The Truth About A Failing Startup

From: http://pastebin.com/BgxFCTEC HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5255209

Somehow, I managed to create an app that some people seemed to like. With some odd stroke of luck, an investor in the U.S saw the app, and saw something in me. He gave me a shot. Invested in me and my company.

Fast forward a couple of years, and that company still exists, but it’s on it’s last legs. It’s dying. I’ve failed. I haven’t been able to innovate, I guess I lost my touch. The money will run out within a couple of months, and the debts won’t be able to be paid. It will all collapse.

I think the investors lost faith a few months ago. They don’t contact me. They don’t even follow me on Twitter anymore and if they do contact and I reply, they don’t respond with answers to my questions.

It’s pretty shitty to be living in a state of impending doom. You know in a month or two, your entire life will crumble apart. You’ve tried everything but nothing works. Doom is coming. And you have to live with it. It’s a constant state of ever worsening depression.

When family asks how things are going, like all entrepreneurs, I respond with “Great!”. I don’t know how to tell them that I have failed.

The investors money is just about gone. My own money is non-existent.

I see articles on Hacker News about depression and entrepreneurs. Most of them are so far from reality. They don’t capture the sense of impending doom, the sense of failure. The don’t capture the loneliness, where you have nobody you can turn to.

If I can leave with one piece of advice to young founders. Please think really hard about taking other peoples money. If I had failed using my own money, I could live with it. But having a team of investors believe in you, only to let them down is an incredibly difficult thing to deal with. Try and finance your product yourself for as long as you can. At least until you can realise if your idea is decent (which takes a long time to figure out).