It sucks. Rant it out. Cry it out. Do what you need to deal with the grief. Visualize the worst case scenarios. They might not be as bad as it feels, it might j

It sucks. Rant it out. Cry it out. Do what you need to deal with the grief. Visualize the worst case scenarios. They might not be as bad as it feels, it might just be the shock of an identity shift. It is a bit like a marriage... and a divorce. The expectation is to move together as a single unit, not two individuals. Sometimes the partner feels trapped and wants out. You managed to convince the investor it was worth committing to, but you couldn't convince the co-founder. As someone who has been in the co-founder seat multiple times, very often I think we get stuck in bad situations too. Sometimes selling or closing the company is a better idea than raising. We sold a company once, only for the acquirers to realize they didn't want to do it either. It wasn't loss making or difficult, we just felt like we were wasting our lives doing it. As you say, founders don't get to quit.