She describes feeling undeserving of heaping praise, panic attacks, sacrificing relationships and friendships in the name of enterprise, hitting bottom, wondering if she should have quit sooner, and finally, relief and hope for the future.
In a world where most tech-related articles mythologize founders, it's sobering to read one that doesn't.
This is true. I don't have some a scientific study that proves this - just every entrepreneur friend I have that is kicking ass right now as an example of this being true.
There's some very old entrepreneurial wisdom that says if your business can make it past year 4, it has staying power. I thought that was bullshit until I made it past year 4 and right about that time we discovered efficiencies, lucrative markets, a kick-ass business model and what we are really good at.
And yeah, not having money is really really awful, especially when it goes on for years with no certainty that it will ever change. But as entrepreneurs, that's how we do.
I had a big failure years ago. It was horrible, and in retrospect there were a lot of really screwed up things going on from day one. This included a business partner who turned out to be a delusional sociopath, etc.
Nevertheless I learned a tremendous amount. You learn things by going through it in the trenches that cannot be taught in school.
Currently working toward attempt two, which is probably much more likely to be successful.
It's sad to read stories like this. But I have to wonder... if the concept is profitable what keeps it from being executed without 2 million dollars in investor money? So maybe you stay smaller... who cares? For you, it is about what you are making, not how big the company is. How much does it really cost to set up a database driven website? Hmmm?
Now, I realize this doesn't apply if the end game is a high dollar exit, but if you can make a decent living with your application/web site ("startup" and "founder" are overused terms in my opinion) who cares?
If you can't make a profit long term, then maybe you your idea doesn't deserve to live. Simply passing the bomb on to the next set of suckers be they the public at IPO's, or acquires, or VC investors hardly seems like the right thing to do (although no doubt it is done all the time... sometimes with incredible profits).
There is life outside the VC world. If it's a good idea and profitable and you love it....stick with it. If you are looking for a billion dollar exit... that's another thing entirely and it's time to move on to the next idea.
I generally agree with this perspective, but a two-sided marketplace is one of the business models that really does need to grow fast. No one would install the Uber app if it didn't have any drivers, and no one would apply to be a driver if there were no riders.
It's a valid point. I think that certain types of ideas do require capital to start. Uber, for example, probably needed a lot of capital to get their infrastructure going. If you have web-based startup with minimal expenses then investment capital may not be necessary until you are ready to make a big move.
Here on HN it is overly glorified to read "company gets 1.2 million investment." It puts things in perspective to think "company takes out 1.2 million dollar loan and now has 10 months to figure out how to stay in business." But that's the reality of going the venture capital route before your company has any income.
I think it was a combination of bad luck, timing, and some bad decisions on my behalf. I learned a lot from the experience.
Actually, we had a team of 5 working on this. Running operations is really intense and time consuming. There is lots of customer service, community management and making sure items arrive at their destination. Then I was there to work on product and I had 2 developers as well.
I looked at the figures, and although it might be possible to cut out all the tech/product side and just leave operations, then we would really be in a zombie state. I thought it was better to cut our losses and move on.
Makes sense. I actually stumbled upon 99dresses the other day after looking at Polenizer(I'm a Brisbanite). Hoping to grow a startup here, not because of some strict nationalism, just too lazy to go through the visa process =D
Curious -- where did all the money go? How did you manage to spend $700k~ -- you hired 2 developers (full time, why?) and took care of ops over 3 years? How long did it take, four years?
5 full time staff, an office, flights, marketing expenses - that all ads up. Apparently we were burning a third of what a startup at our stage normally is with our team size, and I even thought that was a lot.
Was your office in SF (SOMA?). What marketing expenses -- were you paying for user acquisition on mobile? Were you flying to Australia and back?
Lasting 4 years on 700k with 5 people and no income (or even 2 years) with some other minor expenses is relatively low burn, though. We budget 100k+~ / person / year. If your app involved shipping dresses to your office, unfortunately you need to run the ops for it and handle physical objects :(
I feel for the author, but in reading this detailed post-mortem it's clear to see there was a combination of bad luck, poor planning, and a number of incorrect decisions. Hopefully she learned from them, will correct what she can and ride out what she can't in her next venture.
It struck me when she glossed over how/why her two co-founders left. There's got to be a deeper story to why two "co-founders" would leave right when 1.2M is secured.
She said they decided to tell me they were leaving the company without even a hint of warning - my guess is there was no agreement in the first place or a lot of unnoticed warnings. To conclude she's just too trustful is almost certainly a flawed conclusion.
I'm sure she learned a lot from this experience, but she seems to write off the deserters as flaky. I'd be asking myself what I did or what lies I was telling myself that made me think I had co-founders when I really did not. That sort of character judgment is as important as product judgment.
Hey Andrew, I actually glossed over that out of respect for the 2 guys. My purpose was not to bitch about them, and many people who will read this post in my network will know who I'm talking about. There were mistakes made on both sides, but in the end I bent over backwards to accomodate them and as soon as YC was over and they could say they were YC founders they bailed. I'm not saying its entirely their fault - I should have picked up on the warning signs but I was off fundraising for 2 months and didn't notice. But I did consider them my friends, and they didn't care what position I was left in if they were to leave. Anyway, I'm sure we both learned a lot from the experience.
I experienced a co-founder split not too long ago and I can definitely tell you from my personal introspection that you may need to look deeper than "it was my fault for not seeing the warning signs".
It always takes two to tango and you're right to not bitch about them but then saying you were stabbed in the back is silly. Being a founder is tough, having co-founder problems is tougher, clearly understanding what your part in the dynamic is or was is even more difficult.
Sometimes, too, to get this level of internal depth takes distance from the people and the experience. It took about six to eight months for me to figure out what was rightfully my fault and what was rightfully my co-founder's fault - beyond "seeing the warning signs early".
Also, I don't know what your captable looked like but if you were the controlling interest you cannot and should not expect anyone to care about what position you're left in - you must be prepared to shoulder the burden on your own for a bit if they decide it isn't worth their time anymore. The more you own it the more you own it.
Hope you're okay and sorry if this comes off as admonishment, it actually comes from a heartfelt place. You're welcome to contact me personally if you want more support.
[EDIT]
Re-reading my comment, I might be coming off too much as an armchair psychologist, I'll leave the comment up for posterity and maybe you'll find something useful in it or not. Either way I think you've handled yourself well and hope that you yourself are doing well.
