I've made a terrible mistake

You are posting this from a place where it is at least 1am right now. Stop being dramatic, get some sleep, and try to remember that period of your life when every day you'd get home at 7pm at the earliest, after working the whole day to make someone else rich, and having no energy at the end of the day to pursue your own interests.

Not every founder is motivated by material success.

Some people are born entrepreneurs and can't imagine working in any other way. If you are one of those people then I'd suggest that you first find out what it is that you love doing, and then build a company around that.

That way, you will be living a life which you find worthwhile, irrespective of the financial outcome of your venture. You will work harder than ever before because you'll be doing what you enjoy. And you will find it much easier to persevere through all the ups and downs of startup life because your business will be aligned with your personal values and passions.

In short, founding a company in no way excludes mindfulness, humility and reality. It's all a question of finding the right motivation.

Everyone hits lows, take a couple of days and then come back fresh. Perhaps your product isn't going to make a million this year but thats not the end of the world, there is always time.

Congratulations you are one of the few people who have experienced the reality of being an entrepreneur. :). (Not many people learn this throughout their lives)! That change in perspective is worth quitting your 9-to-5 job (once) for IMHO. Its impossible to feel this while sitting at your desk making someone else rich.

And my own story: I quit about 2 months ago and it feels like I have been going around in circles. But I've learnt hell of a lot - customer development, building a prototype etc.

Go to sleep and tomorrow morning you will feel like you've gotten another chance, another opportunity. If you need inspiration read Paul Grahams articles or http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-inspiring-entrepreneu...

Best of luck!

Did you already close the startup? What does/did your startup do?

I don't think you had made a mistake, far from it, I think that this process helped you became aware of the things you really value. That's a big step forward.

I'm a similar person: I approach starting a startup as a means to provide me with enough money in order to have more time to do other things(help others, build/contribute to great applications that can make the world a better place, improve my mindfulness).

Of course, you don't need a startup to do those things(I'm already doing them) but can be of help if you'd like to have more time to do them.

I've worked for a guy like this once. He managed to ruin the best ideas and kill fledgling projects by insisting on adding the latest buzzword features into products, even if it made no sense at all. This was mainly so he could ejaculate embarrassing press releases about the newest nonsensical features, give talks about them and meet people entirely unrelated to our products or business. One such feature was "Twitter integration" on a locked down, behind-the-firewall corporate product, another was "GPS support" for a desktop application.

Whenever a team member got tired of all this and left, he would go through a routine of badmouthing them, claiming he had fired them because they were harming the company. Despite a fairly potent team behind him, the company regularly fell out with customers due to not being able to deliver on the nonsensical promises he had made.

After a while, despite his excellent bullshitting skills, the company had earned a reputation for not delivering on promises and the remaining staff had little to do other than hand over projects to whoever the enraged customer had appointed to take over. In the end all staff had left, the office relocated to a basement and his wife (the co-owner and voice of sanity that permitted the business to even keep going for this long - especially during his lengthy unexplained absences) had divorced him.

If you care more about fame and fortune than about making a good product, please don't start a tech company.

What happened?