I find this story extremely tragic -- not because this man's company, his dreams, failed so tremendously, but that he allowed two fundamental aspects of his adult life to fail with it.
Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities?
I don't mean to attack any premise of the story; I'm honestly curious what startup founders think of this article. I personally have no goals of huge buy-outs nor IPOs, but I would like to start my own business some day. I can't imagine being willing to give up my significant other to focus on the business, and I would hope that about the time I start thinking about using personal credit cards to finance the company I also stop and realize that the company is dead already.
I sincerely don't know what I'm suppose to take from this article, but I have the feeling based on some of the comments in this thread that the parts I find important are not the same parts that others find important.
>Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities?
Ultimately, whether or not it was "worth it" will always be decided based on the final outcome of the company coupled with a large dose of hindsight bias. A startup founder who sacrificed relationships to build a successful company will be recognized as having made the correct decision amidst the company of those who couldn't understand his/her vision.
A startup founder who fails having sacrificed relationships and friendships will be recognized as foolish and overly ambitious.
If you want a story that aspiring founders responded positively to: "How credit card arbitrage funded my first company."[1] fared pretty well on Reddit/HN when it was first written. From the comfort of success it's easy to judge one's decisions as the correct decisions. It's just as easy to condemn the same decisions made by a failed founder.
For me personal debt came simply because I wanted the startup to succeed. Doing whatever it takes was simply taken for granted (by me). Oh, money is needed? Sure, I'll just take out a loan I'm betting my life on this startup, what could possibly go wrong if I bet a tiny bit more?
The personal relatinoship part ... what personal relationship part? I had a serious girlfriend that I got to see one hour a week or less. And even then I was so distracted by the mountain of worry and stress from the startup that I barely even noticed she was there.
It took a year or two to properly bounce back from all that. But I think all in all I'm a better bloke for it. Much more able to make sure things happen in such a way they don't cause too much stress.
Actually, the biggest lesson was that working too much produces more extra work than it solves. These days I take plenty of breaks. I also make sure I stop working the moment I don't feel at 100% anymore ... people aren't paying me to work when I'm tired.
At Startup Weekend events in LA it's popular to show Alec Baldwin's performance of the "Coffee is for Closers" speech from "Glengarry Glen Ross."
The intent is to try and rally the troops and build excitement. Really this is something I find sad and another example of missaligned priorities given the actual content of the movie and the plot that is actually unfolding.
Instead of seeing a sociopath that is driving people to commit fraud and crime, people see Jack Donaghy delivering the "truth" to some losers before heading outside to make love to Liz Lemon.
More to my point, there is this thread of unhealthy romanticized ideas about startups and perhaps work in general that some people, organizations, and publications like to promote. This is just another example. There isn't anything that says "don't be like this." It's a big fish story about the one that got away.
All the business credit card applications I've seen have joint and several liability between the company and the individuals personally. Maybe there's a point at which a company can get credit cards that nobody is individually, personally responsible for, but AFAICT it's not at a startup.
For the people start a startup then it has to be worth it, because you're putting everything on the line. To him the relationship obviously wasn't as important as the startup's success. And if it got in the way? It had to go. With startups, there are only binary outcomes: wild success or abysmal failure. If you're betting everything on wild success, then sometimes you have to make those choices.
(I'm using startup in the sense of "high-growth new business")
>> Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities?
I know someone whose startup didn't work, lost his GF and was in lot of debt. He was well aware of these risks. Someone who runs a startups gives his/her everything to make it work (if determined). Startup founders are optimistic by nature and they are always hopeful that things will work out if they don't give up and work hard. Unfortunately, the trade-off is personal life!
While it isn't me now -- I learned this lesson while I was still working in other people's startups, before actually building my own -- this kind of heads-down, work is life, look up at the end and realize "wow, what was I thinking" is very familiar. I suspect a lot of people here have gone through the period of compulsive overwork that comes after learning skills but before gaining perspective.
It's quite easy to wind up putting personal finances into a company. The feeling is of being "right on the verge" and just needing enough cash to make it until that big deal goes through. It could even be as simple as founders not taking a salary and burning through their own savings on living expenses.
As far as abandoning all of your other relationships, though, I think that is entirely avoidable.
The amount of privilege built into this "painful failure" is disquieting. Here's a person whose biggest problem in life appears to be that he's in debt and, for the moment, unemployed. But: he was the CEO of a company funded to the tune of 8xFTE, and can thus almost certainly walk into hundreds of VP/Product Management or Business Development roles immediately, all of which will pay him more than any of his technical employees. Employees who are also, let's please face it, immensely privileged.
I wouldn't care, except that towards the end someone texts him and he angrily pouts that nobody can know his pain. Well, it's not for me to judge, right. But as someone who does in fact believe that people have an immortal soul, I would say that that whatever the universal spirit or cosmic order or divine intent that unites our existance is, it should probably not be taunted with statements like "you cannot know the pain of someone who was the CEO of a tech company shutting down his office for the last time before hunting for a job in the hottest sector of the entire economy", because that universal whatever might take the time to show you what it's like to be the 48-year-old employee of a midwest factory being shut down.
