|
Advice definitely depends on more factors that you’ve shared. (I’m not asking you to share more, just stating the situation.) It depends on how your co-founders feel, it depends on your collective financial situation, on your equity agreements, outstanding contracts, it depends on what will happen to your customers, etc. I started a company with a friend and when we ran out of money, energy to continue started petering out, even though our metrics were trending the right direction - surely, but slowly, too slowly. We were very lucky to get a buyer right before we were about to close the doors, someone who we knew, who cared, and who was able to get some funding and carry the torch and keep it growing. That took a lot of the worry out of having to stop working on it. As for the next step - I think I found the best of both of your options in a small team inside a large company. It has helped refill the coffers a little after spending more than I should have trying to get a startup off the ground, and it has been exciting and fast paced in a startup kind of way. It depends on your appetite for startup environments, but a couple of things I like about bigco right now are that I don’t have to do payroll or taxes or advertising or worry at all about where money is coming from. I get to go deep on technical subjects and spend time inventing rather than productizing. After having done a startup, I would like to do another some day, but I have learned many lessons, and personally I want to wait for the right idea, the right funding, the right team, and not just jump into any ol’ startup at all. |