Your startup failed. What will you do now.
You might be starting your entrepreneurship journey or you might be on the way to a hefty Series B investment or you might be a founder who shut down their startup recently.
If you are a founder of a startup, you want to read this.
Why?
Because we all know that 9 out of 10 startups fail.
And even if you end up being the “1” that did not, running a startup will take a mental toll on you that no one else can understand.
No one.
Not your friends, not your family, not your team members, not your investors. They all say they do, but they cannot unless they have been a startup founder themselves.
Here are some truths you should know. I hope these provide you some comfort and direction in the lonely and adrift state that you might be in.
#1 Running a startup is lonely. After closing a startup, you will feel more lonely. Talk to someone about it (a lot).
Open up to your mentors / investors / family. Get the support from wherever you can get it. Don’t keep it to yourself.
Get professional help, if needed.
When it first hit me that I will have to shut down my 5 year old startup with 25+ team members, I could not eat for 2 weeks. I wasn’t sure what was happening to me. I was lucky that my family was by my side. While the emotional scars are very much still there, I know I could not have lifted myself up without the huge support of my family and friends.
#2 Your peers, colleagues , friends have moved up a few rungs of the career ladder with additional financial security. You might feel like catching up. That won’t happen overnight.
While you were giving everything you had to your startup, everyone else was pursuing the linear path of career progression and over years, some folks might have done quite well for themselves. Now devoid of the mission and drive behind the startup, you realize that you missed on a lot of personal career growth and financial stability that you could have had.
You cannot catch up with that by simply working harder.
This is a consequence of the choice you made and you have to embrace it gracefully. You will find a path, but you have to be very patient. And your journey will be different from others.
#3 Most recruiters and hiring managers do not understand your resume.
A lot of ex-entrepreneurs struggle with explaining their startup experience on resume. How do you explain that you did growth marketing, front-end development and enterprise sales all at the same time.
You fear that your resume looks either scattered or boastful.
You are right. It is hard to explain your startup journey in a traditional resume. I will not get into resume writing tips in this post but you have to realize the severity of this problem and find ways to address it.
Don’t assume that others know what being a startup founder means.
#4 Don’t look back for closure. Look ahead for new opportunities.
You reinvented yourself before and ran a startup. You beat many odds, did many things that others thought were not possible. You can (and most likely will) do it again.
You might choose to jump on the startup wagon again. Or you might have decided that this is not for you and for many reasons, you want to pursue a more “traditional” career. Either way, you have to remind yourself that you took a risk and that takes grit.
Trying to find closure on what could have been done differently will just waste your time. You want to learn from past failures but from the lens of how to apply those lessons in future. Do not go looking for a nice ending to the startup story, because there isn’t one.
#5 Aim for success. Plan for failure.
Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Founders are supposed to be the leaders that stay strong and do not give up, no matter what. Like any good leader, you want to still plan for the dreaded “what if”.
Given the high statistical probability of failure, you definitely want to plan. That does not make you weak. It shows that you have foresight. Invest in your physical and mental health. Develop your personal growth plan, for example, learn a new skill, an online course, do professional networking that is not related to your startup but about you.
Lastly, if you are a founder who went through a journey to recover from a failed startup, please share your story. None of us should have to go through this alone.
