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Framework of quitting from a YC Founder, ex-MBB advisor, and Softbank Investor


“For those who can simply keep away from dying, you get wealthy. That appears like a joke, but it surely’s truly a fairly good description of what occurs in a typical startup.”
That quote from Paul Graham’s essay How To not Die caught with me throughout my struggles as a Third-year founder backed by Y-Combinator.
For a median small enterprise within the US, you beat 25% of opponents by surviving yr one on common. By yr 4, you’ve crushed half.
For funded startups, the numbers look even higher.
You beat out ~90% of your opponents should you’ve survived lengthy sufficient for a Collection-C. Directionally, in case your probabilities of turning into a unicorn had been 1% once you began, you 10x that likelihood by surviving lengthy sufficient to get a Collection-C.
Now, proposing “simply don’t die” as an answer to “I’m dying” in an trade the place 95% of startups fail sounds foolish. However on a deeper look, it holds advantage once you study why most early-stage startups die.
In keeping with surveys by CB Insights, founders listing operating out of cash and competitors as the highest causes. Whenever you communicate to founders, that’s not often the case. Paul appears to agree with me on this one:
When startups die, the official reason for dying is all the time both operating out of cash or a vital founder bailing. Usually the 2 happen concurrently.
However I feel the underlying trigger is that they’ve turn out to be demoralized.
Personally residing the expertise seeking PMF and talking with friends, I’ve noticed that the breakdown and demoralization of founders is the main reason for dying for many early-stage, pre-product-market match corporations.
To borrow language from Ben Horowitz in his e book Laborious Issues about Laborious Issues, each founder goes via “The Wrestle”.
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