HN: What did you do the day after your company failed?

I spent about two months mostly just thinking about it. We weren't bankrupt. We closed because we realised we no longer had enough money to get from where we were to a point where we could raise another round or get to a sustainable level of revenue. My period of reflection was mostly about why the business had failed, what impact I'd had on it, what I could have done differently, and what I wanted to do next. I learned a lot; mostly I learned that running a business is not something I enjoy or really want to do again.

Really depends. If you invested around 3 years of your life, and took significant investment from people, and all your employees had to be laid off along with yourself, you probably would want to take a break and have nothing to do with business for a while.

Moreover, if you have no money left, you will probably want to find a job, otherwise you will become homeless.

But if you still have some money, and it was only just a short sprint of several months with just you and your co-founder, it's good to move on to the next idea.

I don't recall there being one actual day, since we didn't go bankrupt (no company debt), we just ran out of money to keep running. I took no salary for the last year and lived on my credit cards to try to keep the company running (founders, DON'T DO THIS), so it was more a process of me realizing I was completely tapped out. I really had trouble giving up on the dream. I had been hoping we could pull out a breakthrough and make it work, but it didn't happen.

There is one day I remember very well. I had decided to throw in the towel and start looking for another job. We had been operating in a college town, and I knew the job prospects were poor there, so I took a few weeks to look for a job elsewhere. I was contacted by my apartment telling me I was being evicted. I drove back to get my stuff out and clean up. By the time I arrived, it was night. The electricity had been off for a few weeks, so the lights were out. It was a hot Florida summer, and there was no A/C, so I stripped down to my shorts and using a flashlight I moved my stuff into my car. Then I cleaned it as best as I could by the light of the flashlight. I still remember cleaning out the fridge which had been turned off for weeks, with the bugs in it jumping on my bare chest in the flickering light. I was thinking "This is not my life".

I survived that. You can survive this.

I remember waking up in my apartment, walking out onto the balcony, looking up and seeing the office windows (I lived across the street) and thinking that I had failed.

A week later I had my entire life packed into my car and drove across the country to be with my friends who knew me before I had sunk my life into trying to make the company happen.

Fortunately I still had some residual income from another part of the company that I hadn't sold, so I lived off that.

A year and a half in a bathrobe, letting friends pass thru my house, I found myself being asked to help a friend at his startup getting things off the groud, a contract gig, but cash and something back in the working world.

Life continues, its a very hard place to be on day one, but each day it gets better.

It is still an experience that I'd never trade. Ever.

I just booked a ticket to India that left in 3 days. Stayed there for two months living cheaply, bumming around with family, riding camels, and scaling the himalayas. Realized it takes a very long time to internalize all the lessons I've learned from the failed startup and realign with what I really wanted. A break prevented me from doing more startups simply out of routine habit.

Felt excited for the future because

0. You dream

1. You fail

2. You learn

3. You win

Failure was the end of step 1. The only thing you need is a little break though...