My own experience presiding over startup failure was excruciating. I had a serious personal breakdown that took a couple years to recover from. There was the burnout, but also a deep sense of guilt, weakness, and personal failure. Articles like this can inadvertently heap on guilt, insinuating that a founder "stopped trying" or "lost heart", as a if a better or stronger soul might have prevailed. But sometimes, closing the doors is the right thing to do.
For other failed founders out there... I found very few resources that could help me navigate the aftermath, so I wrote the book I wish I'd had. It's a passion project, so I give it away for free. It's titled "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal."
Yes, personally I think this idea that our identities are defined by careers, job titles or being a founder is inherently very dangerous. So when it all falls apart, who are you? It is very dangerous. We need to stop evangelising this way of thinking and try to be more holistic about it. Life before startups, tech, etc was not defined like this. Yes people's last names were effectively the work they did, but the whole of your identity was not wrapped up in something that could disappear in an instant. Or something we have effectively infatuated as a real necessity. The reason so many of us fail is because we're building things nobody needs. Maybe that's harsh but I have to ask myself, if I didn't build go-micro.dev, would something else have existed to replace it, yes, wholeheartedly yes. My contribution to software is not that significant. If Google didn't exist, would something else exist, Yes, it would.
We have to look at the world differently. OK there's Elon with his effed up childhood and maniacal need to "save humanity" but when you really get down to it, he falters at the simplest questions about life. This man doesn't know what's real and what's not. Let's be clear, those we follow are just human and often what gets them to where they are, while its hard work, if it wasn't them, it would be someone else and those people would be just potentially in the right place, at the right time, and sacrificing things that maybe we shouldn't sacrifice. Life went on long before tech and it will continue long after tech.
On a related note, a science fiction short story anthology titled "Derelict" was published in 2021. When they were soliciting stories, I thought long and hard about how to put a creative twist on the topic. I wrote a story about a race to recover Elon's roadster, which made it into the anthology.
I spent a year and a half building a "startup" of my own (actually, a humanitarian nonprofit) that failed. I can relate to the author's painful emotions as he processes his experience. This emotional journey is common in entrepreneurship, but very few people talk about it, so I wrote the book I wish I'd had.
The book is titled "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal", and I mention it whenever these threads come up. It doesn't sell well, so I'm just giving it away for free.[0] I'm passionate about the topic.
Also, FWIW, although you acknowledge the mistakes in execution, this sounds like a brilliant idea.
As I learned from the a blackboard when doing my study abroad year for Arabic that engrained my respect for teachers, formal or informal: من يعلمني حرفا فصرت له عبدا. Read your bio and thanks for the book, looks interesting Will download and read when I can.
I wrote a book called “Eating Glass” about the grueling emotional and psychological experience of presiding over a prolonged startup failure, coping with the aftermath, and finding my way back to health and growth.
I wrote the book I wished I’d had available to me, as I believe these experiences are common among entrepreneurs and high achievers. My “Show HN” was immediately lost downstream but I have given out free digital copies on a few occasions in response to folks posting here about similar struggles.
I have been successful by most standards, with a litany of professional and educational achievements, a wonderful wife, three beautiful kids, and a life of exciting new experiences. But age 35 was a crucible year in which I presided over the scorching failure of a startup, struggled mightily in my PhD program, and reluctantly accepted that I no longer believed in the religious faith that had shaped my life. That change eventually cost me my marriage. It felt the universe took a sledgehammer to my life.
That year (7 years ago now) marks a "before" and "after" point in my life. It changed all my priorities. I'm much more relational now, much more focused on the present, and search for and find joy in simple, quiet, beautiful things. I still work hard but am far less attached to professional success. The faith change led me to abandon an identity that tormented me with cognitive dissonance, was rooted in social expectations, and never worked well for me; constructing a new, more authentic identity has not been easy but it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
In many ways, my journey has been a fairly conventional "midlife passage" (my preferred term over "midlife crisis"). I'm grateful for the experience, and thankful it came early enough that I could renew my life while still relatively young.
This is a good post, and I'm always glad to see discussions about mental health anywhere in the startup scene. However, I agree with the other commenters who note that healthy routines may not be enough to cope with the stresses of running a startup, particularly given the high rate of failure. Even the strongest and healthiest individuals face a high risk of being strained past a breaking point. I wish we talked more about that.
