Evaluating only Creditas’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Unit economics as the #1 likely cause. That’s exactly how it died.
Key Events Timeline
FOUNDING
Creditas founded
DOWN ROUND
Down round or bridge financing
SHUTDOWN
Mass Layoff Spiral: Creditas ceases operations
Full Analysis
Free · no account needed
Documented cause
Creditas raised $530M from SoftBank, Kaszek, Accel, and Goldman Sachs at a $4.8B valuation, building Brazil's largest home-equity and payroll-deductible lending platform. When Brazil's Selic rate rose to 13.75% in 2022, cost of capital for Creditas's entire lending book surged. The company cut 1,300 employees — 46% of its workforce — in a single week in October 2022, wrote down its valuation by approximately 70%, and pivoted from aggressive growth to survival mode.
Lesson
“Lending companies at 8-9x NIM must model their entire P&L under a 400bps rate increase before claiming unicorn status. Selic volatility is known; it should not be a surprise.”