The last day

I find this story extremely tragic -- not because this man's company, his dreams, failed so tremendously, but that he allowed two fundamental aspects of his adult life to fail with it.<p>Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities?<p>I don't mean to attack any premise of the story; I'm honestly curious what startup founders think of this article. I personally have no goals of huge buy-outs nor IPOs, but I would like to start my own business some day. I can't imagine being willing to give up my significant other to focus on the business, and I would hope that about the time I start thinking about using personal credit cards to finance the company I also stop and realize that the company is dead already.<p>I sincerely don't know what I'm suppose to take from this article, but I have the feeling based on some of the comments in this thread that the parts I find important are not the same parts that others find important.

The amount of privilege built into this "painful failure" is disquieting. Here's a person whose biggest problem in life appears to be that he's in debt and, for the moment, unemployed. But: he was the CEO of a company funded to the tune of 8xFTE, and can thus almost certainly walk into hundreds of VP/Product Management or Business Development roles immediately, all of which will pay him more than any of his technical employees. Employees who are also, let's please face it, immensely privileged.<p>I wouldn't care, except that towards the end someone texts him and he angrily pouts that nobody can know his pain. Well, it's not for me to judge, right. But as someone who does in fact believe that people have an immortal soul, I would say that that whatever the universal spirit or cosmic order or divine intent that unites our existance is, it should probably not be taunted with statements like "you cannot know the pain of someone who was the CEO of a tech company shutting down his office for the last time before hunting for a job in the hottest sector of the entire economy", because that universal whatever might take the time to show you what it's like to be the 48-year-old employee of a midwest factory being shut down.<p>I had a neighbor who's kid --- a great kid, from what I can tell --- brought a pocketknife to school to show other kids. He was zero-tolerance expelled. My neighbor was doing OK for himself, but not OK to the extent of "could swing private school". From what I understand, that event killed it for them: they had to move, the mom and kids to one state (where the extended family lived and the school district would admit the boy) and the dad to a neighboring state to work and commute back on weekends. Do you know a lot of tech people that have had to do that? Then I'd like to suggest those people have standing to at least commiserate with the founder of a failed startup. And this is just something I saw personally; my inclination is, shit like this happens. Shit that is too boring to be the topic of a news story at the top of HN. Shit that happens to people who aren't lucky enough to be in the middle of the startup economy, and that happens approximately <i>all the time</i>.<p>Grand projects fail all the time. Open source projects die. Web communities die. Clubs wind down. Sporting teams disband. I write this so you can angrily tell me that I'm wrong: tell me what's so bad about a tech startup failing in 2012? (Let me preempt one obvious angry barb by saying that was a cofounder and investor in a VC-funded startup that failed in 2001, the "nuclear winter").<p>Please: I'm not saying that startup people are so lucky that they're not allowed to be unhappy when their companies fail. I am saying something else that is more subtle than that.

This story mirrors my startup experience <i>exactly</i>, including the moment where I had to lay off my friends, took a last long look at "our place" before turning the lights off, remembering that this was what I had sacrificed my relationship for, including the ending where I thought of nothing but the crushing mountain of personal debt. In some ways, this is the archetypical founder's nightmare, and it's happening every day in a lot of places. If you're doing a startup, this should be the one scenario that haunts you and motivates you to do better.

If this is in the general vicinity of "Worst. Day. Ever." for you, your life is pretty effing awesome now isn't it. One Thanksgiving a year seems inadequate under the circumstances.<p>(I respectfully suggest that anyone unable to put death of a startup in perspective invest some effort in rekindling ties with folks outside our little bubble. Again, it's Thanksgiving, so you've got a built-in excuse.)

I'm sorry for being negative but I must say this is pretty hard to take.<p>This narrative is cliche in both in form and content. It's painfully melodramatic and offers almost no insight whatsoever. Yes, major losses in any sphere of life can be poignant (in a way this text surely is not). So what? Where's the value?

Nicely written and invokes a bit of an emotional response from me. But just a bit...<p>And then I realize that this person (whoever s/he is, real or fictional) has suffered from the fundamental problem of all business: profit. For some reason, the IT industry as of late has dismissed profits and traditional business rules for the sake of fictional ideals like pageviews, user signups, and such. And while the latter things matter somewhat, there must be a directed line from those metrics to dollars and cents, because utility companies (electricity, Internet, water) like to be paid in dollars and cents, not promises and wishes.