The point went over your head, in any failed dynamic there are always mistakes made on both sides. I'm trying to encourage her to think deeper (not write) about it beyond not catching the "warning signs" which places her in a victim position. Whether she was or not, victim cycles create repeat patterns until the person sees their own role in it.
I'm encouraging psychological healing. I've very much been through a very similar experience.
[EDIT]
It actually sounds like it turned out well since she did end up with a solid co-founder relationship anyway. I'm leaving this up for posterity but now think my thoughts on this are unwarranted.
1. Even though I'd already spent 2 years on the startup, the first co-founder I bought on had the same equity as me. He wanted it, and I wanted someone fully committed.
2. I was off fundraising for 2 months, and my mistake was not communicating that really well with them. I wasn't a great leader at that time. However, I did notice something was off but I just thought it was post-yc depression (which is actually a thing, apparently). I asked them outright if everything was ok, and they said sure, that it would all be fine when we got back to Australia and moved on. I trusted them, and they lied to my face.
3. I think they were very naive, not malicious, in how they left. They thought everything would be fine if they just left, but thats not how startups work.
4. One of them refused to talk to me or give me an explanation after he left. I had to practically force him to meet me for some closure. Its like getting a divorce with no explanation.
I made mistakes too so its not all on them, but at the end of the day a co-founder is supposed to be your partner through thick and thin, and they bailed without talking through the issues at all which equates to stabbing me in the back. And they made sure to tell me this after I'd reimbursed them for thousands of dollars in expenses for their YC adventure.
The purpose of this is NOT to discredit them. I'm not a huge fan of them, but they dont deserve to be villified. I'm just trying to be a bit more transparent about what happened so that its helpful to some readers. I'm sure they've learned from the experience and will treat their next cofounders differently if they do start something else.
In progress on a startup now, and I have realized the most important thing is trust between the cofounders. There is a lot of people who want to be 'cofounders' but don't understand what it means, the real consequences and also what real company control means.
I also think YC might not be helping here - since being a YC founder is such a cachet resume item, the value of growing a company is discounted. This results in real problems as you have illustrated.
In the end, if you don't trust and know your cofounder as well as your SO, it's going to make the hard things that much harder.
I was in the same situation. In my case the reason why the co-founders left wasn't told was because the reason was that they thought their partner was too naive and incompetent to work with. Not something so easy to say straight to the face. In hindsight, I think there was no wrong in feeling betrayed in my case, but at the same time the co-founders did no wrong either. We were too inexperienced to handle the situation gracefully. Break-ups can't be amicable all the time. Everyone has their side of story.
I'm curious what YCombinator has to say about that kind of behaviour. Is this a unique case? Has it happened before? How do you prevent it from happening? What's the benefit of being able to say you're a YC founder?
YC already knows the dangers of "co-founders" who don't have a working history beyond getting together for this startup. Technically, it should have filtered her out of the application process.
I didn't mean it absolutely even though I wrote it that way, obviously there are many other factors and exceptions, but this is one factor that would work against a person.
As for indicators, I think that people who have worked together for a shorter amount of time are more likely to break up. This is because fights and disagreements between co-founders are inevitable, and in startups they are more intense compared to regular business working relationships. When you have history with your cofounder, then you've likely survived those fights and are more likely to get through the ones coming.
>What's the benefit of being able to say you're a YC founder?
Being able to attach the YC brand to your resume is probably very helpful when seeking investment for a new venture or applying for a job at a BigCo.
Although I have no knowledge of the situation beyond this (very well written) post, I don't think it's farfetched that a couple developers would join an existing company just to experience YC and improve their Valley credentials.
I think it's great that you take the high road and don't resort to dragging other people through the mud. You definitely seem to place the responsibility all on yourself, which I imagine is not always the full truth. Not providing any reason at all, actually makes it sound as if the two co-founders just randomly and completely bailed on you. (Which may be exactly the truth)
I was trying to imagine a logical scenario, for example they had an even better opportunity. Or perhaps it was better to split before the stakes became to high. Maybe the salaries were not going to be what was expected, there were disagreements on responsibilities, etc. I can imagine a lot of scenarios.
Not to diminish your article, which I found extremely interesting. It was just a point that definitely seems like there was a greater story to be told.
I find it refreshing that we got this level of truth and detail from a startup post-mortem. The price for that transparency is selective opacity in a few still-sensitive areas. I get the deal.
Perhaps a good approach in this type of circumstance is to explicitly leave it unanswered. (eg. "both left for reasons that are not the point of this post")
Well, if you Google around, you get Peter Delahunty. It looks like he's gone from being a CTO at a few places (including 99dresses) to just working under a CTO. It looks like his strategy didn't pay off.
you say in the article you were "stabbed in the back" by your co-founders. that's provocative language and an extremely strong indictment against two people that are not anonymous.
Political correctness is bullshit. They stabbed her in the back at the worst possible moment, its called stabbed in the back because had they not lied to her about their motivations she could have gotten real co-founders and not be left out without a team at the worst possible moment. They are lucky they got the treatment that they did on this post-mortem. They deserve to get outed publicly. If not only as a service to others who would not knowingly do business with those whose word holds no water.
We don't even know the full story (& probably never will), yet you're already advocating mob justice? That's about as bad, if not worse, than the political correctness you're railing against.
Sometimes people do get stabbed in the back. It is not provocative it is true. We don't know if there's another side of the story, but leaving without warning just right before a round close is really crappy.
You are 22 and female. I kind of hope you will cut yourself some slack. As a 49 year old woman, I kind of wonder how much this whole thing was impacted by your gender. It took me a long time to realize how many doors are just not open to me because of my gender, how many subtle ways I get cut off from information I very much need.
Of course, male or female, you did a helluva lot for someone your age and I really think you should feel fine about the entire thing.
I'd be interested in that too. I am a research scientist, and the experience of trying to get some decent innovative science done appears to be similar in terms of emotional stress as running a start-up. Will it work? What do I need, who will give it to me, etc, etc.
One thing I have learnt, though, is the people are harder than science; if you don't have your working relationships aligned all hell can be created.
It's glossed over because it requires more than a single party to represent the "story" in a fair light and it would unprofessional for her to write about her biased emotional experience.
I think she is 100% in the clear for glossing over it and I personally would have left out bits like "backstabbing" &c... They may or may not have but describing her personal emotional experience while leaving out the hairy and sticky co-founder dynamics is a great way to share an experience of the "dark underbelly" [that is startups].
But can you reliably judge the character of people who are incentivized to deceive you?
