[presidentender]

"the author needed to grow a spine" cuts to my soul.

I was the technical cofounder of a startup. We spent a similar amount of money on a similar agency, on advisors to tell our designer he was doing a good job, and on content writers who were friends of my business founder. I was gentle in my contrary feedback.

On the engineering side, I let an early hire (a friend of mine) refactor our codebase to future-proof it against our inevitable scale. When I tried to call a meeting and redirect, another senior engineer expressed that he "liked" the new domain-driven approach, and that was that. I should have said "no."

Ultimately we shut down; my cofounder left the company and I didn't do anything that fixed it. The business didn't make sense in retrospect. I still feel a lot of guilt for lighting the VC money on fire.

The author should have grown a spine. I should grow a spine.