The four I closed
Webcamlock, Flapsale, SecondProp and Timbrit. What the signal was in each one, and how long I took to accept it.
Of the seventeen companies I have entered as a founding investor since 2011, six were sold and four were closed. Closing fast is part of the method rather than an accident: the group incorporates the company, hires the team that runs it, and stays with it to success or to closure. The hard part comes before the decision, and it is accepting the signal the day it shows up.
Investors publish the exits. The four below were not sold.
Webcamlock started in 2011 and closed in 2012. Flapsale, in 2014, closed in 2015. SecondProp started in 2021 and closed in 2023. Timbrit started in 2018 and closed in 2025.
Look at the first two and the last one. One year, one year, two years, seven years. That distance is the only interesting thing I have to report.
Why is closing part of the method?
The group I invest with has worked together for over a decade. We do not look for outside founders to fund. We incorporate the company as founding investors, hire the team that will run it, and mentor that team on top, week by week.
That carries a consequence worth saying out loud: if we put the team in, the closure is ours too. There is no founder to assign the failure to.
It carries a second one, more useful. When you are the person who incorporated the company, you can close it without asking anyone. That freedom is exactly what makes you slow to use it.
What was the signal, each time?
Always the same kind of signal, and never the one in the spreadsheet. A model survives far longer than a business does.
The signal is that the repeat customer never shows up. You can buy traffic, drop the price, replace the sales team and ship the third version of the product. If the person who already bought once does not come back on their own, what you have is a cost of acquisition dressed as growth.
At Webcamlock and Flapsale we saw it within a year. At SecondProp, within two.
So why did Timbrit take seven?
Because it was growing. And because it was Colombia, where the home services market is genuinely large, so every quarter there was a reasonable case for one more quarter.
A company that grows without retaining gets closed later than one that does not grow. Growth buys time, and you are the one paying for that time.
That is what I take from the four, and it is the only part that generalises. The first three I closed when the data told me. The fourth I closed when I ran out of arguments for waiting, which is considerably later.
What would I do differently?
I would put the closing criterion in writing on the day of incorporation, with a number. Not a date, because a date moves. A twelve-month retention number, agreed while everyone is optimistic and nobody has anything to defend.
It is what I now ask for on the boards I sit on, and the awkward conversation is always the same: nobody wants to write the condition of their own death on their wedding day. Which is why it has to be written that day, the only one when it does not hurt.
- Of 17 holdings since 2011, 6 were sold and 4 were closed. (Juan Santana, own portfolio, as of September 2026)
- The four closures and their lifespan: Webcamlock 2011-2012, Flapsale 2014-2015, SecondProp 2021-2023, Timbrit 2018-2025. (same source)
- The investing group's model: incorporate the company as founding investors, then hire the management team, with hands-on mentoring. (Juan Santana, 2026)
Frequently asked
Is closing a company a failure for the investor?
It is an outcome of the method, and in a group that incorporates its own companies it is the outcome that stops a business without retention from eating five years of capital and attention. The failure is in taking too long, not in closing.
Which signal weighs most before closing?
Retention. The customer who bought once and does not come back unprompted. Every other indicator can be bought with money for quite a while, and that is the problem: they look like movement.
Why publish the closures and not only the exits?
Because everybody publishes exits, which is why they carry no information. A board assessing a director wants to know how that person decides when the right answer is to stop.
Who writes this
Juan Santana. Investor and independent director. Law at the University of Navarra and an MBA from IESE. Investment banking at Robertson Stephens and Lehman Brothers, then general management at Panda Security, Groupalia, Plenummedia and Publicar / Guru. Founding investor in seventeen companies since 2011, six sold and four closed.
The full profile, with the portfolio and the countries, is at Flight JS54.