In my experience, most people are happy to keep their options open, and most people discount volatility pretty hard when forced to make their life choices path-dependent. Not just to start a company, but when it comes time to commit resources to something, you find that even those who you believed would carry through, whether thanks to their track record or particularly convincing talk, will drop out.
I think of it as them having a high discount rate. The NPV of choosing a riskier path with later reward is thus lower than the stable, short term higher returns of stability, and the cost of "flaking" (the likelihood of you choosing not to do business with them ever again if you get to a position of such success that you can afford it) very low, especially if you are not currently in a position of success. Plus, you'll "understand", right?
I've gotten better over time at spotting those who'd drop out, but still have a 30-40% failure rate. I chalk it up to flakers being good at convincing other people - too good for me to spot them - and factor that in as a cost of doing business with good people which pays off in the long term. If you have a reliable way to spot flakers early, I'd love to read about it.
(FWIW on the original subject - Noam Wasserman's data show the highest rate of failure for "family/friends who become co-founders", followed by "fresh hired co-founders" with "people who worked together before as co-founders" being a significant predictor for co-founding success.)
The author took many, many hits and still kept on going. I have an immense amount of respect for her and hope that she will embark on a new venture soon where she can apply everything that she learned.
There are only 23 million people in Australia, and its a small population spread over a huge area. That means shipping is expensive, which isn't great for trading low value second hand fast fashion items. An item that can get shipped for $2.80 in the US would cost $7 at least in Australia.
Also, Australia Post doesn't have any APIs to automate shipping. Girls had to physically go to the post office to ship items, and there wasn't tracking either. This meant a lot of customer service headaches.
Consider one more roll of the dice, this time in the UK. We speak English and we have a postal delivery network.
Rather than chase the $$$ consider taking your idea to Oxfam - a British charity known for selling donated clothes. Your app will enable them to introduce a younger audience to the work they do. They also have people to pick up the phone, a marketing budget and that network of stores.
From a customer standpoint they really might be pleased to pay a premium to Oxfam if their clothes are going to a good home. It is a different 'doing good' proposition. Things that don't sell might as well go to the Oxfam shop as a donation - the app takes people half way there.
If not Oxfam then there are plenty of other charities that might be interested. You might not make money for the VCs of the valley but you will be able to make the thing work, perhaps to feed a few of those in The Global South as a spin-off benefit.
As far as acquiring new users, the idea of an 'Oxfam app' definitely has intrigue, people would do marketing for you by word of mouth. Plus they would 'excuse' themselves to get their next fashion fix.
Just to clarify, I think people should still get some money back, but with 10-25% or so going to Oxfam. Sure there would be postage to pay that might mean people are making pennies on outfits that cost pounds, but this would be psychologically okay if money is going to Oxfam.
You could also pimp the app to show the user/customer how many mouths they have fed through their trades.
This charitable outcome might also work well for those that have put money in your venture. To them they might not have earned $$$ but they will have done something for the greater good.
The UK market is small compared to the US but the geography is a lot tighter. Crack the UK with a partner such as Oxfam and then the other markets will follow, maybe with different partners. I should also say that charities do pay a living wage :-)
Regardless of what you do next, well done for giving it a go and I look forward to hearing about what you do next.
Trying to partner with Oxfam is a brilliant idea. They are also present in other European countries, so this could open you multiple doors in Europe where you don't have competition.
I happen to know someone who worked at the direction of Oxfam in Spain couple of years ago, so let me know if you are interested - it would be a super long shot though.
The UK also has favourable visa arrangements for Australians - certainly more so than the US, which seems hell bent on rejecting any desirable immigration.
Take a break for half a year or something anyway, and then have a look at the Oxfam thing, it sounds cool. You can also do that part-time, no need to force it. Good luck nikki!
+1. Postage in Australia is a very rough deal for many businesses. On top of internal pricing, companies overseas can often ship to here more cheaply than we can even ship internally. It's crippling and will remain so without either drastic overhaul or something like autonomous couriers years down the track.
Wine is big business in Australia, but where wineries in California seem to have < $10 shipping nation-wide, an Australian winery will cop $30+ to post a dozen to an interstate capital.
(I'm an Australian with one physical product which would be easier to sell if the shipping weren't so expensive.)
I really appreciated this article. I'm on year 5 of my "startup" which has struggled and kicked and clawed and just barely hit profitability at the end of last year. I have to admit that it feels totally uncool that we have hung on all this time instead of just quitting after spending somebody's millions of dollars in 6 months. (We never had millions to spend, but anyway). There are so many times when you feel like things are just not going to work. Working hard and persevering are ideas that don't always jive with the "fail fast" strategy.
Even after all this time and things beginning to look positive, I still worry constantly that we will backslide or somebody will come along and take our marketshare or any number of other things. I wish that 99dresses had a different outcome, but still it is an encouraging story. No doubt with this kind of attitude and experience Miss Durkin is going to find success. I think it is extremely important to know that not every venture has to take off within six months to be successful. It's a long haul for most of us.
Well written. One thing I always find funny about the startup world is the idea that hardship is good. Hardship isn't good. Hardship sucks. Sometimes hardship is something you need to survive to accomplish your goals, but not always. While there are a lot of successful startups that went through a lot of hardship, there are a lot of them that didn't. It seems that based on a lot of factors that were outside of your control you were playing the startup game on "hard mode" and you gave it a pretty good run anyways.
Also a pretty good lesson that having a good job and comfortable life maybe isn't so bad after all (a very un-silicon valley lesson).
Gotta agree, startup is not some glorified zero sum game. Losing two co-founders nearly threw me into "depression". A special hell I created around myself of self-doubt and why-me.
Personally taking time off startup helped and made mentally more stronger. I can't even imagine what she went through with so many big ups and downs.
Hardship at a lot of startups is the result of entrepreneurs not respecting the old adage, "It takes money to make money." A lot of entrepreneurs don't really know how much money they need, and young ones often start their companies before they know where it's going to come from.
The good news is that now is a great time to be selling equity in a tech startup. The bad news is that even if you're successful in trading your company's equity for capital, there's no guarantee you'll get enough capital, or that you'll be able to get more of it when you run out.
The point is a bit more subtle. There is the russian roulette aspect of probability, and then there is failure from lack of character. Unfortunately, outsiders can't see or relate to the important distinctions. This makes dealling with use a bit more cognitive overhead--and that's what sucks. Explaining things to folks on the outside who don't have the inclination or understanding to care. That's a different kind of hardship vs. waking up everyday and doing difficult (but tractable) things like problem solving be it in math or marketing. But my guess is those are problems many will never have the privledge of having, for good or bad, one way or the other.
