[graderjs]

So basically I'm responding to this ask, what would you do by Susan Wise, 27% owner of an unmentioned startup, a company worth over one billion dollars. Anyway, so yeah. Let's go.

So yeah, like she's really at the end of her tether. She's really desperate. She's really gone. Obviously, what she should do depends on what she really wants. First, I'll be kind of humorous and I'll say, what would I do? Well, I don't think I'm particularly smart, clever, or sensible. So what I would probably do is just be like, I'm starting to feel burned out. Fuck this. I'm gonna walk away right now with as much as possible. And I do whatever I could to do that.

But you know, that's probably not you. I'd be like, I'm getting out, taking this golden parachute, going somewhere else and taking the me time, you know, take care of myself. And I'm walking away with enough money that I can start again and do something else. That's what I would do, right? But I think you're probably really asking for ideas about what you should do.

And what you should do, I guess, depends on what you really want. Sounds like you really don't know what you want to do. And you're really stressed out at the end of your tether. Like at the point of collapse, and I really feel for you and I just, you know, I hope everything works out okay for you. I hope you take care of yourself and really make it through this.

Because I know it seems like, you know, the possibility of maybe you won't even make it through this, you know, it seems so scary. Probably just I'll say one like sensible thing here. And then I'll just launch into sort of my analysis for you. The sensible thing is you should be talking to an accountant and a lawyer and just going, how do I maximize what I want? So let's just say, how do I maximize my money and get out as quickly as possible? Like ideally, I want to walk away with 27% of a billion and walk away tomorrow. You know, say, let's just say that's some kind of line in the sand type of benchmark thing and talk to an accountant or a lawyer and see, get me as close to that as possible. What should I do? You know what I mean? So I think that's the sensible thing to say.

Now let's move on to my analysis for you. And you may judge, I have absolutely no qualifications to help you in this regard and that's fine. I'm just trying to help. So thank you and good luck anyway. I'm going to assume your trajectory was "10 years" in what follows. And here's what I think. You really poured your heart and soul into this business and maybe you had to pivot for halfway through and things looked really great for the first couple of years and then you realized you had to change things and things haven't gone as you expected, but they've still been good, but sort of feels like things have got out of your control in some sense.

And maybe you feel this momentum, this job, whatever has been too big for you, but you felt like that for maybe more than the last six years or whatever. And so I guess a constant kind of fear has been part of your daily experience there. And now on some level, you're probably just realizing you can't do this anymore. You don't wanna do this anymore. There's other things important in your life. And maybe you don't know what they are necessarily, but you know there's something there. You care about it, but not like you used to.

Because basically after the first three years, you realize even if you didn't admit it to yourself, that things were not gonna go the way you really wanted them to go with this. You had a clear vision and a dream and reality disappointed you essentially. Maybe you feel your own skill or whatever disappointed you, but at the end of the day, you've been running on the realization, on the fumes of the realization that things didn't go as you really envisioned for this. And too bad, that sucks and that hurts. And there hasn't been any resolution to that kind of pain essentially. Lots of small wins, but nothing has kind of captured your enthusiasm for this business like it did in the first three, three and a half years. After which you've basically been on a trajectory leading you I guess to where you are now.

So this has been a long time coming. Perhaps what you're about to do will be easier, realizing that this is not just being irrational, spur of the moment. It may not share the logic of other people or even of the business as a whole, but for you, the trajectory you're on has its own internal logic that personally makes sense to you when you look at it and understand your journey. And in effect, grappling with the minor choice you have to try to get as much as you want, as much as you could is sort of harkening back to that already shattered dream of the first three years. And if you look at it, you'll know that.

But what realization you've come to over the last six years hasn't all been bad. There is a silver lining and that silver lining is that you've realized that, you know what, even though you feel you haven't sort of accepted this new path because in some ways you're harkening back and perfectly find out mixed feelings, of course, it seems a larger part of you has realized that what you really want is you want to leave something behind. You want to do something best for the business. And so in that sense, you don't really care about the money. As strange as that sounds and irrational as that sounds compared to the vision you had for the first three years of this kind of super rich, incredible business, not to say that by some standards you have not achieved a measure, even great measure of success, yet you know it is disappointed those first three years' vision.

