Greg Isenberg is a multi-exit Silicon Valley entrepreneur and owner of Late Checkout product studio. He has:
- Headed Product Strategy at WeWork
- Been an advisor to Reddit
- Founded a startup, Islands, which was sold to WeWork
- Founded 5by, which was sold to StumbleUpon
Guest Author: Greg Isenberg
There’s a bunch of people who should shut down their startups (or sell them) but don’t.
A friend of mine is working on a startup. It’s been 12 years.
The business does $2.3M ARR. He has raised $3.5m in VC funding.
How do I tell him he should quit?
He started the business with a full head of hair. The guy doesn’t have 1 hair left on his head. And I know he’s pretty stressed running this “zombie company“.
The business is growing enough to make him feel like he’s on the right track and not enough for him to raise follow-on financing.
I get his investor updates and no-one responds. I bet most VCs wrote off the investment long ago.
He goes: “If I only get to $5M ARR, I can raise that big round and take a big swing”.
Yeah, maybe.
But sometimes the hard way isn’t the right way. Not everyone needs to be Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk.
You can still create value in this world by creating businesses that are profitable, provide dividends to your team and yourself.
Cheaper and more profitable ever to do it right now. You don’t necessarily need VC. We don’t talk enough about zombie companies.
There’re everywhere. And sometimes starting fresh is freedom.
It’s a new world out there.
Check out the original tweet here.