I had a neighbor who's kid --- a great kid, from what I can tell --- brought a pocketknife to school to show other kids. He was zero-tolerance expelled. My neighbor was doing OK for himself, but not OK to the extent of "could swing private school". From what I understand, that event killed it for them: they had to move, the mom and kids to one state (where the extended family lived and the school district would admit the boy) and the dad to a neighboring state to work and commute back on weekends. Do you know a lot of tech people that have had to do that? Then I'd like to suggest those people have standing to at least commiserate with the founder of a failed startup. And this is just something I saw personally; my inclination is, shit like this happens. Shit that is too boring to be the topic of a news story at the top of HN. Shit that happens to people who aren't lucky enough to be in the middle of the startup economy, and that happens approximately all the time.
Grand projects fail all the time. Open source projects die. Web communities die. Clubs wind down. Sporting teams disband. I write this so you can angrily tell me that I'm wrong: tell me what's so bad about a tech startup failing in 2012? (Let me preempt one obvious angry barb by saying that was a cofounder and investor in a VC-funded startup that failed in 2001, the "nuclear winter").
Please: I'm not saying that startup people are so lucky that they're not allowed to be unhappy when their companies fail. I am saying something else that is more subtle than that.
If you draw out this line of thinking, pretty much all tragedy is whining. Shakespeare would go like this:
ROMEO: That Juliet chick is hot!
BENVOLIO: Dude, she's Capulet. Find some other ho, plenty of fish in the sea.
ROMEO: Good point.
FIN.
Perspective is by definition subjective. Some people are thrilled to be the first member of their family to go to college. Others commit suicide when they don't get their first choice. Almost exactly one year ago one of the founders of Diaspora took his own life. Is your eulogy "he was an ingrate jerk who didn't appreciate how lucky he was?" Even if it's true, nobody deserves that.
This story is well-written narrative. It's something many of us have experienced to various degrees, and a cautionary tale for those still in the euphoric stage. Take it for what it is -- a reminder that not every startup story is a fairy tale.
I think everyone has had that moment when they think "no one knows this pain." It's easy to lose perspective when everything - from a relative perspective - looks like it's collapsing.
One could similarly make the argument that a factory worker in the midwest should get some perspective and see how bad the kids with swollen stomachs and vultures overhead have it. Obviously that's not fair.
This is a person who committed a couple of years, a good chunk of capital, and a good relationship for an idea. And on top of that, they gambled their pride - to try so hard and still fail is a defeating feeling. Especially when people around you are succeeding at the same game.
Admittedly this is all presumptuous, but that's the point. For all we know this could be a work of fiction. Or the author might have struggled through all of this and then some. It seems similarly presumptuous too to conclude that the author has a privileged perspective.
Trying to paint degrees of hopelessness on people and saying the privileged shouldn't complain is wrong. You are always the privileged to someone else.
Being happy is what everyone aspires to - and for many, it means success and doing stuff - as in creating, or as in having a job (much more important that having a salary at least to some people such as Ghandi)
The 48 yo unqualified factory worker right to happiness is just as important as your and mine - we haven't find a good way to say which persons happiness are to be prioritized.
Also, the right to happiness doesn't and shouldn't mean forced equality for everyone - some will fail, some will succeed.
But IMHO you're very wrong in your rant. You shouldn't say that what you consider "priviledged" should shut up - it almost read as if they should engage in some shadefreude, finding happiness while watching other people barely making a living. That's even worse.
You should celebrate instead that he had a chance, and wish him and every other human being to succeed in their endeavours - whatever they are.
I'm not sure which part of a story about a guy whose dream crashed, whose bank account is less than empty, and whose girlfriend left made you think "I am offended that he is upset."
I daresay my problems are somewhat worse than those of the OP's CEO. He isn't in a divorce, doesn't have kids, does he? And yeah, even if my problems are worse, they're still distinctly First World. It isn't as if I have trouble finding potable water for my kids, or have to worry about teenager "soldiers" raping my daughter. So maybe I too am Entitled. And perhaps I too should just Shut Up.
But I don't think so. I can tell you for an absolutely fucking fact that my problems have hurt like hell. And I am pretty goddam sure that those of this guy hurt pretty damn hard too. This guy put his ass out there on the line, everything he had, and came up LOSER. That's going to sting for any one with an ounce of pride. Yes, yes, yes, he'll land some VP Biz Dev job and he'll be All Right but the dream of being his own man has kind of taken a turn for the worse, hasn't it? I daresay that he and I both would drop our crying towels and head for the recruiters' office if the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor tomorrow, and our current problems would seem pretty fucking silly when viewed atop some modern day Iwo Jima. Nevertheless we don't at this exact moment have the benefit of all that perspective and holy shit, this hurts.
I have SEEN with my own two eyes people with whom I would not trade places for a single second. I have seen the people with the serious wrist scars, the verticals-along-the-veins of the suicides who mean business. I have talked with men so schizophrenic I almost cried to see a human mind so shattered before me. I have slept with a woman for no other purpose than to hear her rise "to go to the bathroom" so I could follow her and ensure she wasn't going to the kitchen to do the serious wrist thing. I have heard a mother wailing at the death of her only child.