Or as Lefty Gomez artfully pointed out, "I'd rather be lucky than good." The more time I spend working on my startup, the more I appreciate the wisdom of this quote.
Hardship in itself is crap. Hardship that leads somewhere might kinda be good in retrospect, maybe. The startup world seems intent on getting people to buy into the idea that all hardship is that sort of hardship.
I disagree. I think hardship is a valuable experience that everyone should endure.
1) You only really get to know yourself when you find yourself eating rice for the hundredth time in a row, and live on the floor of an abandoned building.
2) "never again" is one hell of a motivator
3) you gain the knowledge that all these things, all this crap we fill our lives with, is totally unnecessary
4) empathy. Live below the bottom rung for a while and you'll understand far more keenly what poverty is like. The idea of being in that situation and not having the skills, knowledge or gumption to not bootstrap out, or not having the vision to realise you already have, is terrifying.
Thanks for posting this! It sounds like it was incredibly difficult at times. Hard to imagine, but thanks for making it vivid.
I would love to hear more about the following (not holding my breath):
"After hiring a few people and finding an office in NYC we were ready to launch. We solved the chicken-and-egg problem using techniques that we promised never to speak of again because they squarely sat on the grey/black spectrum of naughtiness. If there was a line, we definitely crossed it. We had to. These hacks were harmless to others, so I figured it was only a problem if we got caught."
Post-mortems like this are always really enlightening. I'd really like to know more about some areas the author glossed over, though. What were the grey/black tactics they used to get past the initial chicken-and-egg problem? And what change did they introduce that caused a near-revolt of their userbase?
My guess as to the grey / blackhat tactics they used to gain initial traction were:
1) Fake "sell-side" accounts to provide marketplace liquidity
2) Manipulating app store chart ranking through bot downloads or download services to acquire "buy-side" accounts
It sounds like the service basically stopped growing once they had to abandon the black hat techniques they were using (possibly because they grew large enough to attract scrutiny from the platform operators). If that's the case, there was never a business.
Wow. Amazing story. I have heard of 99 dresses a lot - though women's fashion is farthest from my interest area. So you did build quite a brand.
I am also pleasantly surprised to see that you probably have set up this blog just to share this article?
I have been an entrepreneur 5 years now, and I can totally relate with the part of showing a positive face when you have none - its an occupational hazard. Good luck for the next set of adventures.
BTW, I am sure the Valley community will be open to welcoming you back. You are an entrepreneur through and through - so if its not the Valley, Bangalore's doors are always open :-). Best of Luck.
Ms. Durkin I think you just need to go bigger next time. Don't just solve a small problem, solve a dire one that we all (man and woman, black or white) have in common.
Why disrupt a market when you can create a new one while simultaneously destroying four others? You know, that sort of thing.
I understand the frustration and outright sadness at a startup dying. Its your baby while its there, and sometimes, you wake one day and its not. But that is the nature of startups. Like you said - the odds are against you from day zero. But we do it regardless for that 10% chance of "not dying" and the even more anorexic chance of "making it big". I think ultimately we're doing it for the ride. And I think every person going into a startup should be given a little laminated fact sheet explaining that he's joining an enterprise which will try to fight this statistic and nothing is guaranteed in this rollercoaster. Same way the banks have to warn you before you invest in a portfolio, that your investment might be buggered to hell, people should be aware the same applies to tech startups. If nothing else, that might cut down on the disappointment of letting your staff know its over.
Keep at it Nikki. Well done for your first round. Level up now and go at it again.
I met Nikki while I lived at a Hacker House in Mountain View for a few weeks in January 2012, having recently moved to the Bay Area. I remember being impressed at the time by her intensity, and by the fact that she actually had a real product with real users that solved a real problem.
An audible "oh no" came out of my lips when I clicked this link and realized I was reading about someone I had shared a few dinners with.
It's important for little pieces of history such as this one to be recorded. For the founders, to whom it gives a sense of closure, and for the community. So that we don't forget our comrades who didn't make it to the other side, but still have insightful lessons to share.
The press likes to glorify the AirBnBs, the Googles, the Facebooks - but as founders, I think it's important for us to be realize that this is only a tiny visible part of the iceberg, and that at the end of the day, there are so many factors at play that it would be foolish for us to focus solely on the "how many millions did they make". Human stories are never boring, and experience is one of the most precious thing others can share.
Thanks for taking the time and effort to write this, Nikki. We're with you.
---
"Investing money, creating new products, and all the other things we do are wonderful games and can be a lot of fun, but it's important to remember that it's all just a game. What's most important is that we are good too each other, and ourselves."(http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2012/03/eight-years-today.h...)
I remember sitting opposite Nikki in co-working spaces (Fishburners) and incubators (Pollenizer) back in Sydney throughout 2010 and 2011. Her gumption, determination and focus back then was (and is) a force to be reckoned with. If there is anyone who's failure I would never question - it would be hers.
It's heartbreaking to hear these stories, even more so when it's someone you know. But Nikki - thanks for sharing. We're all made a little stronger for it. For the rest of us it should serve as a reminder that no matter how hard we strive there will be always be forces outside our control that shape our destiny.
Your personal health and well being are much more important than your startup that just failed, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time. Nothing will teach you that faster than losing your health or talking with people who have.
And what if you don't have personal health and well being to begin with? What if you need money to pay off the medical bills, money that you know an ordinary job will never suffice for? Making money is not just a game for everybody, just because it's a game for you.
Doesn't make it false though. Perhaps the opinion of someone who's "got there" and looks back counts for something more - in some cases - than that of someone early in their journey.
I'd rather this than "Yep - it's all just about the money" anyway...
Exactly. Not in that position myself, but I'd guess once you have a certain level of comfort, security and perhaps the option to indulge in some of life's luxuries, it's much like electricity or running water: desperately, terrifically important and yet so easily taken for granted.
Is there anything he could say that wouldn't invite the ad hominem? I'm trying to imagine him saying "Yup, money is pretty damn important" and I suspect the response would be exactly the same. It seems like the only thing you can do if you're wealthy is keep silent.
FWIW, I'm hardly very rich and I've believed that since I got out of college. Mostly because those who believe success in business is just a game and don't get emotionally attached to the rewards tend to do a lot better in business than those who must get rich quick.
I'm kinda failing to see the failure here. Yes, the business failed, but this reads like a fairy tale. Support from family and friends, investor backing, media coverage - all while failing to make a dime.
Try running a successful and rapidly growing business for 8 years while everyone around you tells you you're a crazy fucking idiot and that you should give up and get a job. No investor interest as we make money, which investors hate. That's failure.
