Just some suggestions through the tough times: - Talk to friends and family who understand - See if there are ways that the work done can be absorbed into another company - Drop a note to mentors/ advisors when you are professionally ready - Do some small projects for companies in your network who can pay on time, and hopefully also let you slowly ease into a different team and environment - Cut down on expenses - Pl…
Last year, I went through the same thing. We had a great idea. We had a solid client. We build a platform that worked, and produced products that were high quality, that the end user loved.
Due to miscalculations on our behalf, and due to the client's company disintegrating, we were left in the horrible situation of having to kill the company.
We were worked to the bone. I was emotionally and mentally drained. We felt we'd let ourselves down, and let our staff down. It hit both myself and my partner very hard. But, we paid our bills, and paid our staff out of personal savings, and gracefully closed the company.
I 'forced' myself to take the time off required to get mentally and emotionally stable. For me, this involved riding my motorbike solo from Europe to Iraq (You will have other ways to decompress).
The final step in getting closure was to watch the delight of a friend's kid playing with one of our products. We had succeeded.
- Be gentle to yourself. This is really important.
- Don't force yourself into new projects.
- Take time to look at your startup, and highlight what you achieved. You probably paid your staff. Your code was probably solid. Your servers maybe never went down. Your final product made people happy. These are all successes - and it's very important that you congratulate yourself/yourselves for these successes.
- If you can afford it, take some time off and travel. Change your physical and mental environment. - Spend time reconnecting with your family, friends and contacts. The relationships have probably suffered during your crunch periods. These people will help you back onto your feet, so reach out to them.
- If you need to get a job to pay the bills, contemplate taking a job in a totally different domain. Flip burgers (or whatever your personal equivalent might be). This will allow you to mentally build yourself up again to get back on the horse.
- When you do try again, be aware of the warning signs you probably ignored the first times (especially the 'oh no what am I committing myself to' feeling)
You'll find that over time, and only time, the points of what you did well, and what you did less well, will percolate down into clear, future actionable forms.
Incidentally, I'm back in the saddle. On my time off, I picked up a hobby to tinker with a device, learned two new languages (Python + Qt) and a few new frameworks, and circuit design - and now have my new startup, which is hitting the market in a few weeks.
Just be gentle to yourself :)