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Ask HN: What are signs of a startup failing?
For those of you that work at start-ups. What are some signs you look for that signal you to jump ship? Thanks.
- taprun 9y ago* Free food disappears * Hiring suddenly stops
- muzani 9y agoFounders no longer work on it full time. This is an extremely strong indicator and I've never seen a startup recover from this. Employees get tasked to things other than the core business of the startup. Usually consulting or some other side business. Startups rarely ever die loudly. They just seem to crawl off away from everything else and try to die as quietly as possible.
- waisp 9y agoWhat if the core business changes direction - and the there is a change up of the board....
- meric 9y agoIf they think they can afford a change like this then I think that's a wound, not a kill.
- muzani 9y agoIt's okay if they change core business. The problem is when employees do what they didn't sign up for, or when they focus on things that are not the core business (e.g. consulting or some other company held by the same owner).
- segmondy 9y agoThere's a thousand signs, you will always see some. It's not one thing in particular, it's a combination of things. It's the ability to recognize that more and more of those things are happening instead of less and less.
- badc0d3 9y agoMore closed doors meetings or offsite meetings
- kylegalbraith 9y agoThings I have seen that are usually indicators (although not always as it can vary from company to company). * Hiring comes to a halt. * Senior members begin quitting. * Transparency becomes infrequent. * Teams are being dismantled.
- waisp 9y agoThanks, what if hiring changes direction..... hiring more finance/ business developers over engineers.
- ccdev 9y agoI should have started looking for jobs when my hours were cut from full time to part time at a startup I was at. I guess I was expecting a rebound to happen. A few months later, I messaged the founder asking if he had an ETA for when the work hours would go back to normal. I got laid off after that.
- soulchild37 9y agoSenior/core staff leaving
- codegladiator 9y agoNo sale in over a month
- wpmoradi 9y agoWhat if you dont have a product out yet.
- codegladiator 9y agoWhat is a startup without a product and sales ? Or do you mean someone internally can use the product but it is still not out for more then a month ? Yes, a sign of failure.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoThere are many startups which make products that take more than a month to make.
- waibelp 9y agoI dont know who posted it originally (here on HN) but there are a lot of signs which may be true for startups as well as for non-startups: http://wiki.c2.com/?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom http://wiki.c2.com/?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom
- waibelp 9y agoNot a joke: Kicker score gets changed from 10 to 3 points over night
- pryelluw 9y agoRadio silence. As in the founders/management avoiding communication. Huge red flag.
- abra_kadabra 9y agoIt might be subtle and is similar to what others have said, but if you find the founders running out of steam, losing passion, for the startup, that can be a sign.