I joined a business someone started, personally invested $200k, and forwent income for a year. This is after leaving a prestigious finance job after 5-6 years in the industry and quitting a senior role at a Fintech.
Company’s sales is flat, and it’s running out of money. If this doesn’t work out, I’m a guy who quit the previous start-up (not doing very well rn) after 1 year, blew money, and joined another one that’s also not doing well.
I feel like I’m not employable and that maybe my judgment is poor. Has anyone experienced or gone through this?
God didn’t give us a spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind. It’s okay to feel that way but don’t let it define you!
A lot of startups are struggling, you’re not alone. It’s almost on a daily basis now that I see someone announcing they’re winding down operations on LinkedIn.
Startups are frickin’ hard and most people within the industry know it. It’s uncommon to see profiles where every start-up was a raging success. But the learnings from these will probably help you speed up/get to PMF / pivot when needed faster as you progress.
Worked with a few myself as well, some faired better, some worse, and I have learned that many startups have “exits” which often cannot even be described as a win truly.
If you still have the energy and motivation to go through it I wouldn’t worry about the background. Past business experience is always useful for new teams, even if the businesses ended up not making it.
Yeah, I have. I got the offer of a ~1% share of a company I worked for in exchange for my overtime payout, and turned them down. Joke’s on me. I left some half-year later or so, and the product I built for them worked so good and reliable that they could successfully scale up. Being honest, at the time I gave that company 50:50 of crashing vs. succeeding, because I thought it might as well go south for reasons beyond my control. They are quite healthy still and growing, so I made a bad coin flip on this one as it would have been a share nice-to-have.
Don’t beat yourself up over failure like this. Figure out what’s inside your control and what’s outside of your control, and take ownership over what you can do.
Everything outside of that, it’s always good to seek council. You must have someone with a law-degree in your circle, right? Perhaps friends or family you can trust? Talk to them, and ask for guidance. I found that lawyers make excellent dialogue partners when it comes to situations like that. I didn’t do that. If I had talked to literally anybody about it, who knows what could have been negotiated instead.
Perhaps there is something you can do to turn it around. Like they say, a chip and a chair. You still got that. You’re not out of business yet.
Hope this helps to lift your mood a bit!
Given the amount of capital invested, unless they have multiple investment streams take control of what you can and if it’s a loss leader drop it before you lose more. As long as you have a story and have worked hard despite circumstances you are employable and a lot of employers love entrepreneurial spirit if you plan to work for someone again.
Another guy who got FOMOed by some “entrepreneur” tiktok.
If you got a good prestigious job making you good money, stick to that. You’ll have a better chance of retiring with a few millions there than in business.
If you worked before, you have some value in the previous company. You can always go back.
Truth is business is not for everyone. There is a steep learning curve and you need resilience for it.
Take some time away. Reflect on what you could have done better. Go back to a job. Build confidence. And come back again when you’re ready.
There are always opportunities. Only question is whether you’re ready for them.
Learn from it and move forward. Big part of success is how you learn from failure and have the resiliency to move forward.
It’s happen to me, big and small failures, almost on an annual basis, but got to a point that the successes and risks outweigh the failures.
Turn that fear into positive action.
I think part of the fear is across a few areas: 1) you fear losing the money; 2) you fear you won’t get a job; 3) you fear you have wasted time; 4) you fear the sequence of startup experiences pain a picture of you as a failure; 5) you fear this company won’t be successful (sales are flat).
- the money is gone. It’s not coming back. There is nothing to fear. It just is what it is. Can’t do anything about it now.
- the only way you could have wasted time was if you spent it doing destructive things instead of productive things. You don’t know what you have prepared yourself for so you have not wasted time. You banked time moving things forward, learning fast, adapting. Nothing wasted.
- the job thing is an illusion. It is super easy to sell yourself in your CV and your job. Have the best stories when someone says “why did you leave that job?” You will fly though - people live risk takers.
- same as 2 - just work out the narrative and some key annecdotal stories and you will be fine. Dust yourself off. Ask ChatGPT for some help and learn to present yourself strongly and own your experience.
- this company is not dead. If it is sales you need, then all hands to the pump. I have been at rock bottom with a company and within a couple of years it became a juggernaut and today it is worth $7bn. It ain’t over yet.
Big part is you owning your fear and then figuring out how to cut through despite that fear being present.
Appreciate the post - I think we all get something from an authentic post like this.
Thanks for this. I’m dealing with similar fears and this is really helpful. It’s easy to fall into a default fear-driven mindset, almost subconsciously. Sometimes feels pretty hopeless. Thanks.
Thanks for this. I’m dealing with similar fears and this is really helpful. It’s easy to fall into a default fear-driven mindset, almost subconsciously. Sometimes feels pretty hopeless. Thanks.
Glad you found it useful. If you can isolate money and time fears into separate tracks and deal with them independent of one another, then it is easier to then deal with what’s left over…. That’s what I have found…
Jumping from finance to startups is a big leap, and hitting a few snags doesn’t mean you’ve lost your touch. Hang in there, your journey’s packed with valuable lessons that’ll help in whatever comes next. https://www.cuppa.so/post/turning-your-big-idea-into-a-reality
You are not scared of failure you are scared of people’s judgment because when you are alone playing video games , you’r fin when you lose , you just try again
Jumping from finance to startups is a big leap, and hitting a few snags doesn’t mean you’ve lost your touch. Hang in there, your journey’s packed with valuable lessons that’ll help in whatever comes next. https://www.cuppa.so/post/turning-your-big-idea-into-a-reality
Fear is real for most. But not for entrepreneurs. Only thing real entrepreneurs see is opportunity. If you can’t get out of that fearful mindset, you may want to cut your losses.
Failure is glorious, homie. Embrace it, learn from it. Hardwire the lessons into your brain and don’t repeat them. But failure is a part of entrepreneurship.
Being an entrepreneur may not be for you, unfortunately. As an entrepreneur, you come to know failure well…as it’s all about failing, learning from it, and improving. There is no magic guide to success…we all fail until we don’t.
I’d happily employ someone who had the guts to do all of that, success or fail, that’s a mountain of experience to apply going forward.
Anyone who couldn’t see that is someone you probably don’t want to work for, so I don’t think unemployable is fair.
The more interesting story to me is what you’re doing in the meantime to fix sales in short order. Win or lose that’ll be incredibly valuable additional experience.