Now one question that you probably get a lot and I must ask: why not pivot?
I might publish a long-form reflection when the dust settles.
Very early in my career I used to believe that I or anyone else could be a CEO.
It wasn't until working with tiny teams where the CEO/founders devoted everything in their life to the business -- often at the expense of hobbies, romantic relationships, and any shred of free time -- that I realized true CEOs are a rare breed.
When are you ask things like "what happens if the product fails?" the answer would always be "It won't."
They both relentlessly believe in, and put every ounce of energy toward, their vision because anything less would not suffice
Again as trite as it sounds, I empathize with these people in that to them losing their vision felt like losing something dearest to them
In smaller startups, everyone is directly involved and has to punch above their weight to pull through, not just the CEO.
Also devoting everything in your life to one thing is not a mark of intelligence or skill. It is a mark of dedication but by itself means little.
And yeah, not everyone can be a CEO because most business fail very quickly. There is always an element of luck in those that survive.
But the idea that you devote 24x7 of your life hence you must be a good leader is not accurate. In fact, if you press this culture downstream, you'll tire your workers and the rest of the team.
For example: I cannot imagine being a successful touring live performer. I am an introvert, I keep a rigid schedule so travel throws everything off, can't keep myself awake very late...
Could I perform the functions of a live performer? Yes, though no matter how much I "tried" the mismatch between the job and my natural tendencies is a recipe for failure.
> not everyone can be a CEO because most business fail very quickly
These are not examples of in-born traits. While I agree that not everyone has the motivation to become a CEO, I would disagree that a person cannot learn and adapt.
Is there a way to reach out to you as I would like to hear what you have to say about what I am working on. You can update your HN profile to include contact information or you can reach out to me using my HN profile.
I'm basically working on a portable intelligence layer for AI that I will be open sourcing and the commerical product will be to make the intelligence layer even smarter. I can share the Show HN post that I am working on that better explains the value proposition and would love to learn any lessons you have gained while trying to sell AI tools commerically.
Edit: In case somebody calls me out it. I didn't want to use the `tensorzero` email domain incase the domain was going to become defunct soon.
The only way this could be a 'lesson learned' is if you homehow managed to not pay any attention to what has been going on in the last 25 years with open source software companies.
The other half goes where?
We are returning the remaining capital to investors.
Major pivoting is almost always a really bad idea. (I admit I'm doing a bit of weaseling using the "major" qualifier, but when I searched for examples online, a lot of the ones that came back weren't major pivots, just slight refinements of focus to find better product market fit). Pivoting usually carries a lot of baggage - better to just give the money back and start afresh most of the time.
Familiar with creditors getting divvied in bankruptcies, but not refunds to investors… oh it’s because there’s never any money left when things wind down. (We hear of retail stores where employees discover closures posted on shop doors when reporting to work.)
Honestly, I was close to flagging this story because the title is deliberately manipulative - it makes it sound like the founder did a rug pull. But I was really glad to see the founder come in to these comments and just say we tried, but the market shifted under us. Happens all the time.
The title is misleading unfortunately but that's how social media goes...
Early stage startups tend not to have a lot debt to pay off, because there aren’t many places willing to offer them much credit.
When after a few months we accepted that it wasn’t going to work, our investor got basically all his money back.
It was pocket change amounts compared to the sums of money that they deal with in Silicon Valley. But the point is the same anyway, the investor got back basically everything.
Ended up having to wind it down because it was a stupid idea and I realised quite quickly after spending money on it. Was a small amount of money but a lot for me. Luckily the investor never asked for money back.
Wound down my second one too but lost no money.
Then came into some money through a software sale about 7 years later, and offered to pay the first investor their full investment back, which was about half the money from the software sale (my only sale ever).
They really appreciated it but declined and instead said no, they want to invest in me AGAIN in the next one.
Felt really nice to have someone believe in you so much they would open themselves up to money risk again rather than take their initial investment back
I would applaud that the fact that found took bold decision to think out of the box and take action towards it.