Stop me if you've heard this one before. Brilliant colleges kids sitting in a dorm are inventing and future. Heedless of boundaries, possessed of new technology and thoughtful enthusiasm, they build a new company from scratch. Their early success allows them to raise money and bring an amazing new products to market. They hire their friends, assemble a superstar team, and dare the world to stop them.
Ten years and several startup ago, that was me, building my first company. I particularly remember a moment from back then: the moment I realized my company was going to fail. My co founder and I were at our wit's end. The dot-com bubble had burst, and we had spent all our money. We tried desperately to raise more capital, and we could not. It was like a breakup scene from a Hollywood movie: it was raining my company, and we were arguing in the street. We couldn't even agree on where to walk next, and so we parted in anger, heading in opposite directions. As a metaphor for our company's failure, this image of the two of us, lost in the rain and drifting apart, is perfect.
It remains a painful memory. The company limped along for months afterward, but our situation was hopeless. At the time, it had seemed we were doing everything right: we had a great products, a brilliant team, amazing technology, and the right idea at the right time. And we really were on to something. We were building a way for
It remains a painful memory. The company limped along for months afterward, but our situation was hopeless. At the time, it had seemed we were doing everything right: we had a great products, a brilliant team, amazing technology, and the right idea at the right time. And we really were on to something. We were building a way for
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