So I know what Pain looks like and I know I am damn sight removed from how fucking Bad It Can Get. Okay? And I still know that were I have been hurt like hell, and it made no sense to me. And the last goddam thing I needed was some asshole sneering about how much worse it could be. I mean, no shit, Sherlock.
See thing about perspective is, it's _rational_. It's detached from a moment and a circumstance. The thing about pain is, it is _not_ rational. It is emotional and is about you and your moment. And no one who ever cared enough about anything to accomplish something did it without emotion.
Someone put their ass out on the line. They Failed. It hurts. First World problem? Absolutely. Guess what, here in the first world, we're people too, and we hurt too. We will get over it, we will move on, we will acquire the perspective you so generously commend to us.
But hopefully we'll retain enough knowledge of the pain to have a little sympathy for those going through it.
Thank you, Thomas, for saving me writing a much less eloquent comment along the same lines. As a startup founder way out in the wilderness, I'm often equally amused and saddened by SV tales of woe. We must all keep reminding ourselves of the '48-year-old employee of a midwest factory being shut down', and try to keep a proper perspective on values.
The original article was poetic, but struck me as hollow. Had the author really experienced this, or was this just a creative writing exercise? It didn't feel genuine to me - like this is the way a company ends in the movies, not in real life.
I think you underestimate the pain created due to expectations, Greater the expectation, greater the pain.
Startups are being promoted to every one all over the world as the way to create wealth after mentioning minimally that 90 to 95% startups will fail. If i am 48 year old guy working in a Manufacturing Factory in the US, i can definitely see from far off that i may loose my job. When i can predict my outcome, i can start taking evasive action and i am prepared for any eventuality and this lessens the pain even though it does not eliminate the pain.
Life itself is hard, but managing your expectations ensures that your journey is less pain full or may have more chances of joy.
You can do a small experiment to find the pain or pleasure created, Just promise somebody that you will do anything on a particular date and don't it or do it and you will find their pain is proportional to the expectation which they had on your ability to do the task.
You know what, you're right on the money and the worst part is with people angrily denouncing you they've forgotten that one of the biggest trends in startups is 'fail fast'. It fails, it sucks, you tried. Either get back on the horse or transition out and go work for one of the myriad companies that'll be hiring.
dunno, why you get so much hostility from other posters, maybe they just really don't like being told "other people have it worse off".
anyway, one of your key points i think others on this thread are missing is that this guy has (even in failure) a huge amount of real-world experience that will land him 100k+ salaries if he chooses go to a corporate job.
You are correct that their is some privilege but depending on the situation the clean up / fallout of a failed company can really be quite bad.
Many times founders can be left with astronomical debt pretty much guaranteeing bankruptcy being the only way out. Additionally its not unheard for business loans to have a house on the line as collateral. This doesn't mean this is always the situation but is not as rare of a story as one may think.
This story mirrors my startup experience exactly, including the moment where I had to lay off my friends, took a last long look at "our place" before turning the lights off, remembering that this was what I had sacrificed my relationship for, including the ending where I thought of nothing but the crushing mountain of personal debt. In some ways, this is the archetypical founder's nightmare, and it's happening every day in a lot of places. If you're doing a startup, this should be the one scenario that haunts you and motivates you to do better.
If this is in the general vicinity of "Worst. Day. Ever." for you, your life is pretty effing awesome now isn't it. One Thanksgiving a year seems inadequate under the circumstances.
(I respectfully suggest that anyone unable to put death of a startup in perspective invest some effort in rekindling ties with folks outside our little bubble. Again, it's Thanksgiving, so you've got a built-in excuse.)
I'm sorry for being negative but I must say this is pretty hard to take.
This narrative is cliche in both in form and content. It's painfully melodramatic and offers almost no insight whatsoever. Yes, major losses in any sphere of life can be poignant (in a way this text surely is not). So what? Where's the value?
The problem is not that you're negative, it's that you're unwilling to see the potential of learning from other people's mistakes. Just shutting yourself off from the prospect and consequences of failure does not automatically make you immune to those mistakes. Smart people fail every day, and sometimes those failures are personal disasters. It's a good idea to remind yourself what's at stake sometimes.
Winning the startup lottery is also a cliche, but I don't see anyone complaining when random successful people relate their accounts (some of which could not possibly translate to anyone else).
Sure, from the above it sounds like you think it's silly to call this art, you certainly don't like it. But it's a small piece written by someone for a single purpose, to illicit an emotional response. Whether you consider it good or not it certainly doesn't mean it's not art.
And in the end I'm sure plenty of people identified with it and responded in the way the author intended. No, it doesn't provide any major insight but it probably provided some value to some people. And just because it didn't for you doesn't justify knocking it down as worthless, at least that's how I've come to view any art I don't necessarily enjoy.
I thought the same regarding cliche. The themes are too obvious to me: head in hands, lost girlfriend, lingering last look. They're all listed in TV tropes somewhere.
That being said, I'm the guy who cringes when someone sings about their love being like the moon, stars and sun. There are many people out there who aren't as overly sensitive to cliched writing as me. I think it has value for anyone who felt something while reading it, and it looks like many people in the thread did.
