Grief is a universal experience, especially among founders who have experienced startup failure. There is nothing more humbling than outright failure, but dealing with the mental repercussions can be crippling.
There are typically five stages of grief–denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance–that must be conquered before moving on with a career. Yet grief is also deeply personal. It’s rarely neat or linear, and it doesn’t follow a set timeline. You may find yourself crying, feeling angry, withdrawing, or experiencing emptiness—all of which are natural responses.
What most in the tech sphere won’t discuss is that startup failure is not only normal, but crucial to growth and success. Below are quotes from a number of founders who made it to the other side stronger than ever.
Stages of Startup Failure Grief
Everyone experiences grief differently. Different founders approach failure in their own way. Below is a collection of founders’ stories and how they experienced all five stages of grief.
Denial
Alexis Tryon, Founder at Extra Yarn & Artsicle: “It’s been said that startups don’t die, they commit suicide. Artsicle wasn’t going to die on its own, but it certainly wasn’t flourishing. We were a press darling and everyone said we were killing it. They must be right. Everything is going to be fine. (Everything was not fine.)”
Zak Kann, Founder at Content Raptor: “Denial is a scary thing. You know what is happening — in my case, the fall of my company — but you convince yourself that it can’t actually happen if you don’t admit that it is happening. You come to believe that you are holding off the inevitable by sheer force of will.”
Anger
Kann: “In my head, I was putting together a list of reasons why my co-founder would be to blame if anything went wrong. The partnership between co-founders is crucial when things get rough, and here I was looking for the nearest bus to throw him under. The denial I could live with, but this was unacceptable. I had to let that anger and the desire to assign blame go if we were to have any chance to survive.”
Gabe Zichermann, Author and Public Speaker on Gamification: This phase’s biggest risk is that you will both be hurting yourself physically (the stress hormone cortisol is deadly) and creating long-lasting damage to your most important professional relationships. Not taking steps to reduce your anger will cost you in the long-run.
Bargaining
Tryon: “I built a giant spreadsheet of potential acquirers, fantasizing about why they’d want to buy us […] As it turns out, those offers looked an awful lot like jobs […] The temptation to take a deal was almost overwhelming, to officially note “acquired” next to Artsicle’s name on TechCrunch or AngelList.”
Kann: “I became convinced that a pivot would fix everything […] As our desperation grew, so did the lengths that I would go to make a pivot work. I went as far as suggesting we built add-ons for a real estate CRM. That would have been great if we were in real estate software, but we weren’t. We were a data platform for chemical plants. Try to figure out that leap.”
Depression
Tryon: “I’ve never had children, but I felt like I’d lost a baby. The pain was physical, lodged firmly in my stomach. As I write this, I can feel the nausea coming back and am fighting the urge to stop writing, to go back to hiding. My company, my baby, was going to die. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.”
Kann: “The greatest power depression has is its ability to make you isolate yourself. Depression knows that your support system is its greatest enemy, so it tries to get you as far away from them as it can. I know because that was exactly what happened when I sunk into depression after my divorce.”
Acceptance
Zichermann: I think for most relationships, the rule of thumb is that it takes 1 month for every year of dating to recover after a breakup. I think startup founders can easily multiply this by a factor of 2 or 3, and recognizing the time it will take to accept this loss is critical to your future success.
Shady Ghattas, Global Vice President and Head of Consumer Products Business Unit at SAP:
“While I stopped blaming others, understanding what I could change in my behavior took long months. It would have been much easier to just move on, but I was looking for the lessons that would make my next startup successful. I looked at the patterns of behavior, not just at my last company but also across my entire career. I learned how to dial back the hubris, get other smart people to work with me–rather than just for me, listen better, and act and do what was right–regardless of what others thought I should do.”
Founders must recognize that startup failure is common—far more than people admit. Failure is almost inevitable, especially in a challenging and uncommon pursuit like entrepreneurship. Success and failure are not opposites but complementary forces; failure teaches valuable lessons that inform future success.
Closing a business is painful, especially when a founder’s identity is tied to it. Acceptance allows them to reflect, understand their role, and consider their next steps.
About the Author: Tess Danielson is a journalist and writer focusing on the intersection of technology and society.
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