You Can Quit But You Can’t Give Up
A few months back a founder came to me with a question that had been weighing heavy on his mind- should he quit?
Months prior to stepping into my office he had kicked off a new startup. One he was intensely passionate about. He’d quit his job and taken on a part time gig so he could funnel his energy into it full-time.
After months of scraping and sacrifice the service launched!
Then, nothing.
No Techcrunch story. No huge wave of sign ups. No acquisition offers.
The service was seeing a trickle of new users but not enough to learn much from. He worked intensely to promote the service via social media but it wasn’t taking.
By the time he made it to my office he was broke, working a dead end job and questioning whether he should walk away from the service he, at one time, so firmly believed would succeed. Or should he, as startup lore holds, forge on in faith that one day his vision would ultimately triumph.
Quitting, at least in startup culture, is often perceived as worse than failure. To quit is to be so short sighted as to not see that salvation is just one pivot away.
As a startup community we often draw on metaphors of war and great military commanders to inspire those fighting commercial battles against competitors. Quitting, in this vernacular, is tantamount to death. As PG says:
I now have enough experience with startups to be able to say what the most important quality is in a startup founder, and it’s not what you might think. The most important quality in a startup founder is determination. Not intelligence– determination.You can’t fake this. The only way to convince everyone that you’re ready to fight to the death is actually to be ready to.
Or, put another way by Ben:
There comes a time in every company’s life where it must fight for its life. If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself: “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?”
Heavy imagery for any founder wrestling with such a very personal decision.
Should you stand strong like the fearless leader or retreat like a quivering coward?
WIth that as the backdrop let’s carry this metaphor of battle and war forward in the context of the conversation with my new friend. And let’s do so wrapped in a quote many trace back to Sun Tzu and his Art of War which posits that you can “lose the battle but win the war”.
My new friend was losing the battle with his startup, but that didn’t mean he had to lose the war of ultimately making his own unique dent in the universe.
Since our initial conversation, I’ve been trying to develop a series of conditional statements that can help future founders explore and answer this question for themselves. A few follow (I’d love any feedback or additions you might have):
If you value a relationship more than your company, then you should quit. Startups are hard. They will test and strain every relationship you have inside your company and out. Many significant others simply aren’t cut out for the startup stress-test. Sometimes these relationships weather the startup storm. Other times, ultimatums are made. Sometimes these are great sifters for poor relationships, other times they’re just the right kind of wakeup call. If you value your relationship more than your company, you should find a situation that allows you continue to develop as an entrepreneur without losing that special someone.
If you’re inflicting financial hardship on your family, then you should quit. I’ve seen founders make herculean sacrifices to keep their companies afloat during hard times. Foregoing salaries, taking quick consulting contracts or other part time jobs are just a few ways they’ve done it. But there’s a point at which running lean eventually hits bone. Debts mount, savings deplete and family members begin to feel the impact of startup sacrifices in very real ways. If something isn’t working and your family is suffering then you should quit and find a way to provide for them which keeps you on your entrepreneurial path.
If you can’t win (and that’s important to you), then you should quit. People start businesses for lots of different reasons. Some want to change the world, some want to get rich and some just want to cover their bills without having a boss. If you’re in the former camp and losing, then you should revisit Ben’s quote above with honest self reflection. If you aren’t now and can’t win in the future, perhaps you’re better off quitting and finding another market, company or product you can win at.
If you’d rather do something else, then you should quit. The very essence of startup life is believing so deeply in what you’re building that you’re willing to make other-wordly sacrifices to see it become a reality. It’s that level of passion and commitment that fuels founders and employees. If your tank is running low of this particular variety of fuel, any actions you take will simply be going through the motions. And you’ll lose. You’d be better off quitting and finding something that fill your tank full again.
With the cost of spinning a up a company approaching zero and with Bieber and Britney battling it out for angel investments, more and more companies will be started by wide-eyed founders hoping to change the world.
Then reality will set in.
It’s very hard to build a company of consequence and there are many reasons founders don’t. If you’re fighting a battle you know you can’t win, it’s far braver to retreat, regroup and focus on winning the war than to be another dead body on the battlefield.
In Good to Great, Jim Collins introduces something he calls the Stockdale Paradox which states:
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
Put another way, you can quit but you can never give up.
