30 Heaven forbid if you must wind it up
This chapter covers
Let’s suppose your company can’t be saved. Either you have tried everything and it is just not working, or the investors have pulled the plug, and you have been ordered to shut down your startup. In this anecdote, we will talk about what you need to do, who can help you, what the process looks like, and how to finalize dissolution, put it behind you, and go on to your next thing. There is no shame in a startup failing. At the very least, you learn a lot—I sure did when it happened to me. The next one you do will be better because of what you learned this time.
30.1 Your startup is running out of runway
As you run out of runway and head toward that cliff, do not let your bank balance fall all the way to zero. Shutting down will cost some money. If you drive the cash down to zero, you have backed your investors into a corner, forcing them to put in enough money to have a clean shutdown. But they will not be happy about that.