What's your worst uncontrollable failure that you've ever encountered as founder?
Jung Kim
7 replies
Hey hunters 👋
We barely talk about founder's mental health, while employee mental health is such a crucial topic everywhere in the world.
We sometimes encounter some uncontrollable, natural disasters in our life.
For me, I had a retail AI startup that was already past Series B crumble down in few months and leaving me in $2M debt.
Hong Kong had a massive riot and political unrest in 2018, effectively shutting down most major retail outlets which were my customers. We went into survival mode and endured for few month, only to face COVID right after in 2019. It effectively killed us with absolutely no option.
I was struck with facial paralysis from stress and massive debt to repay.
Luckily, I survived. 5 years in consultancy to restore my finances, and now back to startup world again, launching soon here :)
So here is the question to fellow founders: What is your worst uncontrollable failure that you encountered, and how did you recover from it?
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Henry Sanchez@henry_sachez
I was wondering about this question ?
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One of my worst uncontrollable failures was when a key investor pulled out last minute, causing a major cash flow crisis. Despite the setback, it taught me resilience and the importance of having contingency plans.
@lightfield yeah that happens quite a lot of times, and they most of the times doesnt even give us honest feedbacks or explanation in my experience
I am not sure about this
Had to fire the team, and I was left with facial paralysis from stress and massive debt to repay with only half my face moving.
Oh, the rollercoaster of startup life! My worst uncontrollable failure involved a data breach that felt like watching my code break in real-time. But hey, rising from the ashes like a data phoenix taught me resilience and the importance of robust cybersecurity measures. How about you? What's your tale of startup woes and eventual triumphs?