My last startup failed to raise money and went out of business.
I told that story on stage in New York at the FIF Collective Summit. What I didn’t unpack there was the hardest part of that moment. It wasn’t the financial reset. It was admitting I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to start over from zero with another founder’s vision.
I’d spent four years pouring myself into something that didn’t make it. The thought of doing that again, that soon, was something I knew I couldn’t fake.
Saying “not that” out loud
That admission to myself was the most useful thing I did. Saying “not that” made room for what came next. And what came next wasn’t a job. It was a practice. Mine.
The lesson that stuck
A year and a half into Prism Edge, the lesson holds: the choices you make from honesty about what you actually have to give are the ones that last.
It’s also part of why I do this work. I know what it’s like to be inside a company when the money runs out. I’d rather help founders see it coming.
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