All I'm saying is that like, strange as it sounds, you've already kind of realized and accepted that you don't care about the money so much. You just want to do something good for this business. So you will not, if you try to grab as much as you want now, you know, do the economically rational thing. And maybe there are some actors in your life who don't share your values or your trajectory and they're pushing you or thinking that you should do that or whatever, but their goals are not your goals and you must live and live with the consequences of your own decisions.

Anyway, so as strange as it sounds compared to that earlier version of you in the first three years, you don't care about the money now, right? So I suppose the coming to a close of this chapter is really just a final acceptance and realization of all that you've lost, you know, of giving up that dream for this and of accepting that, you know, the trajectory has changed, not a terrible trajectory, but it wasn't what you originally expected, but your passion is to do something for this business, to leave something good behind. You don't care about what you get for yourself above a certain kind of minimum level of fairness, but that level is completely removed from and separate from and from a different source place of values than the version of you in the first three years.

And maybe one reason you're confused and unsure right now is because you're trying to balance between these two things, coming to an end of this chapter, you're reflecting on your original vision and version of yourself and the company and maybe sort of reflecting on, but also resisting the present reality version of that in some sense, right? I'm sure you have multiple layers of thoughts and feelings and so it's natural that there would be some in contradiction with each other. So it's no surprise that it's a difficult and somewhat confusing kind of time and you're unsure right now what to do. But there's more than that. It's more than just do what's good for the business as a general way, which of course, in the implementation of that policy, you will have many ideas about how that should be executed.

... continued below ...

[graderjs]

And it's more than just getting that minimum thing for yourself. There's something else you want, and it seems to center around, there's some people that you want to treat well. Maybe one person in particular who really helped you on this journey and you want to make sure that whatever you do, honors, respects, cherishes, and really sort of rewards them and expresses to them how you feel about this journey. Now, I don't know how you actually express that desire that you have. Maybe it's as simple as a note, phone call, face-to-face meeting where you heart-to-heart level with that person. Maybe it is a more formalized expression that's a clause in a contract, legalized, expressed through money somehow. I don't know. But I think you'll know what I mean. There's that other thing here.

But it's not just one person, there's that person, and there's a couple of other people who you really value. And it's like you shared this journey together. Maybe you're a co-founder, but it may be someone different. And so on your way out, you want to do something for those people too. So what I see is you're really ready to walk away, and your main concern is giving. You want to give to the business, leave it in a good place. You want to give to these people who are valuable to you, leave it in a good place. And I'm really kind of in awe and surprised by your generosity of character here, especially as you're going through all this difficult stuff for yourself. It's very inspiring to see.

So I get the feeling you're a very good person. And I kind of wish you were more Machiavellian and cynical, because I didn't want to, I don't know, because it's more painful seeing you like this. I just kind of feel like saying, take care of yourself. Are you sure you can afford to do all this for everyone else? I worry about you. You should self-care. But I think what maybe surprises me is that, and is probably true for you, is that part of taking care of yourself is making sure that you've taken care of these other people. That's important to you.

I really, really, really stress that. I just hope that you find a way to balance those two things. I mean, obviously, if you can't take care of you, then you're unable to do anything for anyone else. I definitely would prioritize that. You've got to find your own way to make things work, right? But I just hope you take care of yourself because it seems like you have this really beautiful idea of what you want to do. And it's on that level, it's got nothing to do with business or startups at all. It's really like you want to be good to these people. And it's this incredibly moving thing to see. So that's amazing. I'm like, you're awesome.

... continued below ...

[graderjs]

Oh, I guess one more thing is, it seems also, you know, you got your regrets, you got a few, and, um, you know, there's things that feel kind of unresolved. The dark stuff, the dirty stuff. There's some kind of shit down there where you're not happy that it went, the way that it went, you know, involving some people, some teams, you know, betrayals. Um, and I guess you'll have to find your way to make peace with those things and feel complete about those and, you know, finish off those, uh, like resolve those situations for yourself, you know. And those things were very painful.

