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I'm a fellow founder who’s been through the wild ride of building a startup. I’ve also had to navigate the weird, confusing next part — the part no one warns you about. The part where you have no idea what you're going to do next.
After my first startup, I had no roadmap. No title, no team, no endless Slack pings — just me, a bunch of open tabs, and a serious identity crisis. I wrote my first book, This Better Work, to process all of it. And the more I shared, the more I realized other founders felt the same way.
Now I’m writing a new book:
Post-Founder Purgatory: What Do You Do When Your Startup No Longer Exists?
It’s a collection of real, honest stories about what happens after — after the shutdown, the acquisition, the burnout, the quiet fade-out. But it’s not just a book about endings. It’s a guide to what comes next.
I’m structuring the book around the different paths founders take once their startup chapter ends. For each path, I’m gathering advice from founders like you who’ve lived it — how you made your decision, what the transition looked like, what worked (and what didn’t).
If you’re down to share, I’d love to include your experience. You never know — your story might be exactly what another founder needs to hear to figure out their next move.
Post-Founder Purgatory
What do you do when your startup no longer exists?
This isn’t a book about running a startup. It’s about what comes after: the emotional whiplