I never thought I would fail. For 7+ years I think that's what drove me. Then things changed. Life changed. They attribute it to burnout and often that is the case, but you have to also factor in life and motivation changes. If the success doesn't come soon enough, you start looking towards other things, other aspects of life, if I may even say, more rewarding and real parts of life. Startups are a microcosm of what life is about, but we get hung up on the outcomes, our identities become intertwined with the mythology of the founder. It's important to break free of some of these notions and this retelling of the narrative even for failed founders in the way of "it's burnout", "lack of product market fit". Life goes on. We should look at these more as experiences to learn from, phases of life and then many go towards the next thing, and that's OK. To any failed startup founder here, it's okay, move on with life, try again, just keep going.
jadbox 41 minutes ago [-]
I'm closing my startup this month after five long years of toil and daily struggle. There were many times where we were just one step away from financial success that could have 10x the company. It always felt like we were just "so close" to making it. After years went by, the long hours, stress, and constantly uncertainty made me want my old life back. At this point, I'd rather do boring contract work where the success definition is clear.
pedrozieg 43 minutes ago [-]
A lot of this “startups commit suicide, not homicide” framing feels like it pathologizes what is often a rational choice. Most founders don’t “give up” in some moral sense, they just run out of personal runway before the company produces enough evidence that the sacrifice is still worth it. Cash runway is visible on a spreadsheet; emotional runway, health, relationships, and opportunity cost aren’t, but they’re just as real a constraint.
What I’ve seen kill companies is the mismatch between those two curves: the time it takes to get real signal from the market vs the time a small group of humans can tolerate living in permanent crisis mode. In a ZIRP world you could paper over that with cheap capital; in 2025 you can’t. Calling that “suicide” makes it sound like a failure of grit, when it’s often just updating on new information about your life and the macro environment and deciding this particular lottery ticket isn’t worth any more years.
grandiego 9 minutes ago [-]
Of course almost all startups expect a long live, but strategically it may be better (for the founders) to close when the fundamental assumptions are no longer valid, in order to do a future clean restart in a brand new endeavor (usually after a detox period).
lnsru 1 hours ago [-]
I had some savings during the pandemic and I needed to choose between down payment for a house or fund my patient monitoring venture. I had contact with few care home chains and very positive feedback and even agreement for a test run. I was pussy and went for a home. Couple years later no semiconductor parts were available anymore and I was super happy with my cautious decision. I heard of few hardware ventures, which died during part shortage. What an unfortunate time. There was a product, market opportunity, but simply no production material.
The original sensor got discontinued, I have some savings again and would love to try the same with radar approach. Anyone willing to analyze well being of old people from radar data together?
rawbot 56 minutes ago [-]
What do you mean by "radar" data? Literal radar? Or am I missing some more specialized term?
aliher1911 16 minutes ago [-]
Most likely radars as used in microwave presence/movement sensors.
OtherShrezzing 2 hours ago [-]
I think this article is "why startups died pre-2020", rather than "why startups die [now]".
Lots of this article relates to the reasons startups died when cash was freely available - both from VCs and from the markets you were trying to find product in. For example, if you started an online learning company in March 2020, you'd have hit product right away (along with a thousand competitors), and been lathered with cash from every direction. But three years later, all of those startups were struggling, and I don't know of _any_ that survived. That's not a case of the business owners in 1000 discrete companies giving up. That's the entire world economy reverting back to in-person learning, and the disappearance of the ultra-low interest rates for the company to fall back on while it pivots.
In 2025, founders need to be acutely aware of exogenous factors, as they can be business-obliterating events without the social safety net of 0-1% IR.
hnhg 2 hours ago [-]
There is obvious survivorship bias in the analysis throughout this article. You could reframe it as startups that succeed done have these problems - well, duh!
Edit: actually the more i go through it, it sounds like chatgpt prose, especially by the end.
thanksgiving 2 hours ago [-]
I love this comment because if you flip the article like see below, the concept remains the same and yet I am eased into the premise with "obvious facts" I already believe. Plus, inverting like this focuses on what we want to do to survive versus the negativity of what causes failure.
> Startups have a notorious failure rate – some estimates say 9 out of 10 startups eventually fail. Yet, contrary to what many first-time founders expect, startups rarely fail because a giant competitor swoops in or because of some external “homicide.” Instead, most startups die by “suicide,” meaning their demise is self-inflicted by internal issues. As YC founder Paul Graham once noted, “Startups are more likely to die from suicide than homicide.” In my experience building two startups, I’ve seen that the biggest threats usually come from within the company’s own walls, not from the outside world.
Updated by me:
Startups have an incredibly small survival rate. One in ten startups survives. The ones that survive don't survive simply because a giant competitor didn't kill it or because some external affliction didn't cause it to fail. Counterintuitively, the startups that survived didn't actively try to kill themselves by internal issues.(The rest I can copy paste) As YC founder Paul Graham once noted, “Startups are more likely to die from suicide than homicide.” In my experience building two startups, I’ve seen that the biggest threats usually come from within the company’s own walls, not from the outside world.
DannyBee 41 minutes ago [-]
It also provides literally no data to back up the assertions.
Just more bare assertions.
You could easily write the exact opposite article (ie “exactly as people believe, most startups run out of money well before they give up internally” or whatever) and it would sound exactly as true
bhouston 1 hours ago [-]
“Edit: actually the more i go through it, it sounds like chatgpt prose, especially by the end.”
I noticed that too. 100% mostly written by AI.
dalemhurley 31 minutes ago [-]
9 out of 10 startups fail? Where is this statistic from? Every single I see this troupe repeated I wonder why people don’t question it.