I am a crazy idiot. I keep coming back for more. I will lose my mind before this is over. I am a failure.
While I feel for your situation, I had to downvote you because your comment smacked of No True Scotsman and attention hogging. Sorry.
A startup folded and left several people with nothing to show for years of effort. It seems pretty callous to me to assert that she didn't fail, when several measures say she did, and she feels like she did.
I'm glad she shared her story. Do you think your comment encourages others to do the same?
I read your parent comment with a large level of irony (i.e. not literally). Your parent is bitter that actually building a successful business - by the metrics you just cited, as your parent claims to be doing -- feels/reads/is lived like total failure compared to the feeling of reading a "faery tale" of running a business into the ground while getting incredible levels of support that were "unearned" (if I try to put myself in your parent commmenter's shoes) because the business wasn't actually profitable.
Your parent commenter is bitter about the fact that a total lack of viability - making money - gets support, while he has to bootstrap in the face of derision.
madaxe_again: I recommend you get off of HN if you are interested in building a real business. This is a community for building things that investors here would be interested in. If it's not a problem that a rich man with nothing to do all day but look at Internet metrics can see as something to solve, then building a business is not going to get any support from this specific community.
You should forget about investors. When has an investor ever backed anything that they couldn't have related to within 15 seconds of hearing a pitch for it? But investors don't represent the people of the world.
If you want investment, play with investors. They'll give you $200,000 to stop making money and make a messaging app. If you launch one before you talk with them they'll raise that to $600,000.
It is what it is. (Don't read my comment bitterly. I love this ecosystem.)
Yup - nail on head. Not bootstrapping any more, we did that bit years ago, but I didn't still want to be here, doing this, eight years down the line - hence this is a failure. A moving, growing, functioning, successful failure.
We don't want investors, actually - we don't need 'em. We do, however, want to sell this thing one day, as you can only stare at the sun for so long before going blind. Until then, however, it's fail all the way.
And yes, I'm bitter. Amazingly so. Largely with my own naïvety. But the mask is strong.
(EDIT: I'm not a journalist). If you have an email I would love to talk to you [EDIT:] as a fellow founder. There is a much wider ecosystem in private equity than just HN-style startup investors. The 100 VC's you'll hear about here represent a tiny sliver of a fraction of private equity. I don't know much about the whole market, but I'll tell you what I do know about it and exchange thoughts.
-
[EDIT:] I wrote this comment first, but following the journalist's response also asking for your email am adding these edits.
1. I would consider giving the journalist your email as well (or email him) as having a story written about you can't hurt -- maybe someone will read about your metrics there and want to invest. You explicitly complain about this in "Support from family and friends, investor backing, media coverage". Now, here's your chance. The journalist has a profile reading "Columnist @ Slate. Contributor @ Priceonomics. Co-host of the Stratechery Podcast (stratechery.fm) with Ben Thompson (currently on hold; please stay tuned)."
2. On the other hand you may be wanting to keep a clear separation from this online identity, which I would respect but the journalist would have to prove through showing you other stories they have written that don't divulge the source.
I may have come on a little abruptly, and if so, I'm very sorry for that. To clarify my request: I'm not a fairweather journalist who just registered an account, looking for a scoop or a "gotcha" piece on this thread. And to whatever extent my post came across that way, I apologize. I'm a founder and reasonably longtime HN member (1330 days, evidently. I wish I could have written this comment 7 days from now!) who got involved in journalism through working with a YC company early last year.
When I say I am "inclined to be sympathetic," I mean it. I have a very simple agenda here: I think the media, overall, give too much attention to certain tropes of "success" and "failure" stories w/r/t startups. In this person's story, I am intrigued to see that he's built an economically successful business at which he feels trapped. You don't see that kind of story every day, but I suspect it's not entirely uncommon. At the very least, it's worth exploring. Maybe a story comes out of that chat, and maybe it doesn't. My goal would be to have a friendly chat, and to see where that takes us.
If he'd need to talk to me under condition of anonymity, that's totally fine. If he's willing to go on the record, also fine. And if he decides he doesn't want to talk to me at all, hey, totally cool. I would respect any of those choices out of ethical integrity, professional code of conduct, and sympathy for his predicament.
As for me: I use my real name on this account. That means both that my journalistic output is easily searchable, and that I'm holding myself openly accountable to anyone I engage with on HN.
Would also love your email. I think your story sounds fascinating, and while I don't know the particulars, I'd love to talk to you about them in greater depth.
My contact info is in my profile. Hit me up if you're ever interested in having a conversation with a writer who is inclined to be sympathetic to your dilemma. Not sure if you're media-averse at this point or not, but I'd love to explore your story for my column.
Before you can sell the company, it sounds like you need to find a way to hand the day to day operations and management of the company over to others. At that point selling or keeping the company becomes an investment decision - either way you can step back from it somewhat.
No need to apologise, it's what the downvote button is for :)
My comment wasn't intended to be callous - rather to reflect the fact that success and failure aren't as absolute as "the business failed". She is a success, insofar as she has a great support network, a laudable track record, and a press that wants her to speak her piece. The business going to pot means that it failed in its principal objective - but doesn't mean that it failed as a vehicle for those involved. I suppose what I'm saying is the business failed, she didn't.
I am a failure, in the same light, yet my business functions and grows like a weed. It is not a vehicle for me, however. The business is a success, but every day feels like a failure, as I had not intended to still be doing this eight years down the line.
Sad to see her fail she's a very driven person and admire her for that, most likely if she had a little more funding she would have made it.
I think the most important lesson here is that the team makes all the difference and getting a awesome team is the most important especially for a non technical founder.
She spent a large amount of time and money just getting to the point where she had a reliable team.
Keep one eye on your team and the other on the product and be brutally honest with your team all the time if they can't handle it or can't decide to stay or leave this will make them leave sooner giving you more time to find someone else.
Don't shield the team from bad news this is a group effort and they need to feel a part of it.
270 comments
[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 349 ms ] threadIn a world where most tech-related articles mythologize founders, it's sobering to read one that doesn't.
"I felt like I was drowning in a black ocean, and I couldn’t see any light at the surface. I didn’t know which way to swim."
"I was fucking tired — physically and emotionally. I wasn’t sleeping properly."
"I had no bandwidth for anything else."
"I felt physically sick all day"
"I felt shame, guilt, embarrassment ..."
"I was scared I’d meet someone new and they’d ask me what I do"
"I was also embarrassed because I couldn’t afford to pay for anything..."
