<story><title>The Truth about a Failing Startup</title><url>http://pastebin.com/BgxFCTEC</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Maro</author><text>Hey, fellow failed entrepreneur here.
My startup failed about 6-9 months ago. It was a very difficult time, our business partners went back on their promises and with that 3+ years of my life went down the drain. It was a terrible couple of months, lots of lost sleep, high blood pressure, I&apos;m still dealing with it.&lt;p&gt;I was unemployed for a couple of months, then finally took a job at a great company, where I feel great. Things were finally picking up. I thought I was fortunate because I had my wife who supported me through it all.&lt;p&gt;Then a month ago my wife, who I thought would be my partner for life left me.
Bam.
You think a failing company is bad, try this. I just got thrown back to being 25 and looking for a date, sth I thought I left behind me forever. It was I hope the final price I payed for concentrating too much on my startup the preceeding years.&lt;p&gt;Lessons learned? Too many, but I&apos;ll just say this. The buddhists are right, the only constant in life is change. Shit will happen to you, whether you&apos;re rich or poor. Companies will go under. You may lose money. You will be fired from jobs. Your partner may not turn out to be who you thought she is. Somebody close to you could get sick. Your parents will die. It&apos;s just life. You have to accept these things will happen and do your best to prepare for them.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s though, some people are much better at it than others, but it&apos;s normal if you can&apos;t get over these things in a day or week. Medicine might help (eg. sleep, anxiety), but go easy with that stuff.&lt;p&gt;Don&apos;t lie to your parents. They&apos;re your safe harbour, they will understand and help you. Tell them what&apos;s going on. I&apos;m 32 and although it doesn&apos;t feel very manly, talking to my parents about my current situation is what&apos;s keeping me sane.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pseut</author><text>&amp;#62; &lt;i&gt;Don&apos;t lie to your parents. They&apos;re your safe harbour, they will understand and help you. Tell them what&apos;s going on.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I understand what you mean by this, but just wanted to comment that this is not unambiguously good advice.  Some parents have their own issues (severe anxiety, substance abuse, poor interpersonal skills, etc) and can&apos;t act as a safe harbor; lie to those parents if you&apos;ve got to!  Leave them in the dark!  Find someone else to talk to about your problems.&lt;p&gt;I am glad that you have supportive and stable parents, though, but some people don&apos;t.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Truth about a Failing Startup</title><url>http://pastebin.com/BgxFCTEC</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Maro</author><text>Hey, fellow failed entrepreneur here.
My startup failed about 6-9 months ago. It was a very difficult time, our business partners went back on their promises and with that 3+ years of my life went down the drain. It was a terrible couple of months, lots of lost sleep, high blood pressure, I&apos;m still dealing with it.&lt;p&gt;I was unemployed for a couple of months, then finally took a job at a great company, where I feel great. Things were finally picking up. I thought I was fortunate because I had my wife who supported me through it all.&lt;p&gt;Then a month ago my wife, who I thought would be my partner for life left me.
Bam.
You think a failing company is bad, try this. I just got thrown back to being 25 and looking for a date, sth I thought I left behind me forever. It was I hope the final price I payed for concentrating too much on my startup the preceeding years.&lt;p&gt;Lessons learned? Too many, but I&apos;ll just say this. The buddhists are right, the only constant in life is change. Shit will happen to you, whether you&apos;re rich or poor. Companies will go under. You may lose money. You will be fired from jobs. Your partner may not turn out to be who you thought she is. Somebody close to you could get sick. Your parents will die. It&apos;s just life. You have to accept these things will happen and do your best to prepare for them.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s though, some people are much better at it than others, but it&apos;s normal if you can&apos;t get over these things in a day or week. Medicine might help (eg. sleep, anxiety), but go easy with that stuff.&lt;p&gt;Don&apos;t lie to your parents. They&apos;re your safe harbour, they will understand and help you. Tell them what&apos;s going on. I&apos;m 32 and although it doesn&apos;t feel very manly, talking to my parents about my current situation is what&apos;s keeping me sane.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ovi256</author><text>Thanks for your story, I appreciate you sharing it.&lt;p&gt;I agree with you about the only constant in life being change. I think it&apos;s even older than buddhism, I seem to recall it was Heraclitus who put it as &quot;change is the only permanence&quot;.&lt;p&gt;As for the OP, I hope he stops taking losing investor money so personally. The investors knew well they bought a lottery ticket. Had OP succeeded, the investors would, of course, have gladly taken their part of that upside. Now, he didn&apos;t, and they lost their ticket money. And that&apos;s all it was: ticket money, their fee for getting to play the game. I sympathize with what he&apos;s going through, and hope he&apos;ll get through.</text></comment>