This morning one of our fellow Heretics told me that the startup she worked at will most likely not get additional funding — lights out by the end of the month.
Stuff like this is hard. For most of us it’s the worst nightmare. And yet — it’s the norm, not the exception. With more and more startups getting early stage funding and essentially a flat number of startups getting series A funding the chances for a startup to make it to the end of the tunnel are simply decreasing (here’s a great read on this subject on Inc.com)
This is not to say that it’s easy. Not at all.
So what do you do?
Give yourself some time to reflect. Do an After Action Review. What did you learn? What was good about the experience? What would you do different?
Take some time off. Come to closure. Move on. There is so much to do.
When my first company hit the wall a friend of mine called — he just sold his company for many million dollars. His one comment was: It took him six failed startups to get to this point. I just scored my first one — five to go!