I learned this the hard way, presiding over the failure of a nonprofit I founded. Nothing prepared me for the sheer level of stress and exhaustion, the aftermath, and the recovery process.
I wrote a book about this to help others, in case anyone is going through something similar: "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal." [0]
I have the dubious distinction of having burned down three acres of Stanford's Lake Lagunita with a Li Po battery after crashing a drone (this was a soft pack for a DIY drone). We had been meticulous about charging and handling safety, but they still light off like fireworks if punctured. Seven years later, I'm still terrified of these batteries and treat them like explosives.
The fact that you care about employee development and are deliberately seeking out ways to do it better puts you ahead of most managers. I can't directly address advancement within a company, but will share some of my own experience.
I founded and led a small software development team within government that was a mix of government employees and contractors, but we acted like a startup and had a strong culture and team ethos. I was under severe constraints about what I could actually offer my team members in terms of advancement, but I tried to deliberately help them grow. I cared about them for their own sake, but also believed they would do their best work for my team if they felt valued, taken care of, and fulfilled in their desire for growth.
I did a one-on-one with team member upon hiring, and then every 6 months or so. We used these meetings for mutual feedback but I also deliberately asked about their goals and we strategized together about how to help them advance towards those goals. I was honest about the limits of what I could do. Even though I couldn't directly promote people, we often found ways to help team members learn new skill sets in the course of their work, take on more leadership, or shift into different lateral roles that would stretch their knowledge and abilities. In some cases I worked with our contractor company to pay for training in new skills adjacent to, but not directly related to, their core duties.
I also acknowledged in our first one-on-one that this job was just one of many they would hold. I hoped they would stay with us a long time, but whenever they left, we would wish them well and help them transition into their next thing. I also told them one of my personal goals for each new hire: that they would be better for the time they spent on our team.
These individuals stayed fiercely loyal to the team. Most stayed for quite a while. Many did leave for higher-paying jobs after a couple years, but it was always a difficult decision for them because they loved the team and the mission so much. When they did decide to leave, we always wrote recommendations and did whatever else we could to help them find their next opportunity.
I had a horrible experience with a manager after having generally good experiences (as did my spouse around the same time at a different organization). I realized later that the thing that was most problematic for me (and my spouse) was that I truly to this day do not believe the manager was acting in good faith.
I'm not saying that there are good or bad managers for other reasons, but I think just having someone who really truly wants everyone to succeed (as opposed to being motivated by selfish or ideological reasons) can go a long way.
The worst is just going through the motions. Work on this useless project to say we worked on career development for the year and check off a box. Then at the start of the year start working on another useless project for next review.
As long as you don't do that I think you are ahead of 50% of managers I have had.
I'm sorry you've been going through this. I can relate somewhat. I have been successful by most standards, but made large sacrifices for "paths less taken" that didn't work out like I'd hoped. That included a prestigious PhD, which I did complete but was a grueling experience that ravaged my mental health (grad school can be absolutely brutal for this). Everything culminated between 35-40, a hard season of questioning the direction of my life, feeling restless and dissatisfied, and yearning for something I couldn't name.
You will find plenty of practical advice (such as about career changes), which may be helpful. Professional mental health care can also be important. But I'd also encourage you to take the "inner journey" aspect of this seriously. When we enter these listless seasons, it's often because our soul is alerting us to something in our life that isn't working for us... and thus offering us an opportunity to learn and grow. The darkness has a lot to teach if you do the inner work to slow down and listen to what it has to say. During these years I gained a lot of empathy and wisdom about life.
Passing through these seasons is a universal part of the human experience, and you'll find some wonderful guides. Some of my favorite resources include this article by David Brooks [0], "Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life" by James Hollis, "Let Your Life Speak" by Parker Palmer, "Falling Upward" by Richard Rohr, "Crossing the Unknown Sea" by David Whyte, and "Reboot" by Jerry Colonna.
I also wrote a book about my own experience, titled "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal", designed to help others navigate these seasons. I have numerous free chapters here [1]. My main goal for the book is just to help others going through these seasons, so if you email me, I'll send you a free digital copy. I sincerely wish you luck finding your way through this season.
For other failed founders out there... I found very few resources that could help me navigate the aftermath, so I wrote the book I wish I'd had. It's a passion project, so I give it away for free. It's titled "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal."
Amazon/Audible link: https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Glass-Journey-Through-Failure/...
Free copy: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/arauyfnkwwezbbk0cbvdp/eating-...