Your investors were grown-ups. If you did everything legally, they are "qualified investors" (meaning they have wealth &/or high income); they signed a bunch o

Your investors were grown-ups. If you did everything legally, they are "qualified investors" (meaning they have wealth &/or high income); they signed a bunch of papers that explicitly say they have a good chance of losing all their money; and if they are at all professional, this is part of their business, and in fact believe it or not they are much more likely to invest in your next venture than some random investor you never met. A startup is a venture. If the venture fails, it does not mean you are a personal failure for all of time. It just means that idea, with that execution, did not succeed in the marketplace at that time.