3 ms·

When to give up on your startup

• mindcrime 8y ago
  Most of the items on that list would be better on a list of "when to give up on a product". But a startup isn't (necessarily) a single, specific product. In fact, I'd argue that you very much should not see a startup as being strictly synonymous with any given product, even if you only have one product in development at the moment. To my way of thinking, if the goal is to find "product / market fit" you can accomplish that by iterating on the market, OR the product. It's cliched to talk about "pivots" but you can try products other than the one you started out with. And you can keep trying until you either succeed, or are forced to quit by one of the factors like You have lost the passion for doing the business and it’s time to move on. or maybe You can’t afford to run it anymore and it is starting to ruin your life. Although on that latter one, you can potentially adopt the "keep the burn rate super low, and work a day job" model in which case literally "running out of money" probably won't be a problem. But burning out might be, and that could be a legit reason to walk away.