[gearhart]

Is there anybody who wants your product? Do you have customers? Are they paying you? Is there cash that's just going straight out the door for hosting etc, or is there no cash at all?

I've run one startup that failed outright after 18 months with 10 grand still left in the bank, and I've run one that scraped through to become a success after 4~5 months of having nothing in the bank - I was sleeping on couches because I couldn't afford rent and my girlfriend bought me most of my meals - I got very close to packing it in. The difference between the two was that nobody wanted what we'd built the first time, the second time we were losing money, but people were paying us good money to use the product.

If somebody wants what you're selling - keep selling it, tell your partner that if he wants it to work he needs to put some cash in your pocket to keep your lights on and focus on the money, do whatever you need to do to get your customers to give you more. From where you are, the time for focusing on perfect product is over - you need to cash in what you've built. If you haven't built anything that anybody wants to pay for yet, forget about it, it's not going to happen this time - take a break, get an easy job, get some money and start again when you're ready. It'll be sooner than you think.

[superpi]

We had cash coming in, but it just stopped all at once. Like no one renewed their contract, so I guess that's a red light

[myth_buster]

[I've not been in your situation so please take my comment with a grain of salt.]

I feel there needs to be a closure. The "experience" that @jacquesm refers to is an understanding of what worked and what didn't. Solely based on your the comment above, I think you may need to spend some time learning why the cash flow stopped. Look into what lead to that situation and what could have been done different. Perhaps this may (as it's fresh in your memory) or may not (due to your emotional state) be the right time to do the analysis. People with more experience can chime in here.

Anywho, I don't think people who set out to do things of this nature can be failures. The experience and knowledge gained will easily put you above the median. Replenish & repeat.

[hluska]

This is a great comment. I have been in the OP's position. In fact, I technically kind of am in the OP's position (again) right now.

Personally (and forgive my language), when I look into what lead to the situation and what could have been done differently, my perspective on what happened changes as time goes on.

For me, stage one is "I'm a fucking failure whose head is so completely full of shit that I could make a fortune selling manure". Stage one is great fun because it is when I look at every single choice that I made and find the negative in it. This stage is completely irrational and is likely a symptom of mental illness. My brain usually just lies to me during stage one, so I usually prefer to get the most mindless job imaginable (delivering pizza is amazing) and spend my days listening to vinyl, reading books and lifting weights. I am in my late 30s, so this is a little too close to the plot of American Beauty for even my comfort, but so it goes.

Stage two is where the real growth starts. It is the "I'm a fucking failure because" stage. My startup post-mortems tend to come out of this stage - they are a point where I begin to focus on the particular choices that killed off my startup. All of the noise and ambiguity of stage one is gone, the emotional pain is still there, but it has been dulled by the knowledge that nobody can screw up 100% of the time.

Stage three is the "I learned..." stage and is the place where I feel ready to (as you eloquently say) rise 'above the median'. This is the stage where I realize that I actually did something...it didn't work out, but most crazy ventures fail. I did something, I earned my skin, and nobody can ever take that away from me. Strangely, in stage three, I usually laugh at how naive my startup post-mortem was.

The OP likely can't stop analyzing what went wrong, but at this point, it is just as likely that his/her brain isn't telling him/her the truth. This sounds like his/her first business and, I know that this is hard to believe, but it will get better. This feeling of failure will turn into a profound learning experience that will propel him/her above the median.

Once again though, excellent comment and huge respect for focusing on the positive!!