Charles HudsonFounder and Managing Partner, Precursor Ventures

Startups: Know When to Quit

28 May 2025 · 1 min

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Charles Hudson says founders should shut down if the core conditions that made their startup viable disappear, like a policy change killing their market. Returning funds to investors is a responsible choice. You don't have to YOLO pivot just because things got hard.

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The founder is like, well, this business is not nearly as interesting in a world where that policy is unwound. And I'm like, I agree with you. Yeah. And I think the other thing I will say is, sometimes what I've told people is the right answer is you go into these things with a set of beliefs and hypotheses, and if you're wrong, it's okay to just shut it down and return the money. Or just shut it down if there's no money to return. You don't have to do some YOLO pivot. You don't have to try to scrape and find something. It's actually okay to just be like, look, the conditions that needed to be true for this to be a good idea are no longer true. I recognize that. And we're going to go to something El.