Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?
Let me give you some background info:
- I'm 29 years old, computer science graduate. - I founded two startups. First one failed after 4 years. The second one was acquired 3 months ago but do not take it as a success. We had to sold it to one of our competitors at a price of one tenth of the our series A valuation. Basically, things go bad so fast, it was our best option. I've left the company as a part of the deal. - In both of the companies I've founded, I had to wear too many hats. As a result, I have not excelled in any particular skill, rather I've gained medium level of experience in variety of skills from development to product design to finance. - As a result of the recent acquisition I've some money in my bank account which can cover my expenses for a year from now. - I was mentally exhausted, so I decided to keep things slow for a while and that's why I've not been doing anything for the last three months. - Doing nothing made things worse, since I'm constantly thinking about my future and I can not find anything that I want to do. - I've decided to apply for some jobs but I'm not sure which position I may fit in. - I'm feeling like a huge failure.
What should I do with my life now? Has someone in here ever experienced something like this before? I'm open to any suggestions.
Thanks!
ps: posting this from a throwaway account for obvious reasons. I hope you don't mind.
197 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 224 ms ] threadIn 2010 I barely knew how to code, was a bit depressed. I started doing small JS/C experiments/art projects for a few months... changed me forever.
Take time to rest. If you haven't been doing that in the last three months, (try to) do it now. This means stopping worrying about your future for a bit. Give yourself a month to have fun and be lazy, without feeling guilty about it. (That is, try to do so. If you find that you can't, well, you can't.)
And then it's time to figure out the next step.
By the way, something like 90% of startups fail. You had two out of two startups fail. This shouldn't surprise you. It's the most likely outcome.
I'm about your same age. I have a carreer which, arrogantly, everyone I know considers "pretty damn good"
I've shipped a fraction of what you have in terms of end to end solutions, let alone piloting the ship as a founder would have to. I've learned skill sets deep in narrow areas, but this has left me wanting for broad exposure and heterogenous understanding.
Your experiences and _successes_ (you SHIPPED, even if it failed after N years, and that's not even including a fucking _sale_; how many engineers get even close to that far?) give you skill sets that I couldn't easily replicate from my entire peer network. Do not sell yourself short. Even if you HAD failed, and spectacularly (and both times!) that's still a remarkable amount of firsthand experience that, outside of any pathological decisions on your part I don't know about, may not say anything negative at all about your choices and decisions. (and even if it did, experience is experience, you make mistakes and learn from them, and are so much more valuable after. Did you see the HN lashback to the eng. getting punished for deleting prod? and that's a pretty damn overt failure.)
I can ramble on as the above well demonstrates, largely because I have a deep wellspring of reasons why you're being silly. Please don't take this to be a statement meant in insult, I'm sitting here amazed at your accomplishments as I'm reading, get to your conclusion, and go "wait what why huge failure no stop that".
Actionably, maybe go work for a bigCo/midstage/something more grounded for a few years. Keep yourself stable and sane, see what exists in the world and what other people have done. I hope it will help you see the perspective I have, which paints your accomplishments in a very favorable light. (more importantly, don't take my advice literally, I'm saying broadly, do something to keep yourself afloat, employable, and to give yourself time to unwind and just _do shit_ as you want. Some amount of stability and freedom has done volumes in my own life for regaining mental strength in periods of conflict.) And do this in the knowledge and confidence that this engineer would consider himself lucky to work with and learn from someone who has "failed" as much as you have :)
A perceived failure is discouraging - but you've been gaining experience and growing along the way. This hasn't been a total loss.
And even then I've not come close to the first hand experience you have now, 7 years driving two companies.
So don't be too harsh on yourself, you're doing very well, way above most of people even in your country.
This kind of finance is a game you play with other peoples' money, not with your nest egg.
People aren't as special as they think they are. Investment strategies are littered with the ruined portfolios of folks trying to "beat the market".
Efficient market hypothesis has nothing to do with my opinions here. Whether or not it's possible to beat the market has nothing to do with it either. It's simple averaging - I expect than if I pick individual stocks, I'll get an average result for stock pickers as a group, and that average result is the same as the market as a whole.
