[mef]

out of money, final payroll, no alternative but to go into zombie mode, yet for the last few months the co-founder has been working on his next product which will launch in 2025.

maybe everything that could have been tried was tried but this comes off like some of the effort spent working on the next company could have been spent keeping this one alive

[vidyesh]

They said they will be using the proceeds from that for-profile company to pay for a team member's salary and keep Exercism running as much as they can. So this next company could be considered to be an effort to keep this old one alive!

[p3rls]

It sucks being out of money and then you have to fend off the "why aren't you more dedicated" line of questioning when you had to find an alternative to keep the company alive

[yieldcrv]

Oooh contingent on the next unproven idea being economically viable.

Amusing. I walk away from all business partners that think this way

They hand waive away “who will pay what”

[dheera]

> but this comes off like ...

You don't know more about the company than them.

Most likely they saw this coming months ahead of time, and needed to figure out how to pay their own rents after actual doomsday and needed to pre-emptively start figuring out what's next.

Founders who don't start with a pre-existing financial cushion have very, very little job security if they underpay themselves and their businesses shut down without an exit. Also, founders tend to be generalists, and most big companies don't need more generalists, so it's not easy to get hired, doubly so if you have wasted a lot of your brain pitching to investors and having coffee chats with clients. The harsh reality is, the more you are forced to chat with investors and customers instead of working heads-down, the more you lose your hard technical abilities that other people would hire you for.

As a founder of a shutting down company, if you want to pay your rent on time, you need to do one of 3 things: (a) pay higher salaries prior to shutdown to give you some time to figure yourself out (controversial), (b) start studying to be a specialist well ahead of shutdown and get on the interview treadmill, (c) start working on your next thing well ahead of shutdown.

If you do none of those things, things can get really dangerous to your personal finances.

[ihid]

Exactly. Thank you. Also, I'm using the new thing to keep exercism funded. But even if I wasn't, your post would be entirely true!