Lily Cole's Impossible dream on brink of collapse as funding-backed venture heads to strike-off

Lily Cole's gift-exchange platform Impossible is on the brink of closure after Companies House served a compulsory strike-off notice on the not-for-profit entity I Am Possible Ltd, with the company set to be wound up within two months.

Launched in 2013 by Cambridge graduate Lily Cole, the site let people post 'wishes' for services or objects and for others in their communities to fulfill those requests for free. It drew government backing from a now-defunct Nesta fund and also received funding from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, with the venture even touring the United States as an example of the best of British business. The project was described at the time as a 'cash machine that printed wishes'.

Despite early excitement, Impossible's finances deteriorated. By 2016 the firm had racked up annual losses of more than £250,000. The not-for-profit firm, registered under the name I Am Possible Ltd, was described at the time as a 'cash machine that printed wishes'.

The last accounts filed in October 2024 show the company was £64,000 in the red, had no staff and assets little over £400. The news comes as Cole revealed a 'crisis moment' in which her activist instincts had turned toward becoming a business person.

Speaking on the Conversations With The Lissome podcast last month, she said: 'Everything felt very heavy and serious and businessy, and I realised I didn't want to be a business person, I didn't want to manage companies.' Cole, who fronted campaigns for Chanel, Hermes and Prada, launched Impossible as an antidote to the 2008 financial crash, with requests ranging from ladders to services such as shopping collection, fulfilled by others for free. The platform served more than 100,000 users around the planet before its closure.

The compulsory strike-off underscores the challenges of sustaining not-for-profit, peer-to-peer ventures that relied on philanthropic or high-profile funding, long after their initial hype faded.