Want to know my investment strategy? It's taking every dollar from working that's in excess of my expense budget, immediately putting it long a total stock market index, and sitting on it for about two decades. I don't look at the news, I barely look at the index price, and I'll continue doing this if I lose half my money over the next year. I'll get as good of an expected return, except paying less money in fees and leaving my deferred capital gains invested.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_class_forecasting
"When you went to medical school did you ever want to graduate with a C average?” The doctor said, “No.” Vandergrift replied, “Do you want to send your kids to a C school?” He said, “No.” Vandergrift countered, “Then why are you doing that with your money? The S&P is an average. It’s an average of the 500 largest companies in the United States. It’s an average. It’s a C index. Why would you want to invest to get average returns?”
Reference class forecasting. Have you heard of it? Do you know that it reliably improves the accuracy of your predictions? What makes you a better investor than everyone else trying to beat the market?
Also, to me personally, it seems like you're kind of making up what you just said (to get people to go to your trading school). Can you post some proof that your family is set for "generations"? (For example can you show the order of magnitude of your accounts via an anonymous screenshot?)
By the way I don't share the view of others in this thread who say that your advice is "terrible", the only thing that bothers me is that you did not add a disclaimer and have an incentive to make up what you've written (to generate traffic to your school).
Thanks for understanding.
But I do remember reading your comment on the books discussion page few days ago. Actually, I have been thinking along the lines of what your bio description says. And I even bought a book, from the ones you suggested (the history of hedge funds, one). So thanks!
I am interested in that area, but constrained for bandwidth. As I also want to pursue cryptocurrency and/or ML. So not easy to choose, as realistically will have bandwidth to do only one of the three areas. And that too ensuring current project goes in a near 'self driven' way. Nothing is easy :)
For the book, I hope you like it and find it as inspirational as I did... Good luck, think outside the box and don't listen to the naysayers :-)
I can photoshop a statement showing gazillion dollars in my account, but how about first you go into my profile and show the community exactly how I am running a trading school, because this is how you came out swinging at me unprovoked 2 posts ago...
I don't like bullies in real life and even less hidden on the net...
The only reason this site is in my profile is to show the naive people interested in the stock market that they should never ever pay for a trading school or trust a trading guru, because all of them are failed traders out to scam and steal... Just read trough the heart breaking stories and maybe just maybe someone in the community can help put some of those people in jail... Thant is the whole idea, but I bet you wouldn't understand...
https://tradingschools.info/2015/08/05/a-review-of-emmett-mo...
But I assume you already knew that.
https://www.tradingschools.org/warning/
It takes a thief to catch a thief...
The warning you just linked (it's down at the moment but here is an archive[1]) says "If [someone says] that he consistently makes $1,000 per day, well that’s great. But have them show you proof in the form of account statements."
So I don't see why you became so upset with me when I asked for a similar proof from you - I was fine if you make it anonymously! (Blanking out all of the identifying information).
I would assume that you are being honest, and after all you do have a bit of karma here. So what I asked for is exactly what the site you linked suggests - just some indication of the size of your portfolio, even if you make it anonymous.
Sorry again about misinterpreting your link as a site that you run.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160623064231/https://www.tradi...
As you correctly point out, I am putting faith in you because you could photoshop whatever you wanted, but I am asking you not to do so, just show what size you're talking about about. I still have no idea what size that is to you, and asked out of curiosity.
Sorry that I misinterpreted you to be running that site. Most people here put links to their own site in their profile, since a lot of people here run web sites. (And it is, after all, your profile.)
Based on all this I don’t think your apology will cut it for me, so please have a bit of dignity and stop commenting after my posts, you have lost the privilege to get answers from me anymore, so don’t be a troll...
Thank you and have a good day.
- Experiment with new technologies
You're burned out right now so you're not seeing the big picture. Or rather, you think you're seeing the big picture, which is that you're fucked. But you're really not. You're in a great place and I'm sure your next company will be a success.
Take some time off to reorient yourself, then when you come back to the computer, don't work on anything specific. Just chill and play with new technologies. One day you'll have an epiphany, see an obvious market void, and then your motivation to build a product will come roaring back.
Whatever you do, don't get a job... cmon man that sounds entirely out of line with everything you told us about yourself. That would be a huge waste. Keep plugging away. You'll have success soon.
