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Comment by joshfraser | Hacker News Reader

We'd been running EventVue for 3 years, were exhausted and at the end of our runway when Brad Feld (one of our investors) asked us one question: "Are you still having fun?" When we couldn't honestly answer "yes", his advice was "Then quit! Life's too short." We announced we were shutting down the company the next day and I've never felt more relieved.

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More context: http://blog.eventvue.com/post/372936164/post-mortem

And to think that shortly after you unplugged and went to New Zealand to shake it all off before jumping back into your next awesome new venture (which seems to be going really well).

I bet you would've burnt out if you hadn't and Torbit wouldn't have happened, even if you had the idea or bandwidth for it. I've flirted with the crispy edge of burnout a bunch of times since moving to SF. You haven't really been working hard unless you've at least once seriously considered chucking it all to become a forest ranger, surf instructor or dog walker.

Probably true

I agree with it 100%. It's hard to tell when to quit and when to stick with your startup/product, but not having fun for too long is a sure sign you should be doing something else. I currently have the same problem, not having fun anymore doing it. Part of it not being fun is the market I chose, selling software to people I have a hard time relating to (small business owners in France, not familiar with the Internet and web apps).

For my next product, if it's B2B, I'll make sure to first find an audience, people I'd like to do business with, and then find a product to make (incidentally, that's also the approach advised by Rob Walling and Amy Hoy among others, and it makes lots of sense to me now).

That's the thing. And that's why inspiration (which largely means the ability to have fun while working harder than just about anyone else!) is so important.

So, the answer is to just be rich and then it's all easy?

I'm here now, not having fun; but I also rather like eating and having somewhere to sleep ...

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