Digging deep to find hope when your start-up is falling apart

We were in the heart of the pandemic, and I was describing the state of my start-up to my advisor:

Me: “[Matt], our revenue is down 96% this year, our product usage has dried up, and our VP of engineering is leaving next week. I barely have enough energy to get out of bed………but, I’m still hopeful for the future and our business”. 

Advisor: “Justin, optimism is one of your greatest strengths, but hope is not a plan”. 

Perhaps he thought I was delusional. Some say there is a fine line between hope and delusion. 

Hope is the belief that good things will happen in the future. It leads to resilience, which allows folks to bounce back from difficult and traumatic experiences. Resilience is one of the most essential traits in entrepreneurship. Many businesses fail because the entrepreneurs have given up. 

We’re in a painful time for tech. Right as things stabilized post COVID, we are hit with the worst tech recession we’ve seen in decades. Start-ups are running out of cash and struggling to raise more capital. 200,000+ folks have been laid off in just 12 months. 

How do you find hope when it feels like everything is going to shit? 

Image Created w/ DALL-E

My process of finding hope starts small, by going on a walk. To get out of the house, to look at nature, to hear the birds, to smell the flowers. To snap out of the mind virus that is clouding my senses. 

Then, I sit down, and I open my notepad. I write down all the things that I think could go wrong. It’s important to acknowledge the negative thoughts and convert them into words. This helps to detoxify the brain. 

The most difficult step comes next. I focus on the present, and force myself to write down a list of positives that are happening in my life. When everything is going to shit, it can be difficult to point out positives. But, I force myself to do it. 

I switch my focus to business. I write down a list of positives that are currently happening. I imagine the things that could happen, what we could achieve, assuming the environment gets better. 

I switch to tactics.  I write a list of 3 actionable things our team could do in the next week to make things better. This is the point at which hope starts to become a plan. 

Lastly, I call a teammate, and I share my reflections. We brainstorm, we refine, and we pull together a set of slides. We decide to share these slides with the team during the next all hands. We ask for feedback. 

Before you know it, we have a vision, a strategy, and tactics to get there. 

Through the start-up journey, our team had to often dig deep to find hope, when everything was going to shit. I was blessed to be surrounded by optimistic leaders.  

Following this process of finding hope helped us to make many pivotal decisions. For example: 

We developed a strategy for a dual path strategy for the company: a path to independence, while exploring M&A in parallel

We decided to avoid layoffs, which would extend run-way, but make us less attractive to acquirers.

We hired a new head of engineering, who was critical to shepherding us through the M&A process and getting all of the tech integrated. 

We reached out to thousands of potential new customers, which resulted in product usage

It all starts with digging deep to find hope!