Evaluating only Repositive’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Unit economics as the #1 likely cause. Documented cause: No market fit.
Key Events Timeline
FOUNDING
Fiona Nielsen founds Repositive in Cambridge to create a discovery platform for genomic research data.
FUNDING
Raises £4.5M in seed funding; platform reaches 20,000 researchers and indexes 4.5M genomic datasets.
DOWN ROUND
Series A fundraise fails; institutional partners refuse to pay for data access they previously shared freely.
SHUTDOWN
Company enters administration; platform assets acquired by EMBL-EBI at discounted price to preserve researcher access.
Full Analysis
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Documented cause
Repositive, a Cambridge-based startup, raised £4.5M to build a marketplace and discovery platform for genomic data, enabling researchers to find and access datasets across institutions. Founded by Carmen Mayber and Fiona Nielsen in 2014, the platform attracted 20,000 researchers but failed to convert institutional data custodians to paid data-sharing agreements. In 2020, following an unsuccessful Series A fundraise, the company entered administration and the platform was acquired at a discounted price by EMBL-EBI.
Lesson
“Genomic data marketplaces fail when institutional data owners resist commercialization on ethical and reputational grounds.”