My own experience presiding over startup failure was excruciating. I had a serious personal breakdown that took a couple years to recover from. There was the burnout, but also a deep sense of guilt, weakness, and personal failure. Articles like this can inadvertently heap on guilt, insinuating that a founder "stopped trying" or "lost heart", as a if a better or stronger soul might have prevailed. But sometimes, closing the doors is the right thing to do.

For other failed founders out there... I found very few resources that could help me navigate the aftermath, so I wrote the book I wish I'd had. It's a passion project, so I give it away for free. It's titled "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal."

Amazon/Audible link: https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Glass-Journey-Through-Failure/...

Free copy: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/arauyfnkwwezbbk0cbvdp/eating-...

Yes, personally I think this idea that our identities are defined by careers, job titles or being a founder is inherently very dangerous. So when it all falls apart, who are you? It is very dangerous. We need to stop evangelising this way of thinking and try to be more holistic about it. Life before startups, tech, etc was not defined like this. Yes people's last names were effectively the work they did, but the whole of your identity was not wrapped up in something that could disappear in an instant. Or something we have effectively infatuated as a real necessity. The reason so many of us fail is because we're building things nobody needs. Maybe that's harsh but I have to ask myself, if I didn't build go-micro.dev, would something else have existed to replace it, yes, wholeheartedly yes. My contribution to software is not that significant. If Google didn't exist, would something else exist, Yes, it would.

We have to look at the world differently. OK there's Elon with his effed up childhood and maniacal need to "save humanity" but when you really get down to it, he falters at the simplest questions about life. This man doesn't know what's real and what's not. Let's be clear, those we follow are just human and often what gets them to where they are, while its hard work, if it wasn't them, it would be someone else and those people would be just potentially in the right place, at the right time, and sacrificing things that maybe we shouldn't sacrifice. Life went on long before tech and it will continue long after tech.