At the start of this year, Adam Dell, a onetime Goldman Sachs executive who helped lead the Wall Street firm’s push into Main Street banking, grabbed headlines when he launched a crypto investing startup. His timing would prove to be disastrous.
Dell’s Domain Money, backed with $33 million in funding from a host of big-name investors including Bessemer Venture Partners and Marc Benioff, went live in January—right as the crypto market sell-off was gaining steam. Now, nine months later, Domain Money has stopped taking new clients and charging fees, according to a regulatory filing. And around half of the startup’s 40 to 50 employees—half of whom came from Goldman—have left or been laid off.