Jason M. Lemkin warns founders not to quit after early wins. He cites a founder who abandoned a $20 million raise and a CEO who left a $250 million company with no successor. Your best startup is usually the one you're already running, especially with paying customers and recurring revenue.
Chapters
I'll just tell you one in the weird time we're at. Um, this is probably your best startup. Just talking yesterday with a friend of mine, startup just raised $20 million from a top 2 or 3 VC, founder just quit the next day. Just on the call the other day, yesterday, CEO of a company at $250 million, just, just, just, just quit. Uh, no successor, no anyone to join a, a hot AI startup. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Most of the time, there are, there are times and places to just quit when you have customers, when you have a million or 2 million or 5 or 10 million in revenue. But we, we often think it's easier to get back, to get back to that 10 million in revenue, to get back to 100 happy customers or 200 happy. It might seem easier to quit in the age of AI, but I'd rather take those 500 happy customers, build that badass AI product and sell it to 500 happy customers and go have to find them from scratch. Go off to find that $10 or $20 million. So that's, I, I literally had a third conversation with the founder just crossing $100 million that wanted to leave and do a robotic startup after 10 years. I'm like, I get it, man. But like, this is, you know, you have 9 figures of equity in this company. Maybe go to the next level. So there's so much going on. They're decelerating, accelerating. I just usually think the best startup as found for founders, not, not necessarily for everybody else. Is the one you're already working at. And if you're not happy, turn that into your hot AI startup. It's not— here's the thing, it's not too late, Lenny. Sometimes it feels like it's too late on social media. Maybe it's too late to build the next ChatGPT on the cheap. Okay. But for most stuff, it's, it's, it's not too late. It's so, it's still so early. We don't even have great AI marketing tools. We're really early on these AI SDRs. The markets have not hardened. Um, the LLMs are getting so much better. It is Dude, if you want it, it's not too late. So the best startup you're ever gonna have probably is the one you're working at today. Don't quit. Don't quit if you have happy customers. Maybe that's how it is. Don't quit if you have happy customers. They'll buy more from you.