"I wasn’t depressed so much as disappointed."
..and on and on.
And yeah, not having money is really really awful, especially when it goes on for years with no certainty that it will ever change. But as entrepreneurs, that's how we do.
Nevertheless I learned a tremendous amount. You learn things by going through it in the trenches that cannot be taught in school.
Currently working toward attempt two, which is probably much more likely to be successful.
Now, I realize this doesn't apply if the end game is a high dollar exit, but if you can make a decent living with your application/web site ("startup" and "founder" are overused terms in my opinion) who cares?
If you can't make a profit long term, then maybe you your idea doesn't deserve to live. Simply passing the bomb on to the next set of suckers be they the public at IPO's, or acquires, or VC investors hardly seems like the right thing to do (although no doubt it is done all the time... sometimes with incredible profits).
There is life outside the VC world. If it's a good idea and profitable and you love it....stick with it. If you are looking for a billion dollar exit... that's another thing entirely and it's time to move on to the next idea.
Kind of like all the ebay replacements that never seem to get anywhere in spite of how awful ebay is.
Here on HN it is overly glorified to read "company gets 1.2 million investment." It puts things in perspective to think "company takes out 1.2 million dollar loan and now has 10 months to figure out how to stay in business." But that's the reality of going the venture capital route before your company has any income.
Actually, we had a team of 5 working on this. Running operations is really intense and time consuming. There is lots of customer service, community management and making sure items arrive at their destination. Then I was there to work on product and I had 2 developers as well.
I looked at the figures, and although it might be possible to cut out all the tech/product side and just leave operations, then we would really be in a zombie state. I thought it was better to cut our losses and move on.
Lasting 4 years on 700k with 5 people and no income (or even 2 years) with some other minor expenses is relatively low burn, though. We budget 100k+~ / person / year. If your app involved shipping dresses to your office, unfortunately you need to run the ops for it and handle physical objects :(
She said they decided to tell me they were leaving the company without even a hint of warning - my guess is there was no agreement in the first place or a lot of unnoticed warnings. To conclude she's just too trustful is almost certainly a flawed conclusion.
I'm sure she learned a lot from this experience, but she seems to write off the deserters as flaky. I'd be asking myself what I did or what lies I was telling myself that made me think I had co-founders when I really did not. That sort of character judgment is as important as product judgment.
It always takes two to tango and you're right to not bitch about them but then saying you were stabbed in the back is silly. Being a founder is tough, having co-founder problems is tougher, clearly understanding what your part in the dynamic is or was is even more difficult.
Sometimes, too, to get this level of internal depth takes distance from the people and the experience. It took about six to eight months for me to figure out what was rightfully my fault and what was rightfully my co-founder's fault - beyond "seeing the warning signs early".
Also, I don't know what your captable looked like but if you were the controlling interest you cannot and should not expect anyone to care about what position you're left in - you must be prepared to shoulder the burden on your own for a bit if they decide it isn't worth their time anymore. The more you own it the more you own it.
Hope you're okay and sorry if this comes off as admonishment, it actually comes from a heartfelt place. You're welcome to contact me personally if you want more support.
[EDIT]
Re-reading my comment, I might be coming off too much as an armchair psychologist, I'll leave the comment up for posterity and maybe you'll find something useful in it or not. Either way I think you've handled yourself well and hope that you yourself are doing well.
I'm encouraging psychological healing. I've very much been through a very similar experience.
[EDIT]
It actually sounds like it turned out well since she did end up with a solid co-founder relationship anyway. I'm leaving this up for posterity but now think my thoughts on this are unwarranted.
1. Even though I'd already spent 2 years on the startup, the first co-founder I bought on had the same equity as me. He wanted it, and I wanted someone fully committed.
2. I was off fundraising for 2 months, and my mistake was not communicating that really well with them. I wasn't a great leader at that time. However, I did notice something was off but I just thought it was post-yc depression (which is actually a thing, apparently). I asked them outright if everything was ok, and they said sure, that it would all be fine when we got back to Australia and moved on. I trusted them, and they lied to my face.
3. I think they were very naive, not malicious, in how they left. They thought everything would be fine if they just left, but thats not how startups work.
4. One of them refused to talk to me or give me an explanation after he left. I had to practically force him to meet me for some closure. Its like getting a divorce with no explanation.
I made mistakes too so its not all on them, but at the end of the day a co-founder is supposed to be your partner through thick and thin, and they bailed without talking through the issues at all which equates to stabbing me in the back. And they made sure to tell me this after I'd reimbursed them for thousands of dollars in expenses for their YC adventure.
The purpose of this is NOT to discredit them. I'm not a huge fan of them, but they dont deserve to be villified. I'm just trying to be a bit more transparent about what happened so that its helpful to some readers. I'm sure they've learned from the experience and will treat their next cofounders differently if they do start something else.
In progress on a startup now, and I have realized the most important thing is trust between the cofounders. There is a lot of people who want to be 'cofounders' but don't understand what it means, the real consequences and also what real company control means.
I also think YC might not be helping here - since being a YC founder is such a cachet resume item, the value of growing a company is discounted. This results in real problems as you have illustrated.
In the end, if you don't trust and know your cofounder as well as your SO, it's going to make the hard things that much harder.
Why do you say so? Surely that's just one signal among many, and not an absolute indicator of anything?
As for indicators, I think that people who have worked together for a shorter amount of time are more likely to break up. This is because fights and disagreements between co-founders are inevitable, and in startups they are more intense compared to regular business working relationships. When you have history with your cofounder, then you've likely survived those fights and are more likely to get through the ones coming.
Of course, this is simply one of many factors.
Being able to attach the YC brand to your resume is probably very helpful when seeking investment for a new venture or applying for a job at a BigCo.
Although I have no knowledge of the situation beyond this (very well written) post, I don't think it's farfetched that a couple developers would join an existing company just to experience YC and improve their Valley credentials.
I was trying to imagine a logical scenario, for example they had an even better opportunity. Or perhaps it was better to split before the stakes became to high. Maybe the salaries were not going to be what was expected, there were disagreements on responsibilities, etc. I can imagine a lot of scenarios.
Not to diminish your article, which I found extremely interesting. It was just a point that definitely seems like there was a greater story to be told.
Step 1: Learn about their interview process
Step 2: Interview well and make it in
Step 3: Quit after a fair amount of time due to some plausible reason
Step 4: Carry around the signaling benefits of having attended the learning institution, without any of the pressure of finishing the course
This method has been successfully practised by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and quite possibly, the 99dresses cofounders.