I feel a faint shudder of foreboding while reading it, but I think it was the image at the top of the article that caused it. Very desolate.
Nicely written and invokes a bit of an emotional response from me. But just a bit...
And then I realize that this person (whoever s/he is, real or fictional) has suffered from the fundamental problem of all business: profit. For some reason, the IT industry as of late has dismissed profits and traditional business rules for the sake of fictional ideals like pageviews, user signups, and such. And while the latter things matter somewhat, there must be a directed line from those metrics to dollars and cents, because utility companies (electricity, Internet, water) like to be paid in dollars and cents, not promises and wishes.
Profit is every bit as fictional of an ideal as a pageview or user signup. Most business activity do not take into account the externalities (corn is "profitable" but heavily subsidized by the government and most manufactured goods end up in a landfill that's not paid for by the company) that are created but not accounted for in the "Profit and Loss Statement"
Many technical people are uncomfortable with business because it's too organic. It would be really nice if X amount of effort guaranteed Y amount of dollars, but that's only somewhat predictable some of the time.
There's also that whole marketing thing (which I understand the need for, but will never understand the thing itself) that can drive tech people batshit.
there is a big difference between bootstrapping a business and going for VC as a start up.
It's great to be either but please dont ridicule one or the other because you prefer one type yourself.
ps. I have a bootstrapped business like you talked about so I know what you mean. It is weird to hear from my friends that work at funded start ups about the crazy money being spent. But we need to realise they have to build scale extremely fast.
I am a co-founder and when I bootstrapped my company we made a pact to make sure the startup had to support its own weight. It had to pay its own bills. It had to grow its own customer base. It was a person.
Everything we did, everything we made, everything we said, everything we coded, made the startup stand on its own feet. Granted, things change after series A but I say this because if you find yourself using your own credit cards, your own savings, then you need to think different.
Where did you get the money from to start it? No-one's going to buy anything from a startup that does nothing, and doing anything means at a minimum some labour (and usually buying some stuff as well). Unless you're very well-connected, if you're not investing yourself why would anyone else do so? If you happen to be wealthy already then great (I suspect most successful startups are founded by children of rich families), but if not your choices are either spend time acquiring money to put into it, or use the money/credit you have.
One of the best decisions I ever made was to admit failure early when I saw it coming. It wasn't ambiguous or one of those "if I try hard enough, I can turn this ship around" situations. It was clear that my idea, project, marketing efforts -- all of it -- was essentially going down the tubes. The cash in my savings account burnt off like fog on the Golden Gate. These are standard pressures, but there were some systemic things that keyed me off to how clearly it had failed.
For one, my heart wasn't in it. It was like I had spent months crafting an idea that I thought an audience of customers would receive happily - only to realize I wouldn't use it or care about it myself. It also had become a business proposition I couldn't succeed at myself. I needed more help than ever.
So I packed up my stuff and killed it. It was painful, but I am glad I had the ability to see the truth before getting so bad as to be like the scene painted in this post. That said, it's not always obvious like it was in my case; I have tremendous respect for folks that go through this and fight to the bitter end.
"It was over now. Two years of work and dreams replaced by a landing page."
Two years...that's it?
Developing tech products is an exercise in walking away. The vast majority of code written is a total https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala no longer in regular use by anyone within a few years. It used to be said that most software projects were canceled due to overruns before completion.
"Even the t-shirts had been given away."
Serious question...what else was anyone going to do with them?
It's interesting to think about what can happen after the collapse of a startup, particularly when we tend to give so much of ourselves to the process. I think it's inherently a regenerative process, though. A company may disappear but the lessons stick with you. I'd guess it's not easier but perhaps more familiar the next go around. That's comforting.
Hopefully this is a fictional account of at least the emotions felt by the subject, Mr. "CEO."
If you're going to be in business, I suggest throw out your hockey sticks, pivots, titles, and other nomenclature associated with any romantic fiction you think you're embarking upon. All business is about profit - the "math." Most often that means selling something that costs you less to acquire/produce. Sometimes for a savvy few, that means the business itself is the product.
If you generate substantial profit, you'll be a hero who can do no wrong, with admirers in proportion. If instead you run out of money, you quietly close up shop and start over or take a real job for a while.
If you're really cut out for business you have to be thick-skinned and rational. Any emotional attachment you have to the business will likely just impair your judgement and cause you to miss opportunity or worse take you down with it someday.
I've experienced my own version of this once before, where I lost a girlfriend (and distanced myself from friends and family) but ultimately it didn't work out.
My advice is to remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint. Unless you nurture and protect the important relationships around you you will burn out and the recovery from failure if it comes will be that much longer. If you are 22 or 23 a girlfriend may be less important, but remember to invest time in seeing your friends (non-company!) and family. Prioritize time as a concrete thing that will keep you refreshed and energized over the long haul.
This is EXACTLY how I felt with my first start-up Free.TV It took me years to get over the failure and actually learn from it. But while I am more wise now in my new startups, it makes me realize maybe they may not be as a "big Idea" or that perhaps I am now too cautious and so may not be as successful. Thank you for putting my feelings in such a clear story.
