Shutting down a company is a process. When it seems as if the company isn’t successfully expanding like it should, and you can’t grow the business, you can make a decision to shut down your company.
After several years of living in the extreme and building a company from scratch, you may want to do something different and go for something more stable this time around, and not start a new venture. There may be some disappointment in regard with your decision, but you need to look forward and not backward. To put it simply: it isn’t an easy decision to make, but you need to believe that shutting down shop is the right choice for everybody involved. Moving on should be the right thing to do for both our investors and our employees as a founder.
Off course as a founder you can doubt whether any position in another company can bring the same level of fulfillment and excitement as being an entrepreneur who founded your company from scratch. After you make that decision of shutting down shop however, it may be unclear about how to move forward. After years as an entrepreneur who has built a company and a product/service it’s very difficult to suddenly focus in a specific area of a business from an employee perspective.
It is a real fear, but it really depends on the type of position you decided to assume in combination with the founders and the management you choose to work with. Luckily, if you receive the freedom and support to deal with a variety of meaningful issues when it comes to the company’s growth that requires out-of-the-box thinking, from being involved with acquiring other companies, to fundraising, to planning go-to-market launches or scaling the company, the fulfillment level can be high enough. In such a setting you have to be humble yet creative; and learn to respond rapidly if you want to achieve significant growth from a product that wasn’t around yesterday.
Every once in a while, you may miss the underdog feeling or doing something unbelievable, like creating something out of nothing. People always say that a startup is like a roller coaster ride, the truth is there are more downs than ups in this ride, but these few ups will make you happier than you can put into words.
After many years on that entrepreneurial roller coaster, and post-closing shop you may need something else. You should get your priorities straight and be less concerned about salary, and may chose to vet for a bigger part of the upside you help deliver. You should be proud of your decisions to work for a another company, and hold a significant influential position but not be in the driver’s seat. When you’re steering the boat it’s another type of responsibility altogether. There’s a lot of uncertainty, and also a lot of pressure to ensure that you’re heading in the right direction. On the other hand there are also significant challenges to being an employee, but there is more certainty that you’re following an idea that you wholeheartedly believe in and know what you’re doing to make it succeed.
Want to learn more on how-to-do, drop us an email and we will be happy to share our knowledge and insights with you!
For Hippocampus.io,
Christos Lytras – Managing Partner
