I Walked Away From My Startup This Week

Hey y’all 👋

I left my startup this week. You can read more about my journey here.

Now I’m all-in on making this newsletter valuable for you all. Expect to see even better, more researched posts and new ways for us to connect soon.

Choosing to leave a startup you founded is a complex, hard decision no matter what stage you’re at. So I wrote about it!

This week’s post is about the reasons founders, and how to know you should, decide to leave your startup.

One quick ask: I’d love to learn more about you and what topics you want to see me cover. Please fill this out! Should only take a couple minutes and will help me create even more relevant content for you

Read time: 5 minutes

Leaving a startup you founded is emotional and can exacerbate the extreme highs and lows of startup life both in the lead-up to making the decision and also afterwards.

But there are plenty of valid, legitimate reasons to move on and try something new.

In each of the scenarios below first make sure your team, investors, and customers will be ok. Have a plan to avoid putting the company at risk. A founder leaving can be a destabilizing event even into the later stages, as I wrote about a few weeks ago.

If you leaving will kill the company, consider exploring a sale before moving on.

You’re Burnt Out

Startups require consistent 80-100+ hour weeks, often for years.

Sometimes the reasons why stop mattering and a founder realizes they just don’t have it left in them to keep grinding on the same thing.

Paul Graham says you need to be relentlessly resourceful as a founder. If you lose the “relentless” part, and the “resourceful” part feels extremely tiring, you may be burnt out.

I recommend taking a short time away before making this decision. If, when you come back, you still feel the same way then you can treat it as confirmation it’s time to move on.