The demise of online estate agency eMoov is a cautionary tale of how difficult it is to succeed in a ruthlessly competitive B2C market, even when making what appear to be all the right moves.

It wasn’t lack of a great product that caused eMoov to fold. Nor was it strategic or management mistakes. And it certainly wasn’t because the company lacked good leadership. In Russell Quirk, eMoov had an excellent CEO who did a great job building the business to become one of the UK’s biggest hybrid estate agents. He also hired an impressive C level team with experience from Just Eat, BookaTable and Groupon.

So, if it wasn’t any of those things, what did go wrong?