Ask HN: Starting over after business failure I'm a little burnt out after my business failed after 4 years of hard graft. I'm looking for a new online opportunity but feel as if I've run out of ideas, problems and general creativity. I'm not sure how to start again. Any advice? |
Also, one thing you lose working in a startup for a long period of time is perspective on what "normal" problems are. Which is why so many startups look like they only target other startups. The best ideas come from working in an industry long enough to understand the specifics about a problem, how to solve it, and who would buy it.
Some of my anecdotal evidence: Left an exploded and then imploded startup (where I was one of the first employees), completely burned out and was approached by a guy for a startup.
Sounded good, but my creative energy was gone and my wife told me to go to hell if I wanted to start a company with a newborn on the way.
Went to a super boring corporate job instead that had three big benefits:
1) Nice and cushy 9 to 5 with great money to lick my wounds
2) As OP said: Energy came back and I realigned with normal people and normal problems
3) I left after 11 months with a nice bore-out and so many great examples of what not to do in a company that it had my fire lighted and ready to go.
Turned out the guy who wanted me for the startup had waited for me and together we built the largest streaming search engine worldwide over the past 5 years.
That in turn was a serious roller coaster ride with its own story again, but that wasn't your question, right? :)
How are you monetizing this?
I ask out of concern that this thing sticks around!
My advice: Go back to the scene of the crime and open up an investigation while the trail is still warm and you have some consulting gig to keep cash in your pocket.
Your startup worked for 4 years. I would recommend you go back to your industry and meditate on why you were convicted and why you were committed. Why did you succeed? What did you do better than the competition? Why did you stop succeeding? What about your customers you really loved? Which customers did you really hate? What was the magic of the business that others couldn't repeat as easily as you. In those answers may possibly lie the new startup that you want to launch that will CRUSH the COMPETITION. In a careful poring of the 4 years are the seeds for a new and possibly even more successful company. Take your time because looking at the failure will be painful.
The niche can be served but I'm not sure it can be served and make a living from it. There are other competitors (without our USPs) but they're backed by universities so it's not clear if they're "stand alone" viable either. Thanks for your advice!
Recently listened to a podcast of Tim Ferris, where he interviewed Tony Fadell - who built the iPod, iPhone and Nest. In it, he makes a serious case for getting bored. He explains how he uses it to drive new ideas, such as how it helped him get the clarity of mind to get the idea of Nest, and how afterwards he's done the research for his current problem - one of plastics.
"Get the time to get bored. Spend three, six months if you can, or at least two or three weeks outside of that. Get bored. Just put away all of your things. Maybe go clean up the garage or whatever it is. Right? Through that, you’re going to start to think differently. You’re going to act slightly differently and your mind might open up to other sources of inspiration, other problems, other things where you start to go, “Oh, now I see differently.” I’m not just going to go run to the competitor because I understand the space and run to the competitor and go work for them because they’re going to give me a better job. But I want to go do a whole different thing that I want to learn about that’s going to challenge me so I’m not just checking in every day and doing my work, but I’m actually growing through that."
Listen to it here: https://tim.blog/2019/12/23/tony-fadell/
Keep in mind, dopamine isn't a "pleasure hormone". It's a reward anticipation hormone, one that drives you to do painful things for a reward that might not happen. It mixes both excitement and anxiety... excitement to get you started, anxiety to force you to finish.
It doesn't trigger in things that are actually relaxing. That's why people who are actually having fun 'procrastinate' less on some sites.
In between battling depression and anxiety over the years, I started doodling things again. Those doodles turned into thought experiments, into reading research papers, into connecting into a new field. I'm feeling more energized these days about starting something new, and more excited about working on a startup again.
I wish there was some way I could have avoided falling into the emotional abyss and spending so many years there. Maybe I should have focused on building more friendships over the years instead of being a loner. You really start to take for granted such things until the isolation of failure sinks in. Hopefully this time I will find a co-founder willing to go to felt with me. I'm not sure I can endure another solo fail.
I hope things are working out for you now (mental health wise).
Thanks!
To answer your question, I used to be an engineer more focused on front-end work, UX, and design. These days, I've gone back to my educational roots in economics and mathematics and moved more towards ML and prediction markets.
The only thing we can keep doing is pushing forward. Failure must be seen as a learning opportunity, not a failure of intellect or similar.
With that said, if you are experiencing emotional side-effects, which are completely normal from my POV (I've certainly had them), I urge you to consider your mental health, nonetheless your overall health. Success and money do not mean a thing if you cannot get out of your bed or house every day, or if you've frayed all relationships (whether familial, friendships, etc.) while working as hard as we're told to as entrepreneurs.
To bounce back, I focused on the opportunities that this experience has instead brought me. I realized that I got deeply involved with the entrepreneurship community on campus. I channeled all my energy to help others start companies and avoid the mistakes that I have done. This, in turn, led to more work opportunities at accelerators and organizations that support startups.
