No founder plans for the day when they shall be fired from their company.
You plan funding rounds, product launches and product recalls, but not for the moment in the boardroom when everyone raises their hand and you realize your organization journey is over.
This happened to me. I called this board meeting. I arrange a vote. We had to decide on who would stay, me or my co-founder. The vote didn’t go my way.
In movies, this is where the music plays and the end credits appear. Steve Jobs After John Sculley. Travis Kalanick After Bill Gurley. There is no cinematic pause in real life. No final scene. Just the quiet knowledge that every thing you have built now belongs to another person.
What follows is no drama either. It’s disorienting. And like most founders, I had no idea how you can deal with it.
Don’t fill the silence too quickly
When that ended, I filled my calendar with pointless meetings. Five, six a day. Not because they’d any real purpose, but because it felt weird to not be doing business. For over 10 years, I have not had a day where I didn’t have to think about work. Startup teaches you how you can make things better quickly.
But when you are gone, there’s nothing left to repair. Only yourself. External displacement does not equate to failure to realize the quarterly goal. It’s like losing a story you’ve got been telling yourself for years.
The hardest thing is not knowing who guilty.
Investors? They did their job. Myself? Every decision made sense in context. So the frustration falls on the person closest to you. Your co-founder. It’s not about logic. I would say it’s more of a defense mechanism. This is the mind’s way of attempting to make sense of the loss.
Learn to see the pattern
For months I asked myself: What did we do incorrect? It took me several years to see the pattern.
Later, working at a enterprise fund helped me see the truth. I’ve seen the same story repeated over and all over again. The founders repeat the same emotional arc as follows:
- Waiting for a merger and acquisition transaction;
- Wait a very long time for the transaction;
- The deal collapses;
- The startup stops;
- Expectations vary; and then
- Resentment between co-founders
The same sequence every time. And when the dream fades, guilt fills the gap.
The pattern itself is that anger towards the co-founder is often a projection of the disappointment caused by the failed deal. If this energy is not consciously processed, it finds its own way out, often in the type of anger. You really cannot be mad at yourself; you probably did every thing right. The other side acted in its own interest. So it’s all about the person next to you, your co-founder and your team, and for them it’s you.
And here I have some grudge against investors, because they often see the upcoming dynamics and could at least warn the founders about it.
Once I recognized the pattern, I stopped seeing my story as a failure. This was a part of a cycle that just about every founder goes through, but most don’t talk about it.
Emotional tools trading strategy
Traditional business tools didn’t help. OKRs, planning sessions, off-site strategy, none of it helped with the internal breakdown that happens when your identity and your organization turn out to be separated.
This prompted me to start out learning Gestalt therapy. It gave me the language to grasp how such situations actually work, their cycles, causes and effects, and how you can think about them with proper awareness and perspective. One a part of building startups is not about sales or fundraising. It’s realizing how attached you are to the story you tell the world.
The idea is to first turn out to be aware of your anger and then release it.
Acceptance comes in stages
Acceptance does not come immediately. It comes in pieces.
For me, the first piece got here when I saw one other founder go through the same breakdown and recognized each stage.
The second got here when my first startup was acquired. Not at the valuation I dreamed of, but enough to just accept the incontrovertible fact that it could go on without me. The third one got here with my current company, Incheswhich is built from peace, not fear.
I not measure success by control, but by transparency.
What I would tell the founder in this room
This is what I would share now with one other entrepreneur who finds themselves in the same situation.
- You lose history, not your value. Give yourself space to mourn.
- Don’t let anger select a goal. Instead, name the pattern.
- Find mirrors. Other founders go through the same steps.
- Business tools have limitations. Emotional tools matter here.
- Acceptance comes in stages. You’ll recognize them when they arrive.
Founders are trained to administer every thing except their own psychology. But startups are much greater than capital and code. They are based on the emotional architecture of the individuals who build them. And when that structure falls apart, rebuilding it’s going to be the most significant startup you’ll ever work on.