The comments criticizing the protagonist are somewhat churlish. If someone shares painful emotions with the a comment like "how could they know my pain," he is demonstrating that he has some awareness that his emotions include self pity, that his feelings are subjective. Generally, in the the US anyway, people know that sharing such feelings is not cool. (People start with snarky comments along the lines of "call the waaahbmulance")
The author is trying to buck the huge social pressure against admitting such feelings. Therefore, to ridicule such a person is re-enforcing the paradigms which drive the feelings in the first place.
On a personal note, I have never been comforted in times of unhappiness to have it pointed out that many people have it far worse. I guess if you are someone who derives a sense of well being based on how well you are doing relative to others, being reminded of how much better off you than the hordes of wretched who walk this earth could give you some happiness.
The ending is wrong. The former CEO should not just sulk in darkness. He should be consumed with terror and overwhelming anxiety as he sinks with his gutted office into to the sulphurous underworld, while low-level demon-bureaucrats from Hades emerge from the pit to jab at him with their pitchforks.
Haha geeze, the crowd here is brutal. I don't think the writer is saying that he has the objectively worst life, and everyone should feel bad for him. It's just a microcosm of the human experience. This article is showing that, even in our prosperous country, a relatively successful person can feel the same pain of failure and rejection that everyone feels at some point. The rich and poor all struggle to find out who they are and what their place in life is.
This isn't a contest of who suffered the most. Even though dying is common, it doesn't mean a death is trivial. Personal experiences should be able to be shared without marginalization.
While this story is sad I think it is super important for YC. This page is usually crowded with stories and posts of people telling you how they made it and what you can do to be super successful yourself.
Stories like this one serve the important purpose of unskewing our views on how easy it is to start a company and get rich.
There are reasons why people like 9-5 jobs at big companies (first and foremost probably safety) and it is important not to lose track of them reading all those "you just need to write everything on pink flashcards and your startup is going to make millions next week" stories. :)
Boo hoo. This is emo nonsense. Life is a brutal war for survival you are going to get severely beaten down a few dozen times before you ever make it to the top. 1% of 1% have an easy route to the top. The rest take it on the chin a few times, spit out their teeth, and keep throwing punches.
You seriously can't let that much negativity into your own life. Your business failed? Cool. That same day, 30,000 kids starved to death in Africa. You learned a lot about running a business and discovered that your specific idea didn't work out.
Move on and find a new adventure. Live in the windshield, not the rear view mirror.
I am not an entrepreneur in the HN-sense, so i may just be naive but... Why do you have to shut down you web company once you run out of money? I mesn, can't you just lay off the employees, close the office, take the servers to your basement, get a 'real' job and turn your startup into a hobby?
I mean, the only really necessary expense there is to running a wep-app or whatever, is the electrical bill, right? I assume you've build something in those two years, why flush it away?
Honest question, hope to learn more about the nuances of being a founder!
[+] [-] courtewing|13 years ago|reply
Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities?
I don't mean to attack any premise of the story; I'm honestly curious what startup founders think of this article. I personally have no goals of huge buy-outs nor IPOs, but I would like to start my own business some day. I can't imagine being willing to give up my significant other to focus on the business, and I would hope that about the time I start thinking about using personal credit cards to finance the company I also stop and realize that the company is dead already.
I sincerely don't know what I'm suppose to take from this article, but I have the feeling based on some of the comments in this thread that the parts I find important are not the same parts that others find important.
[+] [-] Permit|13 years ago|reply
Ultimately, whether or not it was "worth it" will always be decided based on the final outcome of the company coupled with a large dose of hindsight bias. A startup founder who sacrificed relationships to build a successful company will be recognized as having made the correct decision amidst the company of those who couldn't understand his/her vision.
A startup founder who fails having sacrificed relationships and friendships will be recognized as foolish and overly ambitious.
If you want a story that aspiring founders responded positively to: "How credit card arbitrage funded my first company."[1] fared pretty well on Reddit/HN when it was first written. From the comfort of success it's easy to judge one's decisions as the correct decisions. It's just as easy to condemn the same decisions made by a failed founder.
[1]http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-try-this-at-home-how-credit-c...
[+] [-] Swizec|13 years ago|reply
The personal relatinoship part ... what personal relationship part? I had a serious girlfriend that I got to see one hour a week or less. And even then I was so distracted by the mountain of worry and stress from the startup that I barely even noticed she was there.
It took a year or two to properly bounce back from all that. But I think all in all I'm a better bloke for it. Much more able to make sure things happen in such a way they don't cause too much stress.
Actually, the biggest lesson was that working too much produces more extra work than it solves. These days I take plenty of breaks. I also make sure I stop working the moment I don't feel at 100% anymore ... people aren't paying me to work when I'm tired.
[+] [-] Moto7451|13 years ago|reply
The intent is to try and rally the troops and build excitement. Really this is something I find sad and another example of missaligned priorities given the actual content of the movie and the plot that is actually unfolding.
Instead of seeing a sociopath that is driving people to commit fraud and crime, people see Jack Donaghy delivering the "truth" to some losers before heading outside to make love to Liz Lemon.
More to my point, there is this thread of unhealthy romanticized ideas about startups and perhaps work in general that some people, organizations, and publications like to promote. This is just another example. There isn't anything that says "don't be like this." It's a big fish story about the one that got away.
