Success Doesn't Always Come the First Time Around

[View this email in your browser]( • [Forward to a Friend]( Many Startups Shut Down a Few Times Before Succeeding TL;DR: "My startup is about to shut down - is this really the end or do startups actually go through this process more than once? How should I be thinking about a shutdown, especially when I really, really, really don't want to shut this thing down?" Every startup dies a few deaths before it lives forever. But that's not what they tell us in the startup Founder brochure. Instead, we make up this fairy tale that our startup must be a great idea that instantly takes off, leaving customers and investors standing in line to hand us their cash. We keep making great decisions while we struggle to stay on top of our meteoric rise. Our days are jam-packed between photo shoots for magazine covers, headlining major conferences, and giving powerful speeches at company retreats. Sound familiar? No, of course it doesn't. Because that's not how any of this shit goes. The real version of a startup involves failing incessantly, sometimes to the brink of shutting down, until we rise back up and finally make this thing work. People don't tell us that we will likely go in and out of business many times on the road to success, but in fact, that's often the case. Today’s Advice Sponsored by [Fundable]( Go broke. Rinse. Repeat. In my first startup, I went completely bankrupt - twice - before turning the corner. What does that look like? It looks like me calling my landlord to say I can't pay the office lease, laying off all my staff, pretending to clients that we were still viable, and avoiding my friends and family altogether. In a word — not awesome. But each time I revised my plan, ran lean, and then slowly worked back up to a point where I could re-build the business using what I had learned last time, which often amounted to "Don't hire anyone until you're 100% sure you can afford them for the long term!" At the time I thought I was the only person that had ever "gone broke and returned." But I'd come to learn later that many, many startups do this, we just don't realize we're not the only ones. Shut Down = Temporary Pause Unlike a big, established business, startups are far more malleable when it comes to the status of our "operational condition." We often have the ability to chop things down considerably and run "lean" for a period of time while we figure stuff out. COVID forced the entire world to do this in 2020 and we often saw how many different ways Founders were able to deal with this condition. Often we are swinging from funding event to funding event, and as nice as it would be us to top up the bank account long before that next cash infusion comes in — that rarely happens. What's more typical is that we wait too long to raise capital, run out of capital, and then run like mad to make up for that fact. In the interim — we basically shut down. These "shutdowns" are typical, and the amount in some cases to a "temporary pause" until we get our shit together. What keeps the startup moving from one shutdown to another is typically a wildly resilient Founder who just won't give up. I've been through shutdowns that worked well (my first story) and I've been through shutdowns that never made it past shutdown (how much time do you have?) and I can tell you, they feel nearly identical while you're in them. Founders "Manage" Shutdowns As Founders, we need to be in a position to manage our shutdowns. Sometimes we're building plans to scale, and other times we're building plans to make it through a shutdown. This is all part of the job we signed up for. When it comes to managing a shutdown the most important thing is to think through how to rapidly de-scale a business so that it can be around long enough (in some form) to ever get past the shutdown. Founders are like vampires — we can get killed many times before our time is up. Also, many of us are just as pasty. What's important is that we recognize shutdowns as part of the startup lifecycle and not a one-off event that "only happened to us." It's normal, friends — treat the event like yet another insane thing we have to do to make our dreams come true. [View Full Article Here]( If you are raising capital in 2021, keep reading... Yes, we are all appropriately excited for the world to open, but there is a small catch. A few key points. More LLC’s were filed in Q3 of 2020 than the same time period in 2019. The Bay area is supposed to account for 20% fewer deals for the first time and venture debt is on the rise. What does this mean for you? Put simply, less money and more competition. Now more than ever it is paramount that founders “do this right.” Meaning, great pitch decks, thoughtful outreach, and tight narratives. With this in mind, our team at Fundable is created this free [Funding Masterclass]( to assist founders in the capital-raising process. Our team at Fundable has helped founders raise in excess of 650M dollars. Jump in, give it a read, and watch the supporting videos. It is well worth 2 hours of your time. [Get Started!]( In Case You Missed It [How Do I Design My Startup Around My Life?]( There’s very little preventing us from designing our startups around our life goals. It starts with us being very clear about what we want to achieve and then taking clear, small steps toward those outcomes. [7 Habits Of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs]( From ice cream powerhouses to e-commerce pros, here are some traits from great founders that I’ve observed and tried to emulate throughout my 20-year career as an entrepreneur. [How Much Should I Be Working? (podcast)]( While there's truth to the assumption that more hours equal more growth, we'll explore how it benefits to think quality and not quantity when it comes to your weekly punch card. Love this topic? Hate it? Let's chat on social media! Wil Schroter Founder & CEO @ Startups.com [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( Copyright © 2021 Startups.com, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you joined Startups.com. Our mailing address is: Startups.com 1201 Dublin RoadColumbus, OH 43215 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.