Team
68Strong growth marketers. Light on anyone who has owned a contribution margin.
This part of the screen is weighted at 30 percent.
Echo
Shopping agents that were supposed to take a cut of the basket.
BerlinAgentsFounded 202322 people
Market
70Consumers will delegate a repurchase. Merchants will not happily fund the agent that sits between them and the buyer.
This part of the screen is weighted at 25 percent.
Traction
66Gross merchandise looked like a business. Net revenue after returns and incentives did not.
This part of the screen is weighted at 25 percent.
Moat
35None we could find. The merchant can email the same offer. The model is rented.
This part of the screen is weighted at 20 percent.
Pass
Screened 26 Sept 2026Pre-written. The replay is simulated.
Summary
Passed on 28 September. Echo takes a fee when its agent completes a purchase. Reported GMV was €18m. Net revenue was €800k, and a cohort cut showed the second order depended on an incentive we would be funding. We do not need a more eloquent version of that.
Why now
A bank was running a process with a deadline. Deadlines are how funds talk themselves into take-rate stories. We wrote the pass instead.
Product
A consumer agent plus a merchant offer feed. The agent is fine. The feed is a set of discounts. Nothing in the loop gets better because Echo saw the last basket, because the merchant will not share the basket.
Business
Take rate on GMV, in theory. In the file, contribution margin after returns, fraud, and the incentive was roughly zero on the newest cohort. Older cohorts looked better because they were subsidised less, and they were also not growing.
Recommendation
Pass. Reopen only if they come back with a merchant-side product that a retailer renews without a subsidy. Do not reopen for a new GMV chart.