Ask HN: How did you know when to call it quits and shut down your startup?
Either VC funded or bootstrapped. What were the signs/metrics/signals that led you to the decision to shutdown?
- you don't feel you are capable (or want to) fix growth
- you don't see any hope - ie you picked the wrong problem and there's no p/m fit
- you are not hustling enough to fix the problems and you don't know why (prob because you lost passion or steam)
2. You hate it. I had a decent growing startup, but I hated the user base. It was a keto diet app. The users were people who lost lots of weight on keto, decided that nutritionists were liars, and were relentlessly anti-scientific. We sold it, and the guys who bought it hated it too.
I hated building apps for politicians, many were like mobsters, and it was a terrible feeling helping them. I once quit one partnership because my partner would just lie, break promises, overhaggle with everyone, and the people we were working with would do the same with us (me).
There was one partnership I ended because the other guy refused to fire some people. They weren't just underperforming, they were unreliable and promising things, then acting like the conversation never happened. But this is really common when you can't pay market rate.
But it's like quitting a job. If you dread coming in to work every day, maybe you should be doing something else. Startup DNA is vital. Can't build a billion dollar company when all your energy goes into rent negotiations.
I personally don't like ads, they pay poorly and annoy everyone. I originally directed the ads to the suppliers, but the cut (7%) was so low it was a loss after sales tax, shipping costs, payment gateway cut (about 9% total). And it was hard to deal with problems like damaged parcels, late and missing items. After doing everything in house, it was about 30% margin average, possible to get to around 80% with factory manufacturing, which was what got everyone excited.
We tried doing meal boxes but that didn't work.
If you're comparing with public stocks, well, most startups go public once they can't sustain those kind of growth rates.