"cut your losses, close down the company, and move on" only works if you have no investors, or if you end up on the verge of bankruptcy. While there are invest

"cut your losses, close down the company, and move on" only works if you have no investors, or if you end up on the verge of bankruptcy. While there are investors around, they'll be looking for pieces of the IP portfolio that they can carve off and auction away or for teams of developers that can be sold as a capability to a company that needs help doing what your startup did. As for "what motivates the founder to stick around", the only things I can think of are continuing opportunity to take what you have an make it successful, mercenary compensation, or protecting your ownership through continuing vesting. If none of those apply, and you don't like the direction the investors want to go, you might be parting company with them.