning center.” (Source 1). Source 4 puts purchases up 270% year-over-year and “close to $80 million in sales” by 2021.
The break: “June 2021 was the first month I think that we missed budget drastically. I think it was about 30% or something, top line. And we had just raised another round, our third round. We closed it February 2021.” (Source 1).
The wind-down was deliberate. “We’re not best positioned to compete in this market. We still have a pretty sufficient amount of capital on the balance sheet. Let’s return to capital to investors. Let’s just not throw good money after bad.” (Source 1). It took two years from the first miss to fully wind it down (Source 1).
The handoff: “It’s time we appointed someone to just handle the wind down, and I was going to go figure out my next thing.” (Source 1). That next thing became Car Dealership Guy.
Lesson for Creators
A clean failure compounds better than a messy one. Yossi could have kept Gettacar limping for another two years burning the rest of the runway, but instead he returned remaining capital to investors. That decision, brutal in the moment, became the foundation of his next brand: he could go to ex-investors, ex-customers, and the press as a founder who wound down responsibly, not as someone running a slow-motion bankruptcy. Failure is not the enemy of credibility. Dishonesty about failure is.
Related
- The Failed Not Boring Club That Became Not Boring — a smaller failure that seeded the next, much bigger thing
- $50M in Ad Spend Before Going Solo — past at-scale experience as the engine for the next venture
- Quit Banking, Got Sued, Paid €15,000 — founder failure as an unavoidable phase before a real win
- Failed Pre-Med, Became a History Major — failure as a redirect, not an endpoint