How do these outcomes make you feel emotionally?
Edit: anyone been bankrupted or financially broken? What do you intend to do about it?
edit - that is to say to you guys in your 20s, be efficient and maybe you can do both
When the startup died, I moved into contracting. I was doing quite well contracting and then one of guys who was on our board of advisors needed some development work and that led to me having substantial equity in the company and still working from home.
So the start up was a total failure, but I learned a lot and it lead me to where I am today which is much better than where I started.
Emotional/personal cost? None really, other than some slight stress imposed on my marriage at a couple of points, but nothing that would have ever come close to the "drugs and therapy" kind of personal costs, or lost friends kind of personal costs.
Was incredibly stressful, and disappointing, but it helped me learn. Hopefully will push that forward and build upon it if I tried something like that again - for now I'm focusing on other areas.