3dsnano

I co-founded a startup in a regulated industry. It's been going about 10 years.

I am the technical co-founder. I built the thing and put together a team of kind, smart, empathetic people who want to do the best thing. I coached them and taught them everything I knew. For the next few years it was a blast, we made incredible things together with our customers. We felt like we were making change happen in our industry.

A while back I was kicked off the leadership team, for reasons that are 50% me and 50% my co-founder. Things weren't going well and it was easy to blame me. Consultants were brought in to mature things and they vacuumed up money, sucking the joy from every crevasse.

They were eventually replaced by a hands-off executive who comes from the industry. There are bold plans to replace the thing we made with more modern tools. Middle management was imploded, SMEs riffed. We are a feature factory that will build whatever anyone wants, as long as they sign.

I've stuck around through all this, watching the team suffer. Until recently, when my co-founder let me know my time was up. I am considered helpful but no longer valued. A layoff is coming and I am the first wave.

It's weird and disorienting to have lost the power and agency around this thing that I spent 10 years of my life on. The only people who are asking how I am doing are the team that I hired, not the leadership team (or my co-founder). It makes me feel like I am out of touch, like at some point I found my ceiling or the shape of the room changed without anyone telling me.

I don't really have a point other than to share this story with folks here. Part of me writing this is to get my feelings out and in the open so I can move on.

Do you have an experience like this? What can you share that could help me?

Hello I am a co-founder of a post-series A startup. Been at it for about 10 years. I recently was pushed out of leadership into a SME role, where I help other companies integrate with our product. I don't write code anymore nor am I involved in strategy. I see the company making a lot of dumb decisions and I feel like I don't have the license, mandate, or energy to go all "founder mode" and try to fix what I see.

It's unsatisfying and boring, but it pays well. I am the top expert in our product and the organization still needs my brain, but the daily feeling of existential dread is getting too loud for me to ignore. It doesn't make sense for me to quit but recently a colleague suggested I take some time off and the idea of a sabbatical has come into mind.

So, I am really interested in hearing stories from other founders who have taken a sabbatical. Did it help restore your energy for your venture or lead you in a different direction? How long did you take off? What goals (if any) did you set for yourself? How did you negotiate this with your other co-founders or board?