Inglorious exits
I’m currently in Lisbon for Web Summit and last week I was in London for Noah Conference. Whilst most of my conversations are about my new startup, MindMatch*, I never shy away from talking about my previous startup, Satago, and, what I sometimes refer to as, my “inglorious exit”.
To be clear, Satago, at least as an investment, failed. Whilst the business itself continues strongly under its new owners, it was in the end purchased from administration. No investors made any money. None. Nichts. Nada.
The full story of what led to Satago’s demise is pretty…. gruesome and would give most founders nightmares. What surprises me is how often the people I am talking with thank me for my honesty about what happened.
Turns out that a lot of people who have been through a crappy firesale of their beloved startup will try to dress it up as a successful exit, or at least avoid mentioning it was unsuccessful, so people really appreciate my candid admission of failure. It helps that our downfall story has more twists and turns than your average John Grisham novel leading one prominent London startup guru at Noah to suggest starting Failcon in London so I can get my story out to other Founders.
More than few people have suggested I write a book about my Satago experience, but unfortunately I don’t have time for that because in the best tradition of failed entrepreneurs I have jumped back on the startup horse, and co-founded MindMatch* — a company applying Artificial Intelligence to hiring.
Losing your company that you have worked on for ~5 years is painful. I don’t ever want to go through something like that again, but it’s what can happen with startups. I knew what I was getting myself in for. I would urge any other founder who has been through similar not to be ashamed of their failure. Failing sucks — but your next investors will not look badly on you for having failed, as long as it is clear that you have learned from the experience.
Embrace it, be honest about it, talk about it, learn from it, take some time off to recover (I took 6 months), then get cracking on with the next idea. Good luck!
*edit/ turns out I wasn’t as passionate about AI for HR as I thought I might be(!), and I later decided to amicably leave MindMatch, which is still running today.
