Startups: When to Quit

Here’s the hard truth, since you’re here, since you’re asking when to quit a startup, the answer is now.

Because you asked.

Truly. That’s the answer.

Most Startups fail and they actually fail not for all the reasons cited but rather merely because the founding team doesn’t have their heart in it any more.  Your IDEAS will fail; your mission, if you’re truly set about it, can’t until you stop.

For example…

Startups all start without any money. Right?

Yet a frequently cited reasons that startups fail is that they ran out of money.

So, no… they ran out of money and the team decide to give up. There is no reason the team can’t go back to the drawing board and rethink how to make their mission work.

Your startup is NOT an idea and it isn’t a product. It’s a business. If your idea proves wrong in accomplishing what you set out to accomplish, or your product doesn’t work, what does that have anything to do with why you set out to accomplish something??

If you started a company just to build your idea, you started for the WRONG reasons. And so I’m speculating, since you asked this question, that the answer is that you should just get out now.

1. You’re clearly doubting keeping at it. You’re considering quitting. Successful founders don’t do that.
2. You’re referring to the idea, as though that has any merit.
3. And you’re referring to quitting and starting another so you can try another idea…

I consider exploring that a definition of insanity, but hey, you be you. Why would start another company just to try an other idea?? Why would throw away all the work you’ve done??

In my work, our work, we have new ideas constantly. Daily. The business isn’t the Idea. We try things, they don’t work, we try something else.

We set out to build a company that enables more capable and effective deployment of capital into media innovation. We only fail if we quit.

You only fail because you’ve considered that you could.

And there is no way I’d quit… I’ve invested time, money, reputation, and more in building our business. An idea therein not working is just another day!

Follow? “Startups” are distinct from “new businesses’” because they’re built upon the tenacity to solve a new problem and create value. HOW you do that is a matter of what works… most of what you try, won’t.

A new business isn’t a startup. If I’m opening a new bank, for example, that model is well-known. We don’t have to test and try to figure it out. It’s known how to open a bank.

So quitting on a bank, frankly, is a little deserving of an eye roll … how’d you not get that right??

But quitting on a startup is giving up … no one knows what’s right: it’s a startup!

What did you set out to accomplish? What was your mission? Why are you quitting that??? Because the one idea that you have isn’t valid to accomplishing that?? My friend, you shouldn’t have started in the first place if you weren’t prepared to put new ideas to work almost constantly. The job of being a founder isn’t making an idea work; it’s executing many ideas as quickly and efficiently as possible so as to accomplish the mission you set out to accomplish.