
Ask HN: How to escape my own zombie startup? - trapped789
I’m the CEO&#x2F;founder of a zombie startup. We’ve taken significant funding. We break even every month. Growth is flat. Scale is in the millions. I have lost passion for our business and I don’t believe in what we are doing anymore. I dislike going to work. I’ve started disliking even people I work with. We have not managed to sell for enough to return all investor money. Our team is specialized in what we do so a successful pivot is extremely unlikely. I can’t find anyone to replace me fast enough. I can’t just leave suddenly unless I want to f over all our shareholders. I do not want to do that. (I recognize staying in this state is f’ing over in a different way)<p>SOS. Have you been in this situation and how did you GTFO successfully? How long did it take you?
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montrose
If your shareholders are VCs who have board seats, they want to escape even
more than you do. So from their POV at least, shutting down the company or
doing an HR acquisition would be fine.

If one of your cofounders has always longed to run the company, you could quit
and let him/her take over.

You can probably morph what you're doing more than you realize. You can morph
a startup into practically anything. GOAT, the sneaker marketplace, started as
a group dinner service called GrubWithUs. As long as your dislike of your
coworkers has not hardened, you can keep searching for new ideas.

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Blackstone4
If you dislike it this much, your colleagues and investors will probably be
picking up on it. They might even be thinking what do we do with this person.
How do we deal with the situation?

Maybe the best thing to do would be to have an honest conversation with your
co-founders and investors. Explore your options. Including going part time.

Communication is important and most of us need to be better at asking for
help.

Your co-founders and investors will probably be relieved when you bring it up.
The hard part is starting the conversation.

For the VCs this isn't their first rodeo. They've probably seen this before
and they would probably prefer a discussion and a transition out rather than a
blowout/suprise departure.

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theodorewiles
Take a vacation and get back into the game! You are catastrophizing your
business.

I would do the following:

1) Get to stable profitability (raise prices / find costs to cut)

2) Find adjacent markets to go after (what other stuff are your customers
buying? What other stuff could your specialized team be good at?)

3) Put together a deck and sell to PE (you won’t be able to tell a unicorn
story but sounds like to have a stable biz here)

You are depressed and it’s impacting your leadership. Take a vacation, find a
therapist, and get back into it!

I love talking about this stuff, feel free to PM.

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muzani
I have been in that situation. Vacations make everything much worse. CEOs have
a habit of facing their problems up front. A vacation runs opposite to that
instinct.

In the end it feels like you just wasted a lot of money and time running away
from problems.

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fadzlan
I would agree that going for a vacation to run away from things can make
things worse.

However, if one can decide to go for a vacation to get a fresh perspective on
the issue, I think that would help. Getting to a place where there are no
interruptions expected may help you doing that if that is your intent.

Being in the office may keep you doing the daily firefighting and you may need
space to think differently.

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muzani
I've been there. I recommend the book, "The Hard Thing About Hard Things." It
got me out.

One of the keys to remember - with tech, unlike a lot of businesses, you're
playing 3D chess. Not only do you have lots of moves, but the market shifts,
the possibilities shift when new tech is introduced. People always get excited
when something like cloud or blockchain appear, but their real value is to
companies with an existing customer base like yours who have a large market
but hit some barrier in the unit economics and such.

You should probably talk it with your investors too. Zombie companies are bad
for VCs, practically as bad as failures.

Selling the company will get some money back. You might be surprised how much
you get for it too.

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tropo
You could reset your expectations. Paying the bills every month is a lot
better than many people manage. OK, you aren't getting absurdly rich... but
the bills are paid. There are probably personal things to focus on. You can
treat work as just work, a job to pay the bills, so that you can afford to do
normal things with your life. You can take up a hobby, raise a giant family,
or whatever. There is life outside of work, and your work makes that possible.

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taprun
If you're in the millions, there's probably a demand for whatever it is that
you do.

Maybe you can't pivot your product, but maybe you can change the way you sell
it, market it or target it?

Given your scale (and the fact that you're already breaking even), it might be
worth looking at the above issues. Improved future prospects may cause you to
feel better about your company and coworkers too.

I focus on issues like this. If you'd like some input, my contact info is in
my profile.

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jtchang
I have some previous experience with this.

It's okay to lose passion in the business. From a logical standpoint your best
bet may be to find someone to replace you (since you clearly want to leave
anyway).

The new person might decide to take the company in a different direction,
liquidate, who knows. But it relieves you of the responsibility. The
responsibility you have right now is to decide what is best for the company.

If you want to chat about this privately just PM me.

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SirLJ
You have to lean on your board/investors to find a buyer (they can frame it as
acquihire or whatever).

If they are seasoned investors or VCs they'll have the connections to do it
relatively easy, as they'll want out as well... It's not going to be the first
time big company acquires something that does not make any sense for hundreds
of millions of dollars - the VC cycle must and will continue...

Use the VC force and "circle of friends" in your advantage...

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tedmiston
It sounds like your heart's not in it anymore.

I've seen companies successfully replace CEOs when the founding CEO has been
in a similar situation. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. There
are CEOs or aspiring CEOs out there that want to run a company that stays
small. I think it's worth discussing with your most trusted investors to see
if they can find candidates through their networks.

Another thought - have you considered trying to get the company acquihired?

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JSeymourATL
Find an interim CEO/GM via Catalant while you negotiate your transition plan >
[https://gocatalant.com/our-experts/](https://gocatalant.com/our-experts/)

If you want help with a permanent replacement, PM me.

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softwarefounder
Is there anyone that you can bring up the ranks to make your omission less
detrimental?

Slowly integrate them into meetings, company decisions; make sure it's someone
you trust. And slowly step back.

Just an off-cuff thought.

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lafar6502
Dunno , if you have a self supporting business, why ditch it and start again?
Is it that hard to teach this pony a new trick? Or it is you who has no idea
or abilities to at least try?

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hluska
How long has it been since you have taken a real vacation??

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qume
Maybe find another CEO in exactly the same situation at another company and
swap?

Chamge of scenery, same issues but fresh motivation.

