Evaluating only PropSVPR’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Market too small as the #1 likely cause. Documented cause: External shock.
Key Events Timeline
FOUNDING
CRISIS
MILESTONE
CRISIS
SHUTDOWN
Full Analysis
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Documented cause
PropSVPR built a residential real estate marketplace for Puerto Rico, listing 4,500 properties and facilitating $80M in annual transactions at peak. Hurricane Maria in September 2017 devastated the island's real estate market, reducing transaction volume by 60% and forcing an 8-month operational suspension while the founders rebuilt infrastructure. The platform recovered to 70% of pre-Maria volume by 2019. COVID then eliminated tourism property transactions (25% of the platform's GMV) for 14 months. A platform dependent on a single-island market of 3.2M people had no geographic fallback for either crisis.
Lesson
“For Puerto Rico proptech: build the platform to serve the Puerto Rican diaspora market in Florida and New York from day one. Cross-market geographic diversification is the only hedge against island-specific catastrophic risk.”
Failure anatomy
Collapse type
Slow Death
🐌 LOW
Hype cycle
Decline
Moat type
Network Effects
Fatal mistake
Hurricane Maria devastated the real estate market the platform was built on