Ask HN: How to escape my own zombie startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to escape my own zombie startup?

39 pointstrapped78916 comments

I’m the CEO/founder of a zombie startup. We’ve taken significant funding. We break even every month. Growth is flat. Scale is in the millions. I have lost passion for our business and I don’t believe in what we are doing anymore. I dislike going to work. I’ve started disliking even people I work with. We have not managed to sell for enough to return all investor money. Our team is specialized in what we do so a successful pivot is extremely unlikely. I can’t find anyone to replace me fast enough. I can’t just leave suddenly unless I want to f over all our shareholders. I do not want to do that. (I recognize staying in this state is f’ing over in a different way)

SOS. Have you been in this situation and how did you GTFO successfully? How long did it take you?

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If your shareholders are VCs who have board seats, they want to escape even more than you do. So from their POV at least, shutting down the company or doing an HR acquisition would be fine.

If one of your cofounders has always longed to run the company, you could quit and let him/her take over.

You can probably morph what you're doing more than you realize. You can morph a startup into practically anything. GOAT, the sneaker marketplace, started as a group dinner service called GrubWithUs. As long as your dislike of your coworkers has not hardened, you can keep searching for new ideas.

If you dislike it this much, your colleagues and investors will probably be picking up on it. They might even be thinking what do we do with this person. How do we deal with the situation?

Maybe the best thing to do would be to have an honest conversation with your co-founders and investors. Explore your options. Including going part time.

Communication is important and most of us need to be better at asking for help.

Your co-founders and investors will probably be relieved when you bring it up. The hard part is starting the conversation.

For the VCs this isn't their first rodeo. They've probably seen this before and they would probably prefer a discussion and a transition out rather than a blowout/suprise departure.

Take a vacation and get back into the game! You are catastrophizing your business.

I would do the following:

1) Get to stable profitability (raise prices / find costs to cut)

2) Find adjacent markets to go after (what other stuff are your customers buying? What other stuff could your specialized team be good at?)

3) Put together a deck and sell to PE (you won’t be able to tell a unicorn story but sounds like to have a stable biz here)

You are depressed and it’s impacting your leadership. Take a vacation, find a therapist, and get back into it!

I love talking about this stuff, feel free to PM.

I have been in that situation. Vacations make everything much worse. CEOs have a habit of facing their problems up front. A vacation runs opposite to that instinct.

In the end it feels like you just wasted a lot of money and time running away from problems.

I would agree that going for a vacation to run away from things can make things worse.

However, if one can decide to go for a vacation to get a fresh perspective on the issue, I think that would help. Getting to a place where there are no interruptions expected may help you doing that if that is your intent.

Being in the office may keep you doing the daily firefighting and you may need space to think differently.

I've been there. I recommend the book, "The Hard Thing About Hard Things." It got me out.

One of the keys to remember - with tech, unlike a lot of businesses, you're playing 3D chess. Not only do you have lots of moves, but the market shifts, the possibilities shift when new tech is introduced. People always get excited when something like cloud or blockchain appear, but their real value is to companies with an existing customer base like yours who have a large market but hit some barrier in the unit economics and such.

You should probably talk it with your investors too. Zombie companies are bad for VCs, practically as bad as failures.

Selling the company will get some money back. You might be surprised how much you get for it too.

You could reset your expectations. Paying the bills every month is a lot better than many people manage. OK, you aren't getting absurdly rich... but the bills are paid. There are probably personal things to focus on. You can treat work as just work, a job to pay the bills, so that you can afford to do normal things with your life. You can take up a hobby, raise a giant family, or whatever. There is life outside of work, and your work makes that possible.

If you're in the millions, there's probably a demand for whatever it is that you do.

Maybe you can't pivot your product, but maybe you can change the way you sell it, market it or target it?

Given your scale (and the fact that you're already breaking even), it might be worth looking at the above issues. Improved future prospects may cause you to feel better about your company and coworkers too.

I focus on issues like this. If you'd like some input, my contact info is in my profile.

I have some previous experience with this.

It's okay to lose passion in the business. From a logical standpoint your best bet may be to find someone to replace you (since you clearly want to leave anyway).

The new person might decide to take the company in a different direction, liquidate, who knows. But it relieves you of the responsibility. The responsibility you have right now is to decide what is best for the company.

If you want to chat about this privately just PM me.

You have to lean on your board/investors to find a buyer (they can frame it as acquihire or whatever).

If they are seasoned investors or VCs they'll have the connections to do it relatively easy, as they'll want out as well... It's not going to be the first time big company acquires something that does not make any sense for hundreds of millions of dollars - the VC cycle must and will continue...

Use the VC force and "circle of friends" in your advantage...

It sounds like your heart's not in it anymore.

I've seen companies successfully replace CEOs when the founding CEO has been in a similar situation. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. There are CEOs or aspiring CEOs out there that want to run a company that stays small. I think it's worth discussing with your most trusted investors to see if they can find candidates through their networks.

Another thought - have you considered trying to get the company acquihired?

Find an interim CEO/GM via Catalant while you negotiate your transition plan > https://gocatalant.com/our-experts/

If you want help with a permanent replacement, PM me.

Is there anyone that you can bring up the ranks to make your omission less detrimental?

Slowly integrate them into meetings, company decisions; make sure it's someone you trust. And slowly step back.

Just an off-cuff thought.

Dunno , if you have a self supporting business, why ditch it and start again? Is it that hard to teach this pony a new trick? Or it is you who has no idea or abilities to at least try?

How long has it been since you have taken a real vacation??

Maybe find another CEO in exactly the same situation at another company and swap?

Chamge of scenery, same issues but fresh motivation.

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