I don't agree with that. Having a job for a while is great way to keep your time structured (OP has a problem with that guessing from what the wrote) and to stay in contact with other human beings.
Even though I'm always going to be happier as 'my own boss' I've had jobs just to tide me over for a bit or to help out some friends' business. None of those were permanent but long enough to regain a grip on the compass before deciding where to move on to next. That can take some time and that time will eat up your savings rapidly. Better to make that time count for something rather than nothing.
Source: was in same position 5 years ago. Email in sig if you want to grab a drink.
This has been the exact opposite of my experience.
I think HR is more likely to say "reject immediately, not an exact fit for the job we are looking for and anyway he or she will probably leave to start another startup soon"
In the corporate world, its hard to change positions because you are type cast.
First of all, this is really not all that bad: you got paid, and you have a years worth of $ in the bank.
Good. Now, the first thing to do is to make sure that you get into a mode where you extend your runway, turn that 12 months into 13 months and so on. Doing nothing for 3 months is enough to recharge your batteries a little bit.
Figure out what your monthly expenses are and then try to find something - anything, really - that pays you just a bit more than that so that you can remain floating while you work out what to do next.
Please do not consider yourself a failure in any way, I've run the same company for almost two decades before getting back a little over what I put in initially. I don't consider that a failure either (maybe I should ;) ), and you managed to do this in a substantially shorter time.
Sooner or later a new real opportunity will come by: use all the lessons you learned and your new perspective on life to make the call on what is worth your time and if and when that happens you can roll the dice once more. But don't get seduced by risking that head-start that you now have over most other people on something with a low chance of success.
Then you might end up losing all the time you put in.
If you're like me - and I really hope you are not - and you're continuously tempted to spend your money in unwise ways then I suggest you buy some real estate in a place where the market is reasonably fluid or, if you already own a house, to simply dump it (or at least a sizable fraction of it) in your mortgage. That way it will last long, will have an immediate ROI (if it is your own house) and you avoid the temptation to spend it piecemeal until there is nothing left.
Best of luck!
Start applying for a bunch of jobs and see what positions feel most comfortable. Also consider psychotherapy to deal with what looks like ruminations and generally poor self-esteem.
While I might not have put it that way, I +1 this. OP doesn't sound like a failure to me. Mental exhaustion from trying to keep the lights on at a start-up can definitely take its toll. I know I have similar thoughts when I've been burning the candle at both ends for too long.
- You learned you didn't have enough rounded knowledge to run a company. You probably recognize this.
- Don't forget that you now have a bunch of experience others don't have, in getting something off the ground, being in charge, and turning the reigns over to someone else at a profit.
- Maybe your next venture needs to be in a position where you'll get to learn to fill in the gaps of what you don't know and also get to leverage what you have learned. I would look for a partnership in an area outside your comfort zone where you don't have to know everything. Be a VP in a small growing company. Let someone else be #1 this time.
It's difficult to fit into a regular job after being a founder. Go ahead and do it, if that feels right to you. But I'm guessing that's not the case.
1) Find a tolerable way to generate cash flow before you need it. Taking a few months off is probably a good idea, but taking 11 months off if you have a year's worth of savings will cause you stress down the road. I'd look at platforms like Toptal and Catalant, where you can find quality clients who pay well. And, many/most of the projects on those platforms are of the 15-20 hrs/week variety (ie that's the max they would want you to work), so you'd have time to figure out next moves.
2) Regardless of your level of physical fitness, get more physically fit. I'm not saying don't go to Costa Rica or Mykonos for a couple weeks and live a little...definitely do that (family obligations permitting). But generally speaking, anecdotal observation of MANY friends who have been through similar situations suggests that people tend to neglect physical fitness in these kinds of situations (especially if you were working out in a company facility). One advantage of having time off isn't just the volume of time itself, but the predictability of your free time. Now is your opportunity to get into (or further into) BJJ or Crossfit or yoga or whatever -- you will build a lot more camaraderie with the crew wherever you end up training if you go there consistently at the same time.
3) Somewhat related to exercise - find fun things to be disciplined about. Make a reading list and hold yourself to it. Devote an hour a day to learning a new language (computer or human). Not only will you learn more stuff but it's really helpful for your overall motivation levels to reset your orientation around "I have to do this thing at this time" to fun activities rather than drudgery.