I am a co-founder and when I bootstrapped my company we made a pact to make sure the startup had to support its own weight. It had to pay its own bills. It had to grow its own customer base. It was a person.<p>Everything we did, everything we made, everything we said, everything we coded, made the startup stand on its own feet. Granted, things change after series A but I say this because if you find yourself using your own credit cards, your own savings, then you need to think different.

One of the best decisions I ever made was to admit failure early when I saw it coming. It wasn't ambiguous or one of those "if I try hard enough, I can turn this ship around" situations. It was clear that my idea, project, marketing efforts -- all of it -- was essentially going down the tubes. The cash in my savings account burnt off like fog on the Golden Gate. These are standard pressures, but there were some systemic things that keyed me off to how clearly it had failed.<p>For one, my heart wasn't in it. It was like I had spent months crafting an idea that I thought an audience of customers would receive happily - only to realize I wouldn't use it or care about it myself. It also had become a business proposition I couldn't succeed at myself. I needed more help than ever.<p>So I packed up my stuff and killed it. It was painful, but I am glad I had the ability to see the truth before getting so bad as to be like the scene painted in this post. That said, it's not always obvious like it was in my case; I have tremendous respect for folks that go through this and fight to the bitter end.

"It was over now. Two years of work and dreams replaced by a landing page."<p>Two years...<i>that's it</i>?<p>Developing tech products is an exercise in walking away. The <i>vast majority</i> of code written is a total <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala</a> no longer in regular use by anyone within a few years. It used to be said that <i>most</i> software projects were canceled due to overruns before completion.<p>"Even the t-shirts had been given away."<p>Serious question...what else was anyone going to do with them?<p>"8 IKEA desks = $1,200, 8 Aeron chairs (used) = $4,000"<p>I don't think I've ever written a line of code while sitting at a $150 desk in a $500 (used) chair.<p>"Nobody ever told him the hockey stick of user growth might look more like a baseball bat laying in an empty field."<p>B. S.<p>This piece is weird. I don't get it.

It's interesting to think about what can happen after the collapse of a startup, particularly when we tend to give so much of ourselves to the process. I think it's inherently a regenerative process, though. A company may disappear but the lessons stick with you. I'd guess it's not easier but perhaps more familiar the next go around. That's comforting.

Hopefully this is a fictional account of at least the emotions felt by the subject, Mr. "CEO."<p>If you're going to be in business, I suggest throw out your hockey sticks, pivots, titles, and other nomenclature associated with any romantic fiction you think you're embarking upon. All business is about profit - the "math." Most often that means selling something that costs you less to acquire/produce. Sometimes for a savvy few, that means the business itself is the product.<p>If you generate substantial profit, you'll be a hero who can do no wrong, with admirers in proportion. If instead you run out of money, you quietly close up shop and start over or take a real job for a while.<p>If you're really cut out for business you have to be thick-skinned and rational. Any emotional attachment you have to the business will likely just impair your judgement and cause you to miss opportunity or worse take you down with it someday.

I've experienced my own version of this once before, where I lost a girlfriend (and distanced myself from friends and family) but ultimately it didn't work out.<p>My advice is to remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint. Unless you nurture and protect the important relationships around you you will burn out and the recovery from failure if it comes will be that much longer. If you are 22 or 23 a girlfriend may be less important, but remember to invest time in seeing your friends (non-company!) and family. Prioritize time as a concrete thing that will keep you refreshed and energized over the long haul.

This is EXACTLY how I felt with my first start-up Free.TV It took me years to get over the failure and actually learn from it. But while I am more wise now in my new startups, it makes me realize maybe they may not be as a "big Idea" or that perhaps I am now too cautious and so may not be as successful. Thank you for putting my feelings in such a clear story.

The comments criticizing the protagonist are somewhat churlish. If someone shares painful emotions with the a comment like "how could they know my pain," he is demonstrating that he has some awareness that his emotions include self pity, that his feelings are subjective. Generally, in the the US anyway, people know that sharing such feelings is not cool. (People start with snarky comments along the lines of "call the waaahbmulance")<p>The author is trying to buck the huge social pressure against admitting such feelings. Therefore, to ridicule such a person is re-enforcing the paradigms which drive the feelings in the first place.<p>On a personal note, I have never been comforted in times of unhappiness to have it pointed out that many people have it far worse. I guess if you are someone who derives a sense of well being based on how well you are doing relative to others, being reminded of how much better off you than the hordes of wretched who walk this earth could give you some happiness.

