@cindie I’ve been there. Many failed startups. Lost money. Lost life. I’ve also been on the other extreme and helped build 2 unicorns, scaled teams from 5 of us to 1000 people and made every single mistake in the book along the way. Bad engineering decisions. Bad leadership decisions. Bad Hiring Decisions. All mixed in with raising over $400MM across 2 companies.
Here’s my advice: look for your good points. I actually feel like I learned the most from the failed startups that I had. We really had to push hard. We tried out countless things. Success is weird. Sometimes you don’t even know precisely why you’re seeing success. Imposter syndrome becomes a real challenge. Whether failing or succeeding, I learned to start journaling my thoughts. Not complaining. Not running through intellectual puzzles. I started analyzing and encouraging myself. I wasn’t writing for anyone else. In fact, I would open a file in Vim, journal for 5 minutes at a times between meetings to collect my thoughts and then I’d erase the file and leave it blank for the next session. It has evolved over the years. Now, I go for an hour walk each night and talk to myself, to the universe, to the void - like I was talking to my best friend. I’m in the middle of getting my next venture off of the ground. Despite a higher net worth than 99.99999% of people in the world, no debt, nice cars, a nice house and healthy family, I still struggle immensely with impostor syndrome. I still have to talk to myself every night on my walk to not get overwhelmed with all of the moving pieces and doubt.
You are young, you’ve got an incredible amount of learning - anyone who has tried to start a company has immensely more experience than even some very senior leaders in large companies who have never dared stepping out on their own and taking a risk. Creativity is the loftiest of human ambitions and also the most difficult. There is no dishonor in going to get a job and building up saving. Go find a job with a Series A startup who is growing fast. I did after a startup failed and we turned it into a multi-billion dollar company. Because I had already tried starting my own companies, I had a lot of scar tissue. I was able to have a profound impact on the team and ended up leading the entire tech organization as we scaled the company up.
The future is going to be defined by people who have started taking the risk to be creative and step out of the crowd to try to build something. You are part of that crowd. You’ve inevitably already faced challenges that few people can even imagine and you’re still alive!! And, you built a foundation of experience for yourself that gives you a perspective that can be a super power for the future.
Trust me, today feels very long but in another 10 years you’ll look back and feel like it flew by. Go find a fast growing rocket ship and reap the benefits of a good salary and the experience of scaling up a company and build a financial and experiential foundation for your next venture, if that is what you decide to do.