These are the hardest. See, when a company or project is dead on arrival there is not much to do, you bury it, do a post-mortem and move on.

If a company is successful then you ride the wave as far and as long as your stamina will let you and then you hopefully pocket a nice chunk of cash.

But when you're in the middle, too big to die, too small to succeed it gets very hard. Killing it off feels completely wrong, pushing it feels like you are adding to the opportunity cost with a relatively small chance chance of eventual success. It's a very practical illustration of the sunk-cost fallacy in all its gruesome glory.

Personally I hope that gittip will continue to grow and that the team will stick with it. They serve a very important role, pioneers in uncharted territory. And even if a lot of those pioneers ended up dead in creeks with arrows in their backs they pointed the way, showed what works and what does not. And they still have a sufficiently large shot at success if they stick with it. But if they'd pull the plug I would not fault them.

Let's hope there will be a 3rd instalment of this article, where gittip grew steadily for the 3rd year in a row and it became profitable. That would be the best way to see this go.