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Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

" Another round, and more time, was possible, but it wouldn't have been right to take more money for something that I no longer believed would work."

While I understand the sentiment, and I don't suspect it was done lightly, the rationale here is superficial. "I no longer believed would work". Well, whether it would work or wouldn't at one point you believed, and now you've got a team of people working for you. Closing primarily on the basis of your beliefs (which, apparently, were faulty before - perhaps they're faulty now too? market might turn around? network connections might kick in in 6-12 months?) comes across as selfish.

I don't think you actually were or are - I've no doubt there was a lot more going on that you didn't summarize in this one blog post, and it came across a bit off-handed. I say this as someone who's had to close down something with a team of people - I don't think anyone ever takes this decision lightly.

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This doesn't make sense as a critique. There is no other way for a person to make a decision to continue to do something than to base it on their belief in its possible success. The frailty of these beliefs as proven by past failures in judgement is irrelevant. Imagine the absurdity of the situation:

VC: So how do you feel about this company going forward once we give you another round of capital?

Owner: I believe we will fail. I am going to take your money and continue anyway.

If the VC did not interpret the owner as being irrational, he would be suspect himself. You are suggesting that it is selfish to give up things you believe are doomed. What other criteria is there for giving something up?

Exactly. I'd have had to lie and mislead investors to get the money. That's fraud and something I wasn't prepared to do.

VC: So how do you feel about this company going forward once we give you another round of capital?

Owner: I believe this is a lot harder than I originally anticipated, and have learned a lot about the industry that invalidates some of the original assumptions. Continuing down the same road isn't a good option, but I'm thinking there are some other opportunities that we've identified which would be more profitable to pursue. Given that you have paid for this education and research, would you be interested in continuing to support us during a change in direction?

Now you are arguing that OP should have pivoted to something new under the assumption that he had an idea of how to so pivot. That's fine, but it is not a defense of the point you originally made and instead agrees with my counterargument.

I was suggesting that there was probably more going on that wasn't divulged in the piece, but the phrasing of "i shut this down because I didn't believe it in" does come across as somewhat selfish. There were/are other people involved - perhaps they were consulted, but the post doesn't mention that they were consulted. Letting the rest of the team go on with someone else at the helm, perhaps with the funders selecting someone new to run things, would have been an option any more. But "I don't believe in this anymore" = shutting down something which some other people may have put their lives in - comes across as selfish.

Again... there's probably more going on that wasn't posted - I was reacting to what was posted, and trying to suggest there may be better ways to phrase what was said.

"I don't believe in this anymore" = shutting down something is exactly the right thing to do

The funding you get from VCs comes from Grandma's pension fund.

You think it's better to burn millions from the pensions of Grandma and her friends to sink into a losing business?

Just to keep a few of us engineers employed for another year before the inevitable failure?

Screw the engineers.

And let them look for better, non-dead-end jobs earlier.

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