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nikkidurkin
created: 1000 days ago
Of course, male or female, you did a helluva lot for someone your age and I really think you should feel fine about the entire thing.
One thing I have learnt, though, is the people are harder than science; if you don't have your working relationships aligned all hell can be created.
I think she is 100% in the clear for glossing over it and I personally would have left out bits like "backstabbing" &c... They may or may not have but describing her personal emotional experience while leaving out the hairy and sticky co-founder dynamics is a great way to share an experience of the "dark underbelly" [that is startups].
In my experience, most people are happy to keep their options open, and most people discount volatility pretty hard when forced to make their life choices path-dependent. Not just to start a company, but when it comes time to commit resources to something, you find that even those who you believed would carry through, whether thanks to their track record or particularly convincing talk, will drop out.
I think of it as them having a high discount rate. The NPV of choosing a riskier path with later reward is thus lower than the stable, short term higher returns of stability, and the cost of "flaking" (the likelihood of you choosing not to do business with them ever again if you get to a position of such success that you can afford it) very low, especially if you are not currently in a position of success. Plus, you'll "understand", right?
I've gotten better over time at spotting those who'd drop out, but still have a 30-40% failure rate. I chalk it up to flakers being good at convincing other people - too good for me to spot them - and factor that in as a cost of doing business with good people which pays off in the long term. If you have a reliable way to spot flakers early, I'd love to read about it.
(FWIW on the original subject - Noam Wasserman's data show the highest rate of failure for "family/friends who become co-founders", followed by "fresh hired co-founders" with "people who worked together before as co-founders" being a significant predictor for co-founding success.)
The one thing that made no sense to me was why they didn't stay in Australia and go after local market. Does the concept not work there?
Also, Australia Post doesn't have any APIs to automate shipping. Girls had to physically go to the post office to ship items, and there wasn't tracking either. This meant a lot of customer service headaches.
Consider one more roll of the dice, this time in the UK. We speak English and we have a postal delivery network.
Rather than chase the $$$ consider taking your idea to Oxfam - a British charity known for selling donated clothes. Your app will enable them to introduce a younger audience to the work they do. They also have people to pick up the phone, a marketing budget and that network of stores.
From a customer standpoint they really might be pleased to pay a premium to Oxfam if their clothes are going to a good home. It is a different 'doing good' proposition. Things that don't sell might as well go to the Oxfam shop as a donation - the app takes people half way there.
If not Oxfam then there are plenty of other charities that might be interested. You might not make money for the VCs of the valley but you will be able to make the thing work, perhaps to feed a few of those in The Global South as a spin-off benefit.
As far as acquiring new users, the idea of an 'Oxfam app' definitely has intrigue, people would do marketing for you by word of mouth. Plus they would 'excuse' themselves to get their next fashion fix.
Just to clarify, I think people should still get some money back, but with 10-25% or so going to Oxfam. Sure there would be postage to pay that might mean people are making pennies on outfits that cost pounds, but this would be psychologically okay if money is going to Oxfam.
You could also pimp the app to show the user/customer how many mouths they have fed through their trades.
This charitable outcome might also work well for those that have put money in your venture. To them they might not have earned $$$ but they will have done something for the greater good.
The UK market is small compared to the US but the geography is a lot tighter. Crack the UK with a partner such as Oxfam and then the other markets will follow, maybe with different partners. I should also say that charities do pay a living wage :-)
Regardless of what you do next, well done for giving it a go and I look forward to hearing about what you do next.
I happen to know someone who worked at the direction of Oxfam in Spain couple of years ago, so let me know if you are interested - it would be a super long shot though.
OTOH, the E3 US Visa is quite simple - it's generally considered to be the easiest US skilled worker visa to get.
Wine is big business in Australia, but where wineries in California seem to have < $10 shipping nation-wide, an Australian winery will cop $30+ to post a dozen to an interstate capital.
(I'm an Australian with one physical product which would be easier to sell if the shipping weren't so expensive.)
Even after all this time and things beginning to look positive, I still worry constantly that we will backslide or somebody will come along and take our marketshare or any number of other things. I wish that 99dresses had a different outcome, but still it is an encouraging story. No doubt with this kind of attitude and experience Miss Durkin is going to find success. I think it is extremely important to know that not every venture has to take off within six months to be successful. It's a long haul for most of us.
I wish Nikki all the best in the future!
Also a pretty good lesson that having a good job and comfortable life maybe isn't so bad after all (a very un-silicon valley lesson).
Personally taking time off startup helped and made mentally more stronger. I can't even imagine what she went through with so many big ups and downs.
The good news is that now is a great time to be selling equity in a tech startup. The bad news is that even if you're successful in trading your company's equity for capital, there's no guarantee you'll get enough capital, or that you'll be able to get more of it when you run out.
The point is a bit more subtle. There is the russian roulette aspect of probability, and then there is failure from lack of character. Unfortunately, outsiders can't see or relate to the important distinctions. This makes dealling with use a bit more cognitive overhead--and that's what sucks. Explaining things to folks on the outside who don't have the inclination or understanding to care. That's a different kind of hardship vs. waking up everyday and doing difficult (but tractable) things like problem solving be it in math or marketing. But my guess is those are problems many will never have the privledge of having, for good or bad, one way or the other.
Isn't that why we have a name for it?
1) You only really get to know yourself when you find yourself eating rice for the hundredth time in a row, and live on the floor of an abandoned building.
2) "never again" is one hell of a motivator
3) you gain the knowledge that all these things, all this crap we fill our lives with, is totally unnecessary
4) empathy. Live below the bottom rung for a while and you'll understand far more keenly what poverty is like. The idea of being in that situation and not having the skills, knowledge or gumption to not bootstrap out, or not having the vision to realise you already have, is terrifying.
I would love to hear more about the following (not holding my breath):
"After hiring a few people and finding an office in NYC we were ready to launch. We solved the chicken-and-egg problem using techniques that we promised never to speak of again because they squarely sat on the grey/black spectrum of naughtiness. If there was a line, we definitely crossed it. We had to. These hacks were harmless to others, so I figured it was only a problem if we got caught."
Edit: ++empathy.
It sounds like the service basically stopped growing once they had to abandon the black hat techniques they were using (possibly because they grew large enough to attract scrutiny from the platform operators). If that's the case, there was never a business.
I have been an entrepreneur 5 years now, and I can totally relate with the part of showing a positive face when you have none - its an occupational hazard. Good luck for the next set of adventures.