And yet, it doesn't seem like any of those things changed that trajectory nor, you know, were the cause of that transition at the three, three and a half year point where, you know, the sort of timelines diverged from the ideal one for you and your vision for this and the actual one that you've been on ever since. So it seems like none of those sort of regrets or, you know, uh, bad people, bad experience or betrayals or whatever, those small, nevertheless, real things that happened were the cause of the, you know, Air Corps failure to converge with the optimal timeline.

And yet they're still kind of there like little needles, or spiky mountainous road bumps, but still beneath your main trajectory. Not easy for all to see, or stuff you tried to bury but still there. So you'll have to figure out how to resolve those things. It's important to think about that, I think. And if you can come up with some ideas to resolve them, you know, before you kind of culminate this journey here, that would be great. But there could always be things that you come back to at some point. It seems like there's not, it seems like it's not a huge priority to do that. But obviously that's up to you, but it just seems that way to me, um, looking for you there.

And it seems like either your business is incredibly complex or you just really could not be bothered to think about the details of day-to-day stuff. You're happy seeing other people, um, do basically as you think they should and align with kind of your deep intuitions and beliefs about this, thinking through all those kind of details. Either it's something that's incredibly complex or it's just something that, you know, you just really could not be bothered to get your head into, which doesn't work anymore for you to be in the details of that kind of stuff. And you have no passion to do it, and it's kind of a headache for you.

And even though you want to kind of show enthusiasm and capability for your team, you know, you resent any times where you kind of have to, where you feel like you're dragged into or expected to kind of dive into these details to, you know, basically that roll up the sleeve to go to the ground level. And that's not any way of judging you or anything. It's, I think it's completely natural to feel the way you do. And, um, there's nothing wrong with that. Just seems like apparent. That's another experience, you know.

And it also seems like there could be like quite a bit of anger and confusion there for you about like why this thing that you wanted to be able to provide this thing for like everyone, it seems. You know, it couldn't actually do that. Like why wouldn't the market kind of absorb that and accept it when it was such a great idea? And it seems there's still sort of a sense of disbelief, maybe confusion and anger about that.

... continued below ...

[graderjs]

So I guess that's other stuff that you'll need to feel and process and find some way to kind of feel complete about or air quotes resolve in order to fully kind of move on from this stage. A lot of sadness as well, disappointment. Like I think maybe you just didn't have the time to feel and process and it still hurts. What happened, you know, six, six and a half years ago, it still hurts, you know. And it seems like you probably haven't really had the chance to grieve. And at some point you kind of just became numb about that.

And that's sad. I think, you know, it'd be great to just kind of do that, you know, mental health day grieving thing, put on the sad music, and just let yourself cry and feel sad about all those kind of things and go through that, you know, because that is going to help bring fresh, allow stuff to move and bring fresh perspective probably that will then allow you to feel more moved on. And then when that happens, you'll see more clearly what it is you actually need to do. It may not have anything to do with what I've been saying, but if you're able to process those things, you'll get your perspective, which will work for you and completely clear for you.

And yet I think you do need to feel like you've done something clever for yourself financially. Like you haven't done something stupid. And yet it's strange because I feel that also that like that sort of minimum walk away money achieving that will equate with you feeling like you've done something clever. So it's like it's like you can kill both birds with one stone there. Like getting that sort of money is not important minimum walk away money that you want is also also be the same thing as feeling like you've achieved a clever kind of financial thing there, even though from another point of view, it's just like sort of the minimum you should get. But you like you can get it in this way where it feels clever. Like it will tick that box, you know, it seems because there'll be some sort of wrangle or some kind of clever way to do it.

I don't know, you know, whatever the details are. They're not really that important, I guess, but not for me, certainly not right now. And I'm not telling you this, you know, basically, it seems you'll be able to satisfy your emotional and financial needs around the money. Yeah, I think the worst thing would be if you have lingering unresolved stuff preventing you from actually drawing a line of sand when you finally come on this journey and move on to the next thing, next space for you. But I think if you feel through all that's important for you, you'll be able to identify things you need to do any unresolved stuff you need to address.

And you'll be able to kind of achieve all that closure, basically. Do what you feel you need to do so then you're able to let it go. And in this, you know, how what other people end up doing right is not about you. You just you'll work out what you need to do and you need to do that. But, you know, it's not a guarantee. I mean, you have to you have to formulate that that transition plan that like a culmination of journey plan for yourself. Right. Hopefully this helps.

