Why I abandoned my startup

You've also now demonstrated that you'll drop everything - that investor money, staff, customers, etc, because you don't like something. How will potable water investors react knowing this story? Part of being successful is sticking through with something.

"How does a liquidity event really make a big difference?" If he was really going to exit at $200MM, I'm assuming a decent portion would have gone to him. Having a bank of, say, $10MM should be more than enough to start his potable water business without having to go to investors to get things started the next time (assuming, that is, he believes enough in it to invest a chunk of his own money, not just someone else's).

But sometimes, you cannot do it.

I have great life plans, but I am moneyless (in fact, having money to by my own food each month is a small victory already), mostly friendless, and powerless (in the sense I do not have political power, or economic power, or friends to leverage, or any other external power).

So I am very sure, that doing something else other than my goal, as a step to do my goal, is not wrong...

By the way, what I do right now I still love to do anyway :) (I make edu apps for little children... not my life goal, but still a noble thing to do, and I hope, profitable)

I don't think investors will take it badly, I don't think they really want to have a founder who's heart isn't in it anymore slaving away at half pace in the hope of making something from the business.

So you decided to shed away your chances of success and the financial capacity to back up the projects you believe in +5 years, +10 years, +15 years from now (etc.) for the time preference of working right now on a project - because there is a water problem in this world.

Tell me, what are you going to do about hunger?

If you really cared about the water problem, couldn't you have donated part of your (steady) income for that?

If you prefer to fix the problem yourself, what are your special skills or experience regarding water?

What are you going to do if your project is deemed "interesting" but not worth investing on - especially now that you won't be able to finance it yourself?

You must certainly place a lot of trust in the goodwill of the future investors, but basically, here you showed that you didn't care about what you were doing, so why should I or anyone else take your word that you won't drop your next project just as quickly as this one?

Unless there is some missing information (ex: you have a 10 years lifespan due to some disease), it doesn't look like refusing the deferred life, but more like taking unneeded risk to get social status (saying you presented at this "Solve for X" conference) under a bleeding heart pretense. Sorry if that's hard - that's just the way I see it.

Anyway, it really seems like a bad decision indeed. If you really hated the job so much, it then begs the question - why did you started it in the first place?

I really hope you can turn around successfully, and find more meaning in your projects.

EDIT: it is good for him, and he will be more happy, but it's not logical. Something sounds out of place in the original post. While he will be more happy, using a charity purpose as the excuse and justification, while it is unlikely to be the best outcome for society, seems phony. Say that you want some fun or social status, that I can believe in. If you really care about solving a problem, who solves it (yourself or someone else) is irrelevant. How it is solved is irrelevant. You just want that fixed. Caring about not getting rich is just as pointless as caring about getting rich. It is a byproduct. You should want to solve the f problem, not want or look for ways to spend your life working on it.

I'm dreaming for a day when I can start a business that installs high powered vacuum suction motors and large hoses into 20 foot utility box trucks so I can help clean the billions of tons of trash that plague our cities.

When I had time I created a hobby of cleaning up small forests and unclaimed land from trash. I'd show up in a green construction vest so people thought I was official and didn't ask questions and would bag all the trash I could find and weighed the bags on a scale. I've got an excel sheet with all my stats. I've picked up over 570 lbs of trash to date. Just in wrappers, McDonalds cups, styrofoam. It's heart breaking to see an area trashy 5 months after I cleaned it up. I stopped doing it because I started wishing death and destruction to the people who littered. It made me angry and bitter towards humanity. I was picking up its trash and it didn't give a damn. I try to ignore it but every time I see trash on the side of the road a part of me keeps saying, "You should invent something that makes it easier to clean that up, think of how clean the whole world could be". The little voice keeps saying "Imagine a giant movable vaccum cleaner mounted on a truck with large hoses sticking out. It could work. Just try.". I can't stop thinking about it.

Your story has actually inspired me to try to go ahead and pursue that dream. If it's one thing tax payers are willing to pay for it's less trash in their neighborhood.

Anyone interested shoot me an email chris at norcophoenix dot com. I know an electrician, a guy who knows where to order the trucks from, and some really cheap office space for startups. I'm in St. Louis Missouri btw.