[+] [-] ams6110|13 years ago|reply
All the business credit card applications I've seen have joint and several liability between the company and the individuals personally. Maybe there's a point at which a company can get credit cards that nobody is individually, personally responsible for, but AFAICT it's not at a startup.
[+] [-] brycec|13 years ago|reply
(I'm using startup in the sense of "high-growth new business")
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dm8|13 years ago|reply
I know someone whose startup didn't work, lost his GF and was in lot of debt. He was well aware of these risks. Someone who runs a startups gives his/her everything to make it work (if determined). Startup founders are optimistic by nature and they are always hopeful that things will work out if they don't give up and work hard. Unfortunately, the trade-off is personal life!
[+] [-] obviouslygreen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakejake|13 years ago|reply
As far as abandoning all of your other relationships, though, I think that is entirely avoidable.
[+] [-] tptacek|13 years ago|reply
I wouldn't care, except that towards the end someone texts him and he angrily pouts that nobody can know his pain. Well, it's not for me to judge, right. But as someone who does in fact believe that people have an immortal soul, I would say that that whatever the universal spirit or cosmic order or divine intent that unites our existance is, it should probably not be taunted with statements like "you cannot know the pain of someone who was the CEO of a tech company shutting down his office for the last time before hunting for a job in the hottest sector of the entire economy", because that universal whatever might take the time to show you what it's like to be the 48-year-old employee of a midwest factory being shut down.
I had a neighbor who's kid --- a great kid, from what I can tell --- brought a pocketknife to school to show other kids. He was zero-tolerance expelled. My neighbor was doing OK for himself, but not OK to the extent of "could swing private school". From what I understand, that event killed it for them: they had to move, the mom and kids to one state (where the extended family lived and the school district would admit the boy) and the dad to a neighboring state to work and commute back on weekends. Do you know a lot of tech people that have had to do that? Then I'd like to suggest those people have standing to at least commiserate with the founder of a failed startup. And this is just something I saw personally; my inclination is, shit like this happens. Shit that is too boring to be the topic of a news story at the top of HN. Shit that happens to people who aren't lucky enough to be in the middle of the startup economy, and that happens approximately all the time.
Grand projects fail all the time. Open source projects die. Web communities die. Clubs wind down. Sporting teams disband. I write this so you can angrily tell me that I'm wrong: tell me what's so bad about a tech startup failing in 2012? (Let me preempt one obvious angry barb by saying that was a cofounder and investor in a VC-funded startup that failed in 2001, the "nuclear winter").
Please: I'm not saying that startup people are so lucky that they're not allowed to be unhappy when their companies fail. I am saying something else that is more subtle than that.
[+] [-] stickfigure|13 years ago|reply
If you draw out this line of thinking, pretty much all tragedy is whining. Shakespeare would go like this:
Perspective is by definition subjective. Some people are thrilled to be the first member of their family to go to college. Others commit suicide when they don't get their first choice. Almost exactly one year ago one of the founders of Diaspora took his own life. Is your eulogy "he was an ingrate jerk who didn't appreciate how lucky he was?" Even if it's true, nobody deserves that.This story is well-written narrative. It's something many of us have experienced to various degrees, and a cautionary tale for those still in the euphoric stage. Take it for what it is -- a reminder that not every startup story is a fairy tale.
Now get back to work.
[+] [-] m0th87|13 years ago|reply
One could similarly make the argument that a factory worker in the midwest should get some perspective and see how bad the kids with swollen stomachs and vultures overhead have it. Obviously that's not fair.
This is a person who committed a couple of years, a good chunk of capital, and a good relationship for an idea. And on top of that, they gambled their pride - to try so hard and still fail is a defeating feeling. Especially when people around you are succeeding at the same game.
Admittedly this is all presumptuous, but that's the point. For all we know this could be a work of fiction. Or the author might have struggled through all of this and then some. It seems similarly presumptuous too to conclude that the author has a privileged perspective.
[+] [-] guylhem|13 years ago|reply
Trying to paint degrees of hopelessness on people and saying the privileged shouldn't complain is wrong. You are always the privileged to someone else.
Being happy is what everyone aspires to - and for many, it means success and doing stuff - as in creating, or as in having a job (much more important that having a salary at least to some people such as Ghandi)
The 48 yo unqualified factory worker right to happiness is just as important as your and mine - we haven't find a good way to say which persons happiness are to be prioritized.
Also, the right to happiness doesn't and shouldn't mean forced equality for everyone - some will fail, some will succeed.
But IMHO you're very wrong in your rant. You shouldn't say that what you consider "priviledged" should shut up - it almost read as if they should engage in some shadefreude, finding happiness while watching other people barely making a living. That's even worse.
You should celebrate instead that he had a chance, and wish him and every other human being to succeed in their endeavours - whatever they are.
[+] [-] monochromatic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chernevik|13 years ago|reply
I daresay my problems are somewhat worse than those of the OP's CEO. He isn't in a divorce, doesn't have kids, does he? And yeah, even if my problems are worse, they're still distinctly First World. It isn't as if I have trouble finding potable water for my kids, or have to worry about teenager "soldiers" raping my daughter. So maybe I too am Entitled. And perhaps I too should just Shut Up.
