What Shutting Down Your Startup Feels Like - Avni Patel Thompson of Poppy with Kat Manalac | Y Combinator

This was an incredibly difficult stretch. Every time something popped up on my calendar I knew it was someone telling me they were leaving the company. These conversations were crushing. All I could think about was finding a way to fix things. We kicked off some really cool product experimentation but we were a Series C company trying to do seed st... See more

Nobody talks about failure in Silicon Valley, yet 90% of startups fail. Why? 3 yrs ago, @neerajberry and I shut down @Sprig, which raised $60M from @GreylockVC + @socialcapital & grew to $20m revenue. Then, it all fell apart. For an honest story about failure, **Read on**

Our “small giants” approach optimized for mojo over growth. We wanted a small, talent-dense team with a focus on craft, autonomy, and quality of life for all team members. We banished the term “founder” in favor of “partner” and tried to be transparent with all business matters across the team.

We took some capital from investors in order to invest ... See more

In college, the author started his first startup, and it failed. Before launch, he didn't talk to customers, he fought with his cofounders a lot. He didn't know how to build working software or deal with tech debt. He read Eric Ries's Lean Startup after this experience and vowed to use it. Since the insurance CRM was geared toward tracking existing... See more