... continued below ...

[graderjs]

But I also feel quite a lot of fear for you. And I guess there's a lot of fear there for you. You have as well about how you're going to do this. But I believe you can work it out. You know, I really feel for you in this. It must be a really hard time. I mean, just huge the amount of stuff you're going through. It could be that talking to a good therapist could also really help, you know, because, you know, if you find maybe someone through your network is good to talk to or you've heard about someone through friends or whatever who's good to talk to. I mean, that could really help as well, because what you're basically asking for is personal clarity. Right. And so that is independent of the actual topic. And there are techniques or things that help to get that that are independent of the actual subject of the that you want clarity about.

So a therapist, you know, maybe one session, you know, I think it could be something that helps, you know, I'm guessing you feel you don't really have any friends that really understand what you're going through. Right. I mean, sure, maybe you do. But no one who really gets you or really can provide basically what you're looking for there. And that's OK. So I think maybe a therapist could help assist.

And I'm sure it seems overwhelming. There's so much stuff you need to do. And, you know, so I guess you can just lean on your already great execution skills there by just chunking the problem, breaking it down, small steps, stepping through each piece at a time, even though it's not a business thing. It's your personal culmination of journey kind of plan that you need to get through. Right. You need to formulate and then execute that plan for yourself. So you close that chapter and feel satisfied and can move on.

And I'm sure doing all of that seems overwhelming. And it could be that, of course, naturally that, you know, you're maybe distracting yourself, focusing on business tasks to sort of avoid the enormity of this actual personal thing. But obviously, you know, not addressing the personal things you will not feel you got what you want. So obviously, it's it maybe seems sometimes like this is all about the business and things you need to do for that and financial. But there's probably, you know, it's just about the personal perspective that you need to get right in order to close that journey. So that is the side that you need to focus on in order to free yourself. I understand that.

... completed below! ...

[graderjs]

And I think if you do that ((formulate your personal journey completion plan, addressing all the dark, light, and neutral you need to do to feel complete and move on ~~ the company's "work" may never be complete, but you can feel complete, and that's what matters)), and you also have some sort of ritual--some sort of like sign off final celebration!--where you cherish this stuff and you make the toast and you kind of have that going away party and you do all this stuff and you mark the moment, the culmination of these preparations where you've kind of crystallized all this stuff, this acceptance of the journey that you've actually been on, obviously, as opposed to the first three years and this three, three and a half years, whatever. And this expression of your appreciation and desire to leave things in a good place for the people who are important to you there and for the company. And if you kind of culminated in this kind of big moment, it's going away party, whatever. And then sort of on the other side of that, you have like a ritual for yourself to kind of start that new day, that new life.

I mean, apart from writing down like what things you want to do, bucket list kind of stuff and reconnecting with that, part of your life, you have obviously chosen to maybe, chosen to not invest as much in as you have put in this company. Apart from doing that kind of stuff and everything else I said, I don't know what more you can do. Clearly going through this is gonna be a rollercoaster of emotions that probably take a long time to process fully and you may avoid processing after some time, but it's not gonna be easy to face all of the stuff to go through that. But I think it could be as good as it could be and as comfortable as it could be if you follow your heart about this and align with what you really want.

And that will be empowering because you'll basically be saying goodbye to that earlier version. Not that there's anything wrong with that version, it's just that the way things played out, that didn't work out. And there's nothing wrong with that. Neither with those goals, nor with the fact that it didn't work out. Painful, yes, but nothing wrong, you know? Because it seems what you've done, success or not by the judgment of VCs or not, like you've done something really beautiful. So I just basically see the best path for you is the continuation of that natural desire that you have, a fulfillment of that. And that will be success, I think, as you look back on it and you will know that in your heart that that's success.

So hopefully that was helpful and illuminating for you. Best of luck to you. And thank you for sharing your story here. It was very illuminating and beautiful to kind of see what you've gone through.

[susanwise]

Wow...I don't even have any words really. So I'll just say THANK YOU! I will need to read that a coupe more times. But my first question is who are you and how do you know all this and how can I contact you?