&#62;&#62; When he started the company, he had a girlfriend. She was a sweet girl, who actually got his Isaac Asimov references.<p>What have you done!?

The ending is wrong. The former CEO should not just sulk in darkness. He should be consumed with terror and overwhelming anxiety as he sinks with his gutted office into to the sulphurous underworld, while low-level demon-bureaucrats from Hades emerge from the pit to jab at him with their pitchforks.

Haha geeze, the crowd here is brutal. I don't think the writer is saying that he has the objectively worst life, and everyone should feel bad for him. It's just a microcosm of the human experience. This article is showing that, even in our prosperous country, a relatively successful person can feel the same pain of failure and rejection that everyone feels at some point. The rich and poor all struggle to find out who they are and what their place in life is.<p>This isn't a contest of who suffered the most. Even though dying is common, it doesn't mean a death is trivial. Personal experiences should be able to be shared without marginalization.

While this story is sad I think it is super important for YC. This page is usually crowded with stories and posts of people telling you how they made it and what you can do to be super successful yourself. Stories like this one serve the important purpose of unskewing our views on how easy it is to start a company and get rich. There are reasons why people like 9-5 jobs at big companies (first and foremost probably safety) and it is important not to lose track of them reading all those "you just need to write everything on pink flashcards and your startup is going to make millions next week" stories. :)

Boo hoo. This is emo nonsense. Life is a brutal war for survival you are going to get severely beaten down a few dozen times before you ever make it to the top. 1% of 1% have an easy route to the top. The rest take it on the chin a few times, spit out their teeth, and keep throwing punches.<p>You seriously can't let that much negativity into your own life. Your business failed? Cool. That same day, 30,000 kids starved to death in Africa. You learned a lot about running a business and discovered that your specific idea didn't work out.<p>Move on and find a new adventure. Live in the windshield, not the rear view mirror.

I am not an entrepreneur in the HN-sense, so i may just be naive but... Why do you have to shut down you web company once you run out of money? I mesn, can't you just lay off the employees, close the office, take the servers to your basement, get a 'real' job and turn your startup into a hobby?<p>I mean, the only really necessary expense there is to running a wep-app or whatever, is the electrical bill, right? I assume you've build something in those two years, why flush it away?<p>Honest question, hope to learn more about the nuances of being a founder!

Two bizarre comments on that page. One is (paraphrasing) "we don't do maudlin stuff like this -- that's for people across the pond" and the other "here in the US we don't go to debtors' prison".<p>From <i>this</i> end of the pond, I would've guessed that Europeans were the jaded cynical ones and USians the heart-on-sleeve maudlin primary-colour-emotions ones. If I had to choose, that is. And startup founders don't go to prison here either.

There's a way to read this piece that's neither "suffering entrepreneur" nor "first world privilege".<p>Pouring all one's hopes and years of effort into a startup is certainly an emotional rollercoaster. If you are the last one out to turn out the lights, it's going to be a poignant moment.<p>If that happened to me, I'd probably consider writing a blog post about it too. But we don't have to react to it as if it means anything deeper than that.

A sad story, but if you start by getting 4000$ of chairs you are doing something wrong, no wonder your expenses were bigger than the revenues.

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life." ~ Socrates

This reminds me strongly of the original dot-com boom/bust around 2000. Working at a venture-funded startup with flashy launch parties, huge payroll and sprawling office space on Park Avenue. We knew it wouldn't last, so we enjoyed the moment while we could.

&#62; <i>Someone with dreams untainted by failure.</i><p>This sentiment is frustrating to hear because of it's misconception about what success is.<p>Those who have never faced failure are not good, they are just lucky. Replicable success requires contact with failure.

Great piece. What is important to know is that it is not over. I hope there will be a part 2 somewhere in the future - telling of the comeback!

Loved this piece, I haven't been in that position, but I could feel the pain.

First World Problems...

nowhere to go but up.