Sitemaps
Does Startup Success Validate Us Personally?
How We Secretly Lose Control of Our Startups
Should Kids Follow in Our Founder Footsteps?
The Evolution of Entry Level Workers
Assume Everyone Will Leave in Year One
Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
What's My Startup Worth in an Acquisition?
When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
The 5 Types of Startup Funding
What Is Startup Funding?
Do Founders Deserve Their Profit?
Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
Why is a Founder so Hard to Replace?
We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
Will Investors Bail Me Out?
The Value of Actually Getting Paid
Why do Founders Suck at Asking for Help?
Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
How About a Startup that Just Makes Money?
How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
How Does My Startup Get Acquired?
Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
How to Pick the Wrong Co-Founder
Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
Are Founders Driven by Fear or Greed?
Why I'm Either Working or Feeling Guilty
Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
What If my plan for retirement is "never retire"?
Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?
The Case Against Full Transparency
Should I Feel Guilty for Failing?

When to Fold the Tents

Wil Schroter

When to Fold the Tents

There's a time to get tough and keep building our startups. And there's a time to be honest about simply folding the tents.

The problem is that our own egos can rarely distinguish between the two.

We hear these (revisionist) stories of great entrepreneurs overcoming insurmountable odds to build the great companies of today, and we assume that in order to earn our own tale, we'll need to bring ourselves to the brink of destruction to do the same.

But the truth is, more often than not, the idea of running ourselves into the ground is just that: we're just killing ourselves with little upside or glory on the other side of the journey. As Founders, we need to have an honest dialog about when it's really time to put a bullet in this thing for the sake of our own sanity — as well as those that love us.

When we've burnt through every form of capital — not just money

The most binary sign that we should fold the tents is always "we don't have any money".

And that's true.

But let's face it, we've burnt through many forms of capital by the time we got here:

  • We've burnt through "relationship capital" with our friends and family every time we re-scheduled a dinner for the 20th time or missed our kid's soccer game yet again.
  • We've burnt through "emotional capital" when we tried just once more to psych ourselves up to come to work today, even though we spent the whole night lying awake in bed trying to do the same.
  • We've burnt through our "health capital" when we looked down at our waists and wondered how we’d ever be able to fit into our old pants again. Or when we accidentally turned on the "selfie cam" on our phones and caught a glimpse of the unfiltered "ghoul version" of ourselves.

There's a point at which our startups are building our future. But there's also a point at which our startups are destroying our future — when every facet of our capital is exhausted, and getting worse.

When we reach this point, it's time to call this thing a wrap.

Two-Paths-min.jpg

When we're more focused on "not losing" than winning

Losing sucks, and building a startup is an exercise in losses, both financially and emotionally. But we soldier on because not only do we not want to win, we also don't want to lose.

At some point though, it's no longer about winning — it's about "not losing." The moment we're no longer focused on the win, or when we can't even see a win in sight in any scenario, but we wake up every day to keep our dream alive just so we won't lose — we're screwed.

Startups aren't built by not losing.

"Not losing" becomes our focus when our ego takes over from our logical mind. We're no longer thinking about how this startup could do something great, we're thinking about what those conversations will be like with our friends and colleagues when they inevitably ask, "So how's that startup you're working on going?"

Sometimes the most "big girl" thing we can do is to admit when a loss is a loss, to ourselves and to all of the people connected to our startup, including the people who love us. There's no one that is going to say, "Boy I wish they had kept running themselves into the ground."

When the passion is gone

There was a time when we were so excited about our idea we couldn't shut up about it.

Any poor fool who had the gross misfortune of sitting next to us on an airplane or across from us at a cocktail party would be stuck listening to us vomit our hyperbole incessantly. We meant well because we were so passionate about how "world changing" this idea could be.

Nowadays? Not so much.

When we've lost that spark, that boundless optimism that kept us trudging through the mud no matter what, we're in for a tough ride. Especially if the business isn't faring well.

Startups are powered by optimism, and when we've lost ours, it makes it really hard to continue marching without that energy. And if we've lost the passion as Founders, we can almost certainly expect that same passion to go away with our team.

When we're just trying to "save the investors"

There's a last ditch version of the business where we're no longer even trying to operate or grow the business for ourselves — we're just trying to do everything we can to "save our investors" from losing money. We asked our family, friends, advisors, angels and other professional investors for real money.

And now we are on the brink of losing it all.

When we can, we should always do right by the people who have taken a risk on us. But there comes a point where the most mature thing we can do is call a loss a loss.

More Founders will run themselves through the ground, usually resulting in massive losses to both their health and what's left of their personal capital just to avoid having to tell their investors that they took a loss. What's crazy is most of the time those very same investors have long since wrote off the investment well before the Founder did!

What's left is a Founder running themselves into the ground to avoid a conversation with an investor who already expects the outcome.

You sorta know when you know

If these scenarios sound familiar, it's because at a certain point you really know it's time to fold the tents — you're just not willing to admit it.

The worst thing any of us can do is hold on too tightly to something that's not meant for this world. It's not about giving up — it's about moving on. All of that time and energy and capital being wasted on a lost cause is much better invested in a new, viable venture that trades negative investment for a positive outcome.

If the signs are pointing to "closing time" for the business, the only thing we can do wrong at this point is continue living in denial.

Fold up. Move on. Life is too short, my friend.

Find this article helpful?

This is just a small sample! Register to unlock our in-depth courses, hundreds of video courses, and a library of playbooks and articles to grow your startup fast. Let us Let us show you!

Submission confirms agreement to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Already a member? Login

Haneen Abu-Remaileh

this reflected exactly what I'm going through at this point. Thank you for articulating it so well.

Reply4 years ago

1 Replies

Register to join the discussion.

Already a member? Login

Create Free Account