4) Invest time in your relationship with your significant other/kids/dating life (as applicable). Most people -- whether it's your wife of 10 years or the guy you met at Starbucks yesterday -- appreciate a dinner cooked from $20 of groceries to a $200 dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant. If you have a significant other, they've probably dealt with numerous cases of "hey sorry I'm really stressed I just want to come home, smoke some pot, eat some takeout, watch Game of Thrones and pass out". If this was the norm for you with your previous job, time to break out of that pattern.
2. Post consulting position, like creating your own consulting web site and some posts to advertise it, to start generating interest, and when in contact just measure each opportunity and see if you should come back from your camping holidays or defer 10 days and jump on it when you're back. See this as paid market discovery. Choose the field of consulting you LOVE and would like to become proficient in, don't offer something you already know and don't like.
3. Meet friends, trusted people, and discuss ideas, a bit on your situation but don't dwell on it, you could sound more depressed than really needed. See if some of these people show interest in what motivates you.
4. Don't hesitate to do one hour to one day projects that go nowhere except testing new technology or concepts. You might discover something great.
5. Get out to exercise a bit daily: walking in nature is excellent. Freshens the mind, replenish your energy tank.
I am sorry for a probably uninvited comparison — I am not implying that my situation is harder, and I know that burnout is a serious shit. It takes months to recover.
Some things to consider:
1) Even if you feel like a failure, you are not. You are a success. Our feelings are not a reliable indicator of personal value, especially after burning out.
2) Try to do something where you can feel small improvements every few days, with enough runway before productivity plateau. Running, meditation, skateboarding, playing guitar, rock climbing — whatever looks the most interesting to you, and looks easy enough (it's important). Regularly feeling improvements in any activity is the best therapy I know.
I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where the last item is really a proximate consequence of the startup failure (rather than a bit of context that makes the problems that are such consequences more acute.)
That's pretty easy for me. Let me try to give an example: start-ups are really hard on relationships, starts-ups that are failing and that you are trying to save doubly so. There is a small chance that that led to relationship issues which in turn led to OP now is a single parent.
There are lots of other explanations besides.
I would say the same even though I'm happily living with my wife. Nursery cost and rent alone would cause financial difficulty.
You can save on nursery but a 3 months old is a full time job if you don't have family around (which an immigrant like me and op is unlikely to have)
Some context: not all startups are financed with external investments; some happen to run from founders' personal savings and debt. I consider myself, as an ex-CEO, to be fully responsible for the failure, but it doesn't make myself a failure. I lived and learned through the experience.
Don't worry about the big picture.
Every day, find yourself some wins and celebrate them.
Maybe it's something as small as brushing your teeth. Dental hygene rocks -- go you!
Or leaving the house and going to Starbucks, even if only to browse Reddit. Hey, getting out that door can be a big challenge.
Maybe it's going for a run or a hike. You totally owned that half-mile.
Whatever it is, write it down in a list, and look at yesterday's list every morning.
Every accomplishment, no matter how small, is a step forward.
Celebrate the fact that you made that step, and didn't give up.
One more thing:
I don't know where you, the OOP, are, mentally.
So while burnout is serious shit, depression is even more serious shit.
And we don't talk about it enough in the tech community.
Whenever I move to a new country, I immediately identify a local English-speaking hospital and dental practice. Because if I ever need them, I will need them on a very tight timeframe.
So, I would invest a little time and find a quality psychiatrist. Somebody that you feel comfortable talking to, and that gives you good advice.
Do what you would do with any professional service, and shop around until you find one you really like.
That way, if you ever really do hit rock bottom, you know where you can go, and don't need to start searching when you're in no shape to do so.
Sometimes your world really has gone to shit. There is no shame in admitting that. Despair isn't limited only to people that have mental problems.
So you treat it like any other survival situation: take stock of your resources, focus only on your next action (and on nothing else), celebrate every win that you get, and realize that failure is going to be part of the process, too.
You're going to need every ounce of motivation and positivity that you can muster, and those ounces don't come free. So earn them, no matter how small, and bank those victories for the next day.
