Anonymous Startup Founder Blogs About His Company’s Downfall

Image via Flickr/ watz

An anonymous startup founder recently turned to Tumblr to dish out on the details of his unraveling company.

The blog, “My Startup Has 30 Days to Live,” features a header description that simply states: “Through a series of unfortunate events, I took a bootstrap (and profitable) startup onto the VC rocket ship. Now it’s crashing into the ground. Hard.”

The unidentified founder quit his day job nearly two years ago to chase the dreams of his own venture and initially achieved some mild success. He was accepted into a well-known accelerator, had some exposure with TechCrunch, hired some employees, and maintained a solid user-base that he hoped could grow into something bigger (and more profitable).

According to the blogger, although accelerators are meant to help the company prosper, he was not met with that expected fate.

“Over the next 3 months, our initial desire to not raise a seed round was dismissed and we were thoroughly convinced that we had to continue on the VC rocket-ship in order to matter to anyone,” says the blogger. “My reluctance to do this was met by scoffs and dismissals from many others in the accelerator cohort (most of which have since gone on to fail hard) as well as by the mentors and investors who had offered their time, network and resources to help us succeed.”

According to him, “listening to investors” was one of the many mistakes he made since he walked through the doors of the accelerator.

As time progressed and he did all the things startup founders were supposed to do (pitches, breakfast run-arounds, mentoring sessions with VCs, building product after product), he found himself less motivated with the company he built from the ground up.

“I didn’t believe the shit I was selling investors,” he wrote. “This was not the company I put my life on the line to build.”

As his startup continues to unfold and he prepares to fire his first employee to keep it afloat as long as possible, the founder remains optimistic about the future amidst a not-so-optimistic blog title.

“We’ve made some personal sacrifices to get our startup off the ground,” he wrote. “Yesterday, we made some even bigger ones to postpone the layoffs for a little longer. Our prognosis doesn’t change, but the team stays together just a little longer, hopefully long enough for us to make things right.”