Dalton Caldwell says many successful startups survived because founders kept going when logic said quit. Airbnb almost died. Before shutting down, ask yourself: do you still enjoy the work, trust your cofounder, love your customers? If those are gone and the startup is making you miserable, closing with integrity won't hurt your reputation.
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If you look at all the startup stories that we have at YC and all the companies we funded over all the years, the underlying theme is that rationally the founders should have given up at some point. And so again, let's talk about Airbnb. You know, when they probably should have shut down like three or four times before they got into yc, it objectively wasn't working. They were basically ruining their lives, they were disappointing their parents, everything was wrong. It was a purely irrational act for the founders of Airbnb to keep working on their goofy startup. And again, that's just one story. If you look across the portfolio of YC and non YC companies, there has to be this irrational intention to keep going even when the world tells you it's not working and you feel completely defeated and you likely have to go through this many times and have these near death experiences and then you get lucky and then you look like an overnight success. That is the theme, that is a summary. And I provide, you know, lots of data and lots of stories there. But this is one of those things that the longer I had this job, the more I really, really believe this is true.
What's your advice? Kind of on the flip side of that, where there's a lot of startups, especially these days, that are just super struggling, have been added for a while. They'd be very sad if they had to shut this thing down. But often it's probably the right move.
I think this is a nuanced question and it's hard for me to say something on a podcast that'll actually be useful to people, but here, here's, here's a couple of thoughts. One, Are you still having fun? Do you still enjoy doing what you're doing? Do you enjoy spending time with your co founders? You know, like, is this actually a fun thing you're doing? And if the answer is yes, I would tend to lean on the keep going. And then if it's more of, wow, this is actually profoundly affecting me, a negative way in my relationships with people in my life and I don't really want to work with my co founder anymore and things like that, then I would lean on the probably don't do it anymore. Something that a lot of the folks that turn it around have in common is they actually do love their customers and, and they love their product. And again, if you, in the Airbnb story, they really liked Airbnb, like, and they liked working with each other and they liked the first host that they met and they knew all their names. They loved their startup even though it was going bad. And so that's kind of, to me, a signal to keep going, is that you really, really love what you're doing and the people you're. You're doing it with, and you love your customers and you love the problem versus when you're just like, yeah, I could care less about any of those things. I'm just having a bad time. Harder to be encouraging in that situation. You know, if it's really going poorly or if you're having a really bad time, it's no big deal. No one will remember that you. That you shut down your company probably in 10 years or 20 years. As long as you have integrity, as long as you're an honest person, as long as you handle yourself well through good times and bad, people will remember you fondly. We have such a short life. There's only so many years we get to have our careers doing something that makes you miserable. And the only reason you're doing it is to avoid losing face. And you know, when you're hard, it's.
Not going to work. I don't know.
That seems like a pretty big opportunity cost on. On literally your life.
That's exactly what I tell founders all the time. Life is short. There's no need to force yourself to work on this. Yeah, and I really like your point of just like, is it still enjoyable? Do you like working with your founders?
