[tresante]

This is something I'm pondering a lot these days. I am the co-founder of a startup that I'm in the process of winding down. We had some success but ultimately never gained sustainable market traction in a very hard to penetrate market.

Having bootstrapped the company to revenue and kept things very lean and with costs and employee salaries funded initially through personal savings and a little bit of debt, I didn't take a dime of salary for myself in over 3 years.

I always told myself the experience would be incredibly valuable regardless of what ultimately happened, knowing the chances of success were slim but opting to go for it anyway, because how else was real change effected? Yes, I've definitely learned a lot, would do things very differently a second time round and have gotten some experiences (good and bad) that I wouldn't otherwise have had, but I'm finding it hard to see much upside in the past 3 years right now. I see my colleagues doing well in their careers and seemingly every other startup founder I've met, crushing it, although I have also seen a few failures over time.

I've tried to sell what's left of the company but have had little interest. I've applied to jobs in the Bay Area but it's clear hiring managers don't know quite what box to put me in and would rather go with the brand name and "safer" candidates. Yes I'm being a little selective in where I want to work, but it's hard not to stick to your ideals after standing by them for the past 3 years.

Hopefully it'll all be part of a glorious master plan that becomes apparent in decades to come but at this point who knows! It's definitely given me a better appreciation for the risks that entrepreneurs (including early employees) take and a greater respect for those who do go out and grow something that truly makes the world a better place.

[pbecotte]

Having been one yourself very recently, you must be aware that every founder is "crushing it" right up until the put up that blog post about how it didn't work out, right?