Is it legit? I saw a few 30 days left to live stories here, now 30 days for startup to live. Is it PR shit or real deal? If you fire employee you must pay compensation, so how can you not able to pay his payroll of week? If you fire him it will be more expensive then one weeks payroll.
My Startup has 30 Days to Live
31–40 of 239 posts
Re: My Startup has 30 Days to Live
#32Thanks for sharing. I sympathize with you, because I just recently went through something similar, with less success than you've had. It sounds like a tough situation, but you're not out of options. You might just be out of the preferred options.
It seems to me that if you're truly out of money, you can either:
1) Try to double down on funding. Your investors can either re-up you or kiss the money they've put in and the debt/equity they have goodbye. But this just puts you on the treadmill for another X months. If you don't like how that feels now, maybe it's not the best direction. 2) Try to get acquired by someone who will pay you to finish your product. 3) Get outside work to pay the bills and put your startup into side project status. Surely with what you've built, you have made yourself highly employable, and if you're in a big-time accelerator, you probably know people who need your skills. 4) Make a "personal pivot", and use the skills and experience you've developed to springboard into something else.
I've come to learn that the discourse in the startup world is completely slanted toward success stories, even though success is far from the most common outcome. Almost no one gets it right the first time.
For example, from my own limping startup, I've learned a lot about what I did that didn't set myself up for success, and how I would do it differently. I got a day job--which I'm loving so far--and I'm planning to save a substantial portion of my pay to build a warchest over the next few years, such that next time, I won't dive in already broke (just one of several crucial things I would do differently).
Re: My Startup has 30 Days to Live
#33Interesting. I feel like the time most previously successful startups begin to fail is when the founders are intellectually dishonest and push forward through cognitive dissonance. You have to see and believe in a vision to make it come to life. That is my big takeaway from this - if you disagree with your VCs or don't think something will work, you have to say so.
This may be a shot in the dark, but if it were me I would call up the VCs and begin having the hard conversations. "Hey, we're in trouble. I think we made mistakes here, here and here. I'm in over my head, what do we do now?"
They may ask for what's left of the money back, your business may fail, but at least you go out having been straight-forward with yourself. And you can get on the horse and do it again.
Just my two cents.
Re: My Startup has 30 Days to Live
#34I'm going to say this knowing that I may get down voted to heck. And I don't mean it as a "told you so" to the OP, but rather hopefully some cautionary advice for would-be founders. I have come to the opinion that if you are bootstrapping, you have no business calling your company a startup. You are building a small business. And there is nothing shameful about this. You are among solid companions with your local plu…
You're right.
Many accelerators have a knack for picking up teams that have demonstrated the ability to build things that generate revenue and traction. The siren song of money, networking and growth is really seductive. The implications you speak of (and I experienced it) aren't always so clear (or too easy for a prospective founder to dismiss).
Re: My Startup has 30 Days to Live
#35Can't make payroll? Complain about being stretched thin?
Start a useless blog!
Perfect!
Re: My Startup has 30 Days to Live
#36I'm going to say this knowing that I may get down voted to heck. And I don't mean it as a "told you so" to the OP, but rather hopefully some cautionary advice for would-be founders. I have come to the opinion that if you are bootstrapping, you have no business calling your company a startup. You are building a small business. And there is nothing shameful about this. You are among solid companions with your local plu…
You're wrong. A bootstrapped company can grow just as fast as a company that takes VC money.
Re: My Startup has 30 Days to Live
#37I'm going to say this knowing that I may get down voted to heck. And I don't mean it as a "told you so" to the OP, but rather hopefully some cautionary advice for would-be founders. I have come to the opinion that if you are bootstrapping, you have no business calling your company a startup. You are building a small business. And there is nothing shameful about this. You are among solid companions with your local plu…
Agree completely - startup is about growth - but there is a definite difference between a small technology company and a local barber or restaurant. A local barber or restaurant has a limited customer base. No matter how incredible or world class his haircuts are, nobody will fly from across the country to have their hair cut. A technology/internet startup is different. If the company is small and sticks to very slow but definite growth through a genuinely good product, eventually they can become an enormous corporation even if they weren't planning on it because anybody in the world can give them money for their value.
Intent is important, but the reality is that a slow growing internet company not focused on growth can eventually end up growing at 100% week on week simply because of slow improvement on product that provides value - 'startup by mistake'. A local barber can never have the same effect.
Re: My Startup has 30 Days to Live
#38> I’m scared.
Congratulations: You're normal. Look at it this way: You are commanding on a battlefield, there are a helluva lot of guys about to die. If you freeze up, they all die.
So make some fucking decisions, save as many as you can. Throw some into the line of fire for the sake of the others. It's what battlefield commanders do. The gods have chosen you for this role, rise up and do your best. You will make some bad calls, and don't sweat it. Focus on making the right calls, then course correcting the bad ones.
Good luck.
Re: My Startup has 30 Days to Live
#39I'm going to say this knowing that I may get down voted to heck. And I don't mean it as a "told you so" to the OP, but rather hopefully some cautionary advice for would-be founders. I have come to the opinion that if you are bootstrapping, you have no business calling your company a startup. You are building a small business. And there is nothing shameful about this. You are among solid companions with your local plu…
I would call any new business a startup, but call the VC-driven, exponential-growth-seeking model "growth startup".
I think you make a great point, but out of curiosity, what do you suggest are the best avenues for funding a tech business in the more traditional revenue-driven-growth model, if you're not bringing enough seed capital to get off the ground on your own? It seems like what's missing is an accessible happy medium.
Re: My Startup has 30 Days to Live
#40I'm going to say this knowing that I may get down voted to heck. And I don't mean it as a "told you so" to the OP, but rather hopefully some cautionary advice for would-be founders. I have come to the opinion that if you are bootstrapping, you have no business calling your company a startup. You are building a small business. And there is nothing shameful about this. You are among solid companions with your local plu…
So if "startup" is off-limits, what should we call (and how will we fund) the mid-growth/mid-risk businesses that are too risky for a sane person to take personal liability (which banks tend to require) but aim for 15-50% growth per year as opposed to 5% per week (which is 12.6x annual growth-- impossible without what would be, excluding extreme resources, degenerate gambling).
We say in this country that getting rich slowly is the virtue and that get-rich-quick is the scam. Yet VC is obsessed with the latter.
I have some ideas on how to finance this currently underexplored (and underfunded) class of businesses: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/gervais-macle... . But I have no power, so don't count on me to fix the problem.