I was one of the few remaining people in a startup that employed close to 200 people at its peak. This was during the dot com bust and we faced customers cance

I was one of the few remaining people in a startup that employed close to 200 people at its peak. This was during the dot com bust and we faced customers cancelling orders and weren't able to raise any money or find any other way to continue. This wasn't a pets.com story (we weren't an Internet company) and we had a pretty good product with a great outlook 6 months earlier. We had a couple of waves of letting people go while trying to re-focus and somehow survive. It wasn't great but the writing was on the wall. Those of us that stayed knew it was a long shot. I (and everyone else) got severance pay and I also had an exciting new job lined up by the time we officially closed through contacts I made while working in this startup. Pretty much everyone who worked there did OK as far as I know (some people from later waves went to places people from earlier waves went to...).