But I don't think so. I can tell you for an absolutely fucking fact that my problems have hurt like hell. And I am pretty goddam sure that those of this guy hurt pretty damn hard too. This guy put his ass out there on the line, everything he had, and came up LOSER. That's going to sting for any one with an ounce of pride. Yes, yes, yes, he'll land some VP Biz Dev job and he'll be All Right but the dream of being his own man has kind of taken a turn for the worse, hasn't it? I daresay that he and I both would drop our crying towels and head for the recruiters' office if the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor tomorrow, and our current problems would seem pretty fucking silly when viewed atop some modern day Iwo Jima. Nevertheless we don't at this exact moment have the benefit of all that perspective and holy shit, this hurts.
I have SEEN with my own two eyes people with whom I would not trade places for a single second. I have seen the people with the serious wrist scars, the verticals-along-the-veins of the suicides who mean business. I have talked with men so schizophrenic I almost cried to see a human mind so shattered before me. I have slept with a woman for no other purpose than to hear her rise "to go to the bathroom" so I could follow her and ensure she wasn't going to the kitchen to do the serious wrist thing. I have heard a mother wailing at the death of her only child.
So I know what Pain looks like and I know I am damn sight removed from how fucking Bad It Can Get. Okay? And I still know that were I have been hurt like hell, and it made no sense to me. And the last goddam thing I needed was some asshole sneering about how much worse it could be. I mean, no shit, Sherlock.
See thing about perspective is, it's _rational_. It's detached from a moment and a circumstance. The thing about pain is, it is _not_ rational. It is emotional and is about you and your moment. And no one who ever cared enough about anything to accomplish something did it without emotion.
Someone put their ass out on the line. They Failed. It hurts. First World problem? Absolutely. Guess what, here in the first world, we're people too, and we hurt too. We will get over it, we will move on, we will acquire the perspective you so generously commend to us.
But hopefully we'll retain enough knowledge of the pain to have a little sympathy for those going through it.
[+] [-] jimwhitson|13 years ago|reply
Thank you, Thomas, for saving me writing a much less eloquent comment along the same lines. As a startup founder way out in the wilderness, I'm often equally amused and saddened by SV tales of woe. We must all keep reminding ourselves of the '48-year-old employee of a midwest factory being shut down', and try to keep a proper perspective on values.
[+] [-] unreal37|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srid68|13 years ago|reply
Startups are being promoted to every one all over the world as the way to create wealth after mentioning minimally that 90 to 95% startups will fail. If i am 48 year old guy working in a Manufacturing Factory in the US, i can definitely see from far off that i may loose my job. When i can predict my outcome, i can start taking evasive action and i am prepared for any eventuality and this lessens the pain even though it does not eliminate the pain.
Life itself is hard, but managing your expectations ensures that your journey is less pain full or may have more chances of joy.
You can do a small experiment to find the pain or pleasure created, Just promise somebody that you will do anything on a particular date and don't it or do it and you will find their pain is proportional to the expectation which they had on your ability to do the task.
[+] [-] nicholassmith|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edwinnathaniel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novaleaf|13 years ago|reply
anyway, one of your key points i think others on this thread are missing is that this guy has (even in failure) a huge amount of real-world experience that will land him 100k+ salaries if he chooses go to a corporate job.
[+] [-] moocow01|13 years ago|reply
Many times founders can be left with astronomical debt pretty much guaranteeing bankruptcy being the only way out. Additionally its not unheard for business loans to have a house on the line as collateral. This doesn't mean this is always the situation but is not as rare of a story as one may think.
[+] [-] Udo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patio11|13 years ago|reply
(I respectfully suggest that anyone unable to put death of a startup in perspective invest some effort in rekindling ties with folks outside our little bubble. Again, it's Thanksgiving, so you've got a built-in excuse.)
[+] [-] ForrestN|13 years ago|reply
This narrative is cliche in both in form and content. It's painfully melodramatic and offers almost no insight whatsoever. Yes, major losses in any sphere of life can be poignant (in a way this text surely is not). So what? Where's the value?
[+] [-] Udo|13 years ago|reply
Winning the startup lottery is also a cliche, but I don't see anyone complaining when random successful people relate their accounts (some of which could not possibly translate to anyone else).
[+] [-] efuquen|13 years ago|reply
What's the value in art?
Sure, from the above it sounds like you think it's silly to call this art, you certainly don't like it. But it's a small piece written by someone for a single purpose, to illicit an emotional response. Whether you consider it good or not it certainly doesn't mean it's not art.
And in the end I'm sure plenty of people identified with it and responded in the way the author intended. No, it doesn't provide any major insight but it probably provided some value to some people. And just because it didn't for you doesn't justify knocking it down as worthless, at least that's how I've come to view any art I don't necessarily enjoy.
So what? I enjoyed reading it, that's what.
[+] [-] saraid216|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] famo|13 years ago|reply
That being said, I'm the guy who cringes when someone sings about their love being like the moon, stars and sun. There are many people out there who aren't as overly sensitive to cliched writing as me. I think it has value for anyone who felt something while reading it, and it looks like many people in the thread did.