After working for about a year I gained new perspectives and experiences which pointed me to a new idea that I am currently pursuing. The "circle of startup" if you will :)
One of the best frameworks that starting my first company helped me develop is finding "problem/solution fit". Of course, that depends on your past business and experience. Personally, I became more sensitive to noticing problems and realizing that I could solve them with technology.
Start consulting with companies that have made it a little further down the road and learn from them.
Remember that not everyone has solved the same set of problems.
Find companies that have problems that you already solved with your business, and help that company by applying what you've learned.
They'll benefit from your experience and fresh approach, and you'll see what you can do with a different set of tools (more capital, better product, better team, etc.)
After working with a few companies for a few quarters, you might have a fresh outlook on whether to solve a new problem or join an established company.
What did it for me was putting aside my ego and realizing that maybe my ideas weren’t the pinnacle of human thought. Up until this point I had been building what I wanted, believing that as an engineer I knew better than everyone else and therefore what they needed and should want. I think Silicon Valley and VCs have this problem in general and this is why most of them fail.
It wasn’t until I immersed myself into searching, networking and communicating, that I finally understood that there is a huge divide between what people need and what engineers think they need.
With that said, my suggestion would be to network with people outside of your normal circle and find someone or a business that is doing remarkably well without engineering or automation. Figure out how to pitch the bigger picture to them and co-opt them into a new venture. Their idea is already working with manual, redundant workflows. Imagine what you could do together to make the business scalable.
I feel this is the mental state (whether objectively broke or otherwise) of most employees, which hinders them from starting that business they always wanted to start, or starting contracting/freelance. It's a poison as far as I can tell. Truly some of the most capable people I know cannot by pried loose from the toxic work environments and low pay they are stuck in because sick systems disrupt our ability to reason well.
My off-ramp was to:
1) Take on consulting clients
This allowed for a shift in day to day/finding an alternate source of income asap. Depending on opportunities available, you might want to skip this step.
2) Identify interesting startups in the area + get a software dev job.
This allowed me to hone up my rustier coding skills and make good money without needing to worry about clients/big picture deliverables.
3) After 1 year, move to FANG.
I needed a year to get back into the IC mindset and skillset at a level where I could be hired as a senior/principle level at FANG.
Before doing this, I built a pretty strong startup network in New York City. Through starting a company and running an entrepreneurship club at New York Univesity, I got to know a lot of relevant people on the scene. entrepreneurs, investors and community builders. Once I was sharing with people that I was working on. I got introductions to potential clients. My biggest client right now is a person whom I knew from the first year at the University.
If you are good at hosting events or bringing up ir target audience together, I would suggest looking into that.
Instead of focusing on making more money, focus on spending less. This reduces pressure, increases health and time to think and be creative. In my adult life I have spent years in low expense scenarios learning and creating. Forget the herd, do what you want to do. Move to a cheap place (avoid anywhere with a 'digital nomad' community) and go swimming, surfing, rock-climbing or cycling every day. Even if you have zero savings one remote gig or an occasional bout of local work will keep you going.
We do live frugally however which is how I was able to start the business in the first place. We traveled a lot when we were younger but now we live what many would probably call a "boring" life. We're anti-consumerist, minimalists I suppose and we're happy with that ;-)
Be gentle to yourself. You probably will need longer to recovery emotionally than financially.
Let the process take its time. If you're unsteady emotionally or under pressure (need to make a business to regain income) it is very difficult to make pragmatic decisions.
Good luck.
Whatever your next thing is, you should start it with fresh energy.
Big companies also mean big opportunities. And you don’t get to see what these opportunities are unless you’re on the inside. You will find some inspiration there for a great B2B company and you can leverage the connections you make there to make it happen.
Take some time to refresh your mind. After grinding your idea for four years you most likely lost some experience in other fields.
Have fun, read fiction books. When you'll find a new idea, you most likely neglect this parts of the life again for several yers. Good luck!
You can still solve the problem you were trying to solve with the startup, although you'll be doing it at a company. Maybe approaching it from a different angle will shed new value on your ideas and creativity, and you won't feel as depleted.
Give yourself some time. Eat, sleep, work out, live - chances are you might not have done much of that lately. I would suggest travel, but maybe not right now :)
Look after yourself first, allow yourself to be bored again, the creativity and the itch will come back. But you can’t force it if you’re running on empty.
Having failed 4Q19 at my startup, and tried finding work elsewhere, employers have rejected me left and right.
I'm no longer positioning myself as a founder/business owner, instead choosing a more traditional function, and deleting any reference to me being a founder / having done practically every single function.
Research out of U Oregon confirms my experience. https://business.uoregon.edu/news/job-prospects-former-start...
In there next 6 months, there will new opportunities that never existed before. For example, there are many companies that are realizing they will get left behind if they don't let their workers, work remotely. I am sure there will be a new set of companies that specialize in making certain job roles more remote friendly.