BTW, I am sure the Valley community will be open to welcoming you back. You are an entrepreneur through and through - so if its not the Valley, Bangalore's doors are always open :-). Best of Luck.
Ms. Durkin I think you just need to go bigger next time. Don't just solve a small problem, solve a dire one that we all (man and woman, black or white) have in common.
Why disrupt a market when you can create a new one while simultaneously destroying four others? You know, that sort of thing.
Good luck!
Keep at it Nikki. Well done for your first round. Level up now and go at it again.
An audible "oh no" came out of my lips when I clicked this link and realized I was reading about someone I had shared a few dinners with.
It's important for little pieces of history such as this one to be recorded. For the founders, to whom it gives a sense of closure, and for the community. So that we don't forget our comrades who didn't make it to the other side, but still have insightful lessons to share.
The press likes to glorify the AirBnBs, the Googles, the Facebooks - but as founders, I think it's important for us to be realize that this is only a tiny visible part of the iceberg, and that at the end of the day, there are so many factors at play that it would be foolish for us to focus solely on the "how many millions did they make". Human stories are never boring, and experience is one of the most precious thing others can share.
Thanks for taking the time and effort to write this, Nikki. We're with you.
---
"Investing money, creating new products, and all the other things we do are wonderful games and can be a lot of fun, but it's important to remember that it's all just a game. What's most important is that we are good too each other, and ourselves."(http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2012/03/eight-years-today.h...)
I remember sitting opposite Nikki in co-working spaces (Fishburners) and incubators (Pollenizer) back in Sydney throughout 2010 and 2011. Her gumption, determination and focus back then was (and is) a force to be reckoned with. If there is anyone who's failure I would never question - it would be hers.
It's heartbreaking to hear these stories, even more so when it's someone you know. But Nikki - thanks for sharing. We're all made a little stronger for it. For the rest of us it should serve as a reminder that no matter how hard we strive there will be always be forces outside our control that shape our destiny.
These things are easy to say for a very rich guy.
I'd rather this than "Yep - it's all just about the money" anyway...
FWIW, I'm hardly very rich and I've believed that since I got out of college. Mostly because those who believe success in business is just a game and don't get emotionally attached to the rewards tend to do a lot better in business than those who must get rich quick.
Try running a successful and rapidly growing business for 8 years while everyone around you tells you you're a crazy fucking idiot and that you should give up and get a job. No investor interest as we make money, which investors hate. That's failure.
I am a crazy idiot. I keep coming back for more. I will lose my mind before this is over. I am a failure.
A startup folded and left several people with nothing to show for years of effort. It seems pretty callous to me to assert that she didn't fail, when several measures say she did, and she feels like she did.
I'm glad she shared her story. Do you think your comment encourages others to do the same?
Your parent commenter is bitter about the fact that a total lack of viability - making money - gets support, while he has to bootstrap in the face of derision.
madaxe_again: I recommend you get off of HN if you are interested in building a real business. This is a community for building things that investors here would be interested in. If it's not a problem that a rich man with nothing to do all day but look at Internet metrics can see as something to solve, then building a business is not going to get any support from this specific community.
You should forget about investors. When has an investor ever backed anything that they couldn't have related to within 15 seconds of hearing a pitch for it? But investors don't represent the people of the world.
If you want investment, play with investors. They'll give you $200,000 to stop making money and make a messaging app. If you launch one before you talk with them they'll raise that to $600,000.
It is what it is. (Don't read my comment bitterly. I love this ecosystem.)
We don't want investors, actually - we don't need 'em. We do, however, want to sell this thing one day, as you can only stare at the sun for so long before going blind. Until then, however, it's fail all the way.
And yes, I'm bitter. Amazingly so. Largely with my own naïvety. But the mask is strong.
-
[EDIT:] I wrote this comment first, but following the journalist's response also asking for your email am adding these edits.
1. I would consider giving the journalist your email as well (or email him) as having a story written about you can't hurt -- maybe someone will read about your metrics there and want to invest. You explicitly complain about this in "Support from family and friends, investor backing, media coverage". Now, here's your chance. The journalist has a profile reading "Columnist @ Slate. Contributor @ Priceonomics. Co-host of the Stratechery Podcast (stratechery.fm) with Ben Thompson (currently on hold; please stay tuned)."
2. On the other hand you may be wanting to keep a clear separation from this online identity, which I would respect but the journalist would have to prove through showing you other stories they have written that don't divulge the source.
You can give me a pseudonymous email, it's fine.
When I say I am "inclined to be sympathetic," I mean it. I have a very simple agenda here: I think the media, overall, give too much attention to certain tropes of "success" and "failure" stories w/r/t startups. In this person's story, I am intrigued to see that he's built an economically successful business at which he feels trapped. You don't see that kind of story every day, but I suspect it's not entirely uncommon. At the very least, it's worth exploring. Maybe a story comes out of that chat, and maybe it doesn't. My goal would be to have a friendly chat, and to see where that takes us.
If he'd need to talk to me under condition of anonymity, that's totally fine. If he's willing to go on the record, also fine. And if he decides he doesn't want to talk to me at all, hey, totally cool. I would respect any of those choices out of ethical integrity, professional code of conduct, and sympathy for his predicament.
As for me: I use my real name on this account. That means both that my journalistic output is easily searchable, and that I'm holding myself openly accountable to anyone I engage with on HN.
No pressure intended, either way.
My contact info is in my profile. Hit me up if you're ever interested in having a conversation with a writer who is inclined to be sympathetic to your dilemma. Not sure if you're media-averse at this point or not, but I'd love to explore your story for my column.
Why do you need to remain involved day to day?
My comment wasn't intended to be callous - rather to reflect the fact that success and failure aren't as absolute as "the business failed". She is a success, insofar as she has a great support network, a laudable track record, and a press that wants her to speak her piece. The business going to pot means that it failed in its principal objective - but doesn't mean that it failed as a vehicle for those involved. I suppose what I'm saying is the business failed, she didn't.
I am a failure, in the same light, yet my business functions and grows like a weed. It is not a vehicle for me, however. The business is a success, but every day feels like a failure, as I had not intended to still be doing this eight years down the line.
I think the most important lesson here is that the team makes all the difference and getting a awesome team is the most important especially for a non technical founder.
She spent a large amount of time and money just getting to the point where she had a reliable team.
Keep one eye on your team and the other on the product and be brutally honest with your team all the time if they can't handle it or can't decide to stay or leave this will make them leave sooner giving you more time to find someone else.
Don't shield the team from bad news this is a group effort and they need to feel a part of it.