I feel a faint shudder of foreboding while reading it, but I think it was the image at the top of the article that caused it. Very desolate.
[+] [-] typicalrunt|13 years ago|reply
And then I realize that this person (whoever s/he is, real or fictional) has suffered from the fundamental problem of all business: profit. For some reason, the IT industry as of late has dismissed profits and traditional business rules for the sake of fictional ideals like pageviews, user signups, and such. And while the latter things matter somewhat, there must be a directed line from those metrics to dollars and cents, because utility companies (electricity, Internet, water) like to be paid in dollars and cents, not promises and wishes.
[+] [-] jasonshen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivingmenuts|13 years ago|reply
There's also that whole marketing thing (which I understand the need for, but will never understand the thing itself) that can drive tech people batshit.
[+] [-] djt|13 years ago|reply
It's great to be either but please dont ridicule one or the other because you prefer one type yourself.
ps. I have a bootstrapped business like you talked about so I know what you mean. It is weird to hear from my friends that work at funded start ups about the crazy money being spent. But we need to realise they have to build scale extremely fast.
[+] [-] electic|13 years ago|reply
Everything we did, everything we made, everything we said, everything we coded, made the startup stand on its own feet. Granted, things change after series A but I say this because if you find yourself using your own credit cards, your own savings, then you need to think different.
[+] [-] lmm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sentiental|13 years ago|reply
For one, my heart wasn't in it. It was like I had spent months crafting an idea that I thought an audience of customers would receive happily - only to realize I wouldn't use it or care about it myself. It also had become a business proposition I couldn't succeed at myself. I needed more help than ever.
So I packed up my stuff and killed it. It was painful, but I am glad I had the ability to see the truth before getting so bad as to be like the scene painted in this post. That said, it's not always obvious like it was in my case; I have tremendous respect for folks that go through this and fight to the bitter end.
[+] [-] uahal|13 years ago|reply
If it's not working but there's a chance you could make it something valuable, give it another go.
If it's not going to work and you know it's not going to work, it's time to shut it down and move on.
(edited for clarity)
[+] [-] marshray|13 years ago|reply
Two years...that's it?
Developing tech products is an exercise in walking away. The vast majority of code written is a total https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala no longer in regular use by anyone within a few years. It used to be said that most software projects were canceled due to overruns before completion.
"Even the t-shirts had been given away."
Serious question...what else was anyone going to do with them?
"8 IKEA desks = $1,200, 8 Aeron chairs (used) = $4,000"
I don't think I've ever written a line of code while sitting at a $150 desk in a $500 (used) chair.
"Nobody ever told him the hockey stick of user growth might look more like a baseball bat laying in an empty field."
B. S.
This piece is weird. I don't get it.
[+] [-] Kaedon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OldSchool|13 years ago|reply
If you're going to be in business, I suggest throw out your hockey sticks, pivots, titles, and other nomenclature associated with any romantic fiction you think you're embarking upon. All business is about profit - the "math." Most often that means selling something that costs you less to acquire/produce. Sometimes for a savvy few, that means the business itself is the product.
If you generate substantial profit, you'll be a hero who can do no wrong, with admirers in proportion. If instead you run out of money, you quietly close up shop and start over or take a real job for a while.
If you're really cut out for business you have to be thick-skinned and rational. Any emotional attachment you have to the business will likely just impair your judgement and cause you to miss opportunity or worse take you down with it someday.
[+] [-] technotony|13 years ago|reply
My advice is to remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint. Unless you nurture and protect the important relationships around you you will burn out and the recovery from failure if it comes will be that much longer. If you are 22 or 23 a girlfriend may be less important, but remember to invest time in seeing your friends (non-company!) and family. Prioritize time as a concrete thing that will keep you refreshed and energized over the long haul.
[+] [-] opendomain|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b1daly|13 years ago|reply
The author is trying to buck the huge social pressure against admitting such feelings. Therefore, to ridicule such a person is re-enforcing the paradigms which drive the feelings in the first place.
On a personal note, I have never been comforted in times of unhappiness to have it pointed out that many people have it far worse. I guess if you are someone who derives a sense of well being based on how well you are doing relative to others, being reminded of how much better off you than the hordes of wretched who walk this earth could give you some happiness.
[+] [-] daniel-cussen|13 years ago|reply
What have you done!?
[+] [-] ChristianMarks|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeformed|13 years ago|reply
This isn't a contest of who suffered the most. Even though dying is common, it doesn't mean a death is trivial. Personal experiences should be able to be shared without marginalization.
[+] [-] Sarien|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forrestkyle|13 years ago|reply
You seriously can't let that much negativity into your own life. Your business failed? Cool. That same day, 30,000 kids starved to death in Africa. You learned a lot about running a business and discovered that your specific idea didn't work out.
Move on and find a new adventure. Live in the windshield, not the rear view mirror.
[+] [-] MrJagil|13 years ago|reply
I mean, the only really necessary expense there is to running a wep-app or whatever, is the electrical bill, right? I assume you've build something in those two years, why flush it away?
Honest question, hope to learn more about the nuances of being a founder!