2 days ago
- Tract was founded in May 2023 to solve Britain's housing crisis by improving the planning permission process, raised £744k pre-seed in April 2024, and ceased operations in March 2025 after failing to secure a viable venture-scale business model.
- The company explored multiple business models: site-sourcing tool (Tract Source), free land-appraisal tool (Attract), tech-enabled land promotion, and an AI-powered planning document editor (Tract Editor), but none generated revenue.
- Key lessons include overestimating the British market's size and receptiveness, raising venture capital for a model that likely needed different funding, focusing too much on technology over business development, and building a team too early.
- The founders emphasize the importance of getting to the US market, staying lean until revenue is proven, being aggressively commercial from day one, and testing hypotheses quickly and thoroughly.
- Despite technical progress (e.g., Scout tool, Tract Editor), the company faced low willingness to pay, conservative industry, long sales cycles, and fragmented market, leading to the decision to return capital to investors.