I’m sitting on a bench and don’t have any clue about my future.
My boyfriend and I entered the startup world around 4 years ago. He’s the technical co-founder, and I’m non-technical. We secured two investments but pivoted multiple times and couldn’t achieve profitability. We earned some money in those 4 years, a total of around 250k.
Now, we’ve decided to completely pivot and do something else. We believe we can’t be successful in the current industry; it’s extremely challenging, with few competitors, and users expect everything for free. Our ARPU was less than a dollar ☹️
Fortunately, we still have around 1 year of runway, which is good. We could try new ideas, but we have barely any motivation left. One day we’re on a hype train, thinking we’ve found a profitable problem, and the next day, we’re feeling blue because we realize it’s a hard barrier to entry.
What should we do? We’re both super lost. Should we go into communities we’re interested in, build a network first, and then start another startup? Or what?
We know two things - we don’t want to return to a 9-5 job, and we super enjoy working with each other.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
I was you about two years ago, almost down to the dollar amount of revenue. Same dependence on one enterprise customer, cofounder is my husband.
We took a vacation and talked at length about what we had left in the tank. Each of us. One of you may be more willing to give it another go than the other. Do you have investors? Employees? That will affect your decision too.
I wouldn’t blindly pivot without assessing your own mental state as it’s super easy to try out different ideas and burn yourself out on putting yourself out there as the non-technical founder selling different things over and over again (speaking from experience). Happy to chat more over dm.
Wow! I’ll send you a DM next week. Now I’ll take some time to clear my head. Thank you! ♥️