

Ask HN: What happens to the founders of startups that fail? - cgoodmac

What kinds of things do they do after? Real examples would be helpful.
======
nostrademons
After my first startup, I got a job at Google. After my second startup, I just
founded another startup.

Part of becoming an entrepreneur - probably _the most important_ part of
becoming an entrepreneur - is realizing that the rules are just guidelines.
People will give you all sorts of career advice - "never leave a job without
another one lined up", "make sure you get a good raise every time you switch
jobs", "don't call yourself a programmer" \- but they're just telling you
_what worked for them_ , and in some cases it didn't even work for them. The
guiding principle you should follow is "I'll deliver things of value to other
people, and in return, I'll ask for things of value to myself."

~~~
kluck
1\. you advise others not to follow the advice of others (blindly) 2\. you
give advice to others

My advice would rather be: Think.

~~~
nostrademons
There's no contradiction between saying "Consider other people's advice
carefully before acting upon it" and "That said...here's my advice."

"Think" is probably a pretty good way of summing it up.

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beatpanda
They go to a farm upstate. They're real happy there, with lots of room to run
around.

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minimaxir
They write melodramatic postmortems on Medium which fail to identify why
exactly their startup failed.

Afterward, they either a) do another startup or b) join an established
company, depending on how jaded they are from the experience.

~~~
tlb
It's often hard to know why a startup failed. For example, if you released
something but got few sales, it's hard to know if the product wasn't executed
well enough, or your sales & marketing were weak, or there's simply no market.
Would a couple more iterations have brought success? You can never be sure.

~~~
minimaxir
That's the exact reason why I'm not a fan of them. Most of the posts on Medium
are made less forewarning and more a last ditch publicity event.

~~~
gxespino
I doubt the part about last ditch publicity event. Would writing a postmortem
on why you've failed really help to bring in customers? Most likely not.

~~~
minimaxir
Last ditch publicity for either their own personal branding or a product
pivot.

------
dalerus
I went and worked full time at a company. Spent time with my family and
enjoyed the fact that every two weeks a paycheck would be in my bank account.

After that, I started another company.

------
kluck
They try to justify their next startup by claiming to have identified the
reasons why their previous startup failed. (irony)

Actually if they learnt something, they did not fail. Their startup just
ceased to exist.

------
PaulHoule
Ever wonder where the homeless people in SF come from?

~~~
amorphid
After running out of money, I did the homeless thing in San Francisco for a
while. That was hard. The easiest way out of it was starting a new business,
as I had a hard time getting taken seriously when applying to jobs. Being a
failed, desperate entrepreneur type did not help me project a confident aura
of "you'd be lucky to hire me". It was more like "good luck, we wish you the
best (and please get out of our office)".

------
informatimago
This is what happens to them:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpXY6LBNUNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpXY6LBNUNk)

;-)