Slogging through a long and grueling hike isn't about focusing on the summit of the mountain. It's about taking one step. And then you repeat.
Sure, it might not be fast, and it might be hard as hell, but if you just don't quit, you will make it through.
In other words, "just be positive"?
For incredibly poor interpretations of the phrase "just be positive"
I never let that put me down. What I did instead was to find more work since I do consulting and pay down the debt and still get a decent living.
So lesson is to learn from your mistakes and find solutions to your problems and keep on fighting.
You'd be surprised how many people actually have it worse than us but the key here is to not give up.
If you pick up a guitar and play it for an hour, you're probably going to get a little bit better. Likewise, if you go for a run, you're going to be a little bit faster the next day.
These sorts of relationships can be really good for our brains after founding a startup, where there isn't always a clear relationship between what you put in and what you get out.
This is awesome advice for any situation brilliantly sumerized. Thank you!
As someone about to start the dreams - I'm curious.
"Remember that failure is an event, not a person." Zig Ziglar
No offense but most of the sob stories that make HN front page sound like whining from a spoiled brat. Your case sounds like proper bad/tough.
I guess at least you've gained some skills from all this.
My background: 39, failed a couple of companies - the last one was the only true high profile project (in biotechnology). As a bonus, my co-founder tried to make me sign some IP related documents once we were going under, proving that the person I was living with the last two years of my life was a complete human disappointment.
I am a scientist, multilingual, deep expertise in chemistry, skills in biotech, IT, and the whole startup salad. CV wise in Europe, I am totally out of the norm, have no life partner, and had to struggle to get back to life. No savings left, so I actually moved in to the cellar of my parents place. Additional bonus: All the stress of the last years start to pay off and gave me some bad health surprises, and I had to face a 2-3 month long depression.
Fortunately, I got our of it, and I am not facing the same thing?
Where do I fit in? What should I do with my beautiful, finite life? Work in a company? Get a wife? Get kids? Save up money to start my next project?
Take a break, think about what you want in life, re-evaluate your situation, and move on. C'est la vie.
If anyone wants to get in touch - here is my email: mfv@freeshell.de
:^)
Joining a larger company than the one's you've founded might help round out your skills, too.
Most tech startups fail... yours failing doesn't make you a failure. Your other option is to take what you've learned along the way and try again. I've you've previously founded solo, it may be worth thinking about trying again with a partner or two, if there are some candidates to do that with that you've met along the way. They can help with skills and experience you don't have, and can help keep you motivated when you're feeling down.
I don't think that it's been a net financial win (yet), but I really think it was worth it to experience other parts of life that I'd been ignoring when I had my nose to the grindstone and had tunnel-vision induced by that business. If anything, it would have been better to branched out sooner!
If you truly feel like a failure, try moving abroad for a few months. Meet and talk with people you never would have in your own country. See how they see life. Listen to their stories and their goals. You might be surprised to find that you're not the failure you thought. You might also discover opportunities to take advantage of your skills that you had never considered before.
In this instance, with any sort of standard liquidation preference and dilution (i.e. 20% investor ownership), common stock was probably worthless.
As far as what to do with life "now", that is the greatest problem that you will spend a lifetime trying to solve.
while (life = true) { echo "what now?" }
## My Own Advice ## For me, getting back to basics is my current pursuit (currently only a dream). I think our generation is generally accepting of the idea to live sustainable and detached from the economic machine.
It's ok to not know what the next steps are, take that as a sign that you need to slow down, reflect, and heal.
You are more experienced than you give credit for, but it's tough to see the entire picture when you are looking through a magnifying glass.
Find a mentor, counselor, or therapist to talk with. Heck, even a friend who has been through something like this would be good for you. Basically, get those thoughts out in the open so that you can hear yourself talk. Just by talking you will validate how you feel, what you think, and ultimately take steps towards feeling better.
Meditation helps. Recently I've developed for the first time in my life anxiety attacks that leave me with chest wall pain. I attribute this to recent events in my family, work, and trying to meet society's expectations. But, I have found that meditation has helped me bring some peace to my life. Gardening, sitting by a fire, playing with my dog, woodworking, listening to music, these are just a few of many things you can do find peace in your mind.
Too bad we couldn't grab lunch or coffee. I would enjoy hearing your story.