DeathArrow 16 minutes ago [-]
To me it doesn't seem the author made a honest effort to understand how start ups function, why they fail or succeed. It's a low quality piece, if it is even wrote by a human.
zwnow 2 hours ago [-]
There's a huge difference in startup cultures too, I noticed the European regions are more focused on organic growth while US startups tend to aim high.
I've been a solo dev in a startup with like 4 people for little over a year now, the business exists since 2 years and we are somewhat even on expenses vs income now.
Growth is pretty slow, but as long as we break even its been pretty good.
xandrius 1 hours ago [-]
The keyword is sustainability. I have seen the same, in the US is winner takes all (or most) while in the EU, you can be present locally on a smaller scale (say within a single country or region), be growing (albeit slowly) and still be able to exist.
Sure, it might not make you a billionaire but you end up still being your own boss, not stress out if investors suddenly change mind on what's cool, etc.
francoispiquard 1 hours ago [-]
IMO as soon as the investment dry this is going to be seen as "smart" and "grounded" but it should have been the only way of doing.
Having VC gamble on start-up all the time is just not sustainable. If a product is not generating $ then maybe it deserves to die
zwnow 33 minutes ago [-]
> If a product is not generating $ then maybe it deserves to die
Somewhat agree. Depends on the product, if its novel and does not do its job well enough to generate a revenue stream it does yea. If it's in a market where some big corp has a monopoly I'd love to be able to see whether the monopoly killed it silently, like Amazon does with many many startups (predatory pricing).
Monopolies are creating unfair competition scenarios for businesses ensuring them to stay alone at the top... Idk what happened to competition but im tired of local shops closing due to people buying everything from a predatory corporation.
bhouston 1 hours ago [-]
This seems to miss diagnose the issue as suicide but really the startup wasn’t having success. If the company isn’t making money, then yes you run out of runway, you get founder conflicts etc. Saying this is suicide is missing the point.
If you are failing giving up is sometimes the right option. Many startups are based on assumptions/predictions that turn out to be wrong. And it is hard to pivot if you’ve spent the money and committed or not worth it if your cap table is wrecked.
BTW this mostly read like it was mostly written by AI. The various bolded text, missing the point, and emdashes.
leoc 59 minutes ago [-]
If I were a startup, I would simply achieve product/market fit instead of failing.
(yes, /s)
mads_quist 6 minutes ago [-]
Haha, yes. I never understood why startups don't achieve PMF
1 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 12:46:10 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
What I’ve seen kill companies is the mismatch between those two curves: the time it takes to get real signal from the market vs the time a small group of humans can tolerate living in permanent crisis mode. In a ZIRP world you could paper over that with cheap capital; in 2025 you can’t. Calling that “suicide” makes it sound like a failure of grit, when it’s often just updating on new information about your life and the macro environment and deciding this particular lottery ticket isn’t worth any more years.
The original sensor got discontinued, I have some savings again and would love to try the same with radar approach. Anyone willing to analyze well being of old people from radar data together?
Lots of this article relates to the reasons startups died when cash was freely available - both from VCs and from the markets you were trying to find product in. For example, if you started an online learning company in March 2020, you'd have hit product right away (along with a thousand competitors), and been lathered with cash from every direction. But three years later, all of those startups were struggling, and I don't know of _any_ that survived. That's not a case of the business owners in 1000 discrete companies giving up. That's the entire world economy reverting back to in-person learning, and the disappearance of the ultra-low interest rates for the company to fall back on while it pivots.
In 2025, founders need to be acutely aware of exogenous factors, as they can be business-obliterating events without the social safety net of 0-1% IR.
> Startups have a notorious failure rate – some estimates say 9 out of 10 startups eventually fail. Yet, contrary to what many first-time founders expect, startups rarely fail because a giant competitor swoops in or because of some external “homicide.” Instead, most startups die by “suicide,” meaning their demise is self-inflicted by internal issues. As YC founder Paul Graham once noted, “Startups are more likely to die from suicide than homicide.” In my experience building two startups, I’ve seen that the biggest threats usually come from within the company’s own walls, not from the outside world.
Updated by me:
Startups have an incredibly small survival rate. One in ten startups survives. The ones that survive don't survive simply because a giant competitor didn't kill it or because some external affliction didn't cause it to fail. Counterintuitively, the startups that survived didn't actively try to kill themselves by internal issues.(The rest I can copy paste) As YC founder Paul Graham once noted, “Startups are more likely to die from suicide than homicide.” In my experience building two startups, I’ve seen that the biggest threats usually come from within the company’s own walls, not from the outside world.
Just more bare assertions.
You could easily write the exact opposite article (ie “exactly as people believe, most startups run out of money well before they give up internally” or whatever) and it would sound exactly as true
I noticed that too. 100% mostly written by AI.
Sure, it might not make you a billionaire but you end up still being your own boss, not stress out if investors suddenly change mind on what's cool, etc.
Having VC gamble on start-up all the time is just not sustainable. If a product is not generating $ then maybe it deserves to die
Somewhat agree. Depends on the product, if its novel and does not do its job well enough to generate a revenue stream it does yea. If it's in a market where some big corp has a monopoly I'd love to be able to see whether the monopoly killed it silently, like Amazon does with many many startups (predatory pricing).
Monopolies are creating unfair competition scenarios for businesses ensuring them to stay alone at the top... Idk what happened to competition but im tired of local shops closing due to people buying everything from a predatory corporation.
If you are failing giving up is sometimes the right option. Many startups are based on assumptions/predictions that turn out to be wrong. And it is hard to pivot if you’ve spent the money and committed or not worth it if your cap table is wrecked.
BTW this mostly read like it was mostly written by AI. The various bolded text, missing the point, and emdashes.
(yes, /s)