What do people usually do after they run a failed startup? | Hacker News Reader

What do people usually do after they run a failed startup?

victusspiritus.com

20 pointsmessel27 comments

Whatever the hell they want to? Sheesh - it's a failed startup, not the loss of a child. People fail at all sorts of things all the time, and the best way to guarantee an eventual success is to keep stepping up to the plate.

Easy to say. But a "failed startup" is often coincidental with a failed relationship, failed self-image, drained savings, eroded health.

Starting another one right away can be a 'rebound' decision. It can be helpful to wait a little while, maybe work at some mundane job until you get your perspective back.

But yes, keep positive, assume you will soon be back in the game.

Sure - I understand all of those consequences, but none of them are showstoppers that should preclude you from doing something else. It may not be ideal, but in life you play the hand you're dealt, and getting up from the table (metaphorically speaking) is RARELY a sound decision. Like I said, they can do whatever the hell they want to. The worst possible choice out of "whatever the hell they want to", though, is nothing.

We're in agreement.

I also wonder what the real question was behind the article. Is the author a lost soul? Suffering and looking for life direction? Or just needing advice about how to fill out taxes after the financial chaos that is a failed business.

> But yes, keep positive, assume you will soon be back in the game.

You never left the game. Failed start-ups are as much a part of it as anything else; as long as you're doing the right things, you will always be +EV as time progresses.

Wasn't anything more to me than a failed startup and a great experience. How you could have a failed self image after being your own boss, managing people, making products people want, and pushing yourself to grow personally is beyond me. Letting it ruin your relationship is not the fault of the startup but your behavior towards those you love or their lack of respect for your work and passion.

If you were doing all of that, you probably don't have a failed startup.

An oversimplification on both of our parts

After my startup failed (and all of the pivots we could think of didn't work), I tried a few other ideas with different partners. None of those worked, and I ended up doing consulting work (mostly for other startups) for a while. It paid ok, but I realized that I wasn't really doing my own thing, and I could do significantly better by working for someone else. I also kind of realized that I just wasn't ready to go out and start something else for various reasons.

A pretty interesting startup made me a pretty good offer, and after consulting for them for a month, I figured that I might as well take the stock options if I was working for someone else. Worked there for a while, and then they got acquired by a big company. Got to see an acquisition first-hand, which was definitely interesting. Now I'm working at a big company, which I never thought would happen again, but I guess that I see it in a different way.

I'm not really sure how I got from point A to point B, but it has been an interesting ride. And I think that pretty soon I'll be ready to start something else.

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Maybe it's time for you to found/cofound. It matters more when it's your creation, and that might be the missing ingredient. You gained battle scars and learned quite a bit at your three failed startups, and to hell with baseball analogies anyway.

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Hey running a coffee shop is a great business as long as you're not next store to Starbucks, or if your coffee is incredible. Besides, you don't have to code to run a business. Understanding how software is structured, what resources certain design decisions cost are valuable skills.

What language(s) do you code in? I hit the wall with c++ after 14 years of building sims/algorithms with it. Ruby/Python/javascript have opened up incredible avenues of hacking fun for me.

Sorry, I deleted my stories as I felt they were revealing too much personal information. My last job I was using Ruby and Java doing back-office data munging stuff for a financial firm.

If you want to share those experiences, I'd appreciate the information. Maybe I can learn something vital. Hit me up at messel at gmail dot com anytime you feel like it.

>Besides, you don't have to code to run a business.

Funny, here on HN/YC there seems to be a heavy bias against anyone who is not a developer.

Do it again, but better. Typically with a higher chance of success and re-using all the connections they've made during the running of the previous one. There is no stigma attached to failing at starting up because the rest of the business world knows how hard it is and those that are successful likely have had a few failures themselves to look back to.

Start another one!

This had me thinking about that interview question:

"In a country in which people only want boys every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?"

Replace girl with "failed startup" and boy with "successful startup" and the answer must be the same... the overall success rate of all startups must be 50%, assuming that people always try for a successful one after they fail.

Of course, that means there will be those who succeed on their first try and you might be the one that experiences twenty failures in a row...

It is interesting because we put a lot of ourselves in the code we write and the ideas pursued. So when something fails, It can be a process to get over it. Although trying and failing is better than never taking a risk.

Get an MBA?

Disheartened with technology during the lull after the first dot com bubble burst, I went to law school.

After finishing up and working at a law firm for a year, I realized that I'd rather fail at startups than do that for a living.

Did you study IP law?

That may help you succeed at failing to fail.

The MBA normally precedes the failed startup...

You only really fail when you stop trying.

Try to understand what went wrong, take a break, and scout for the next opportunity, patiently.

they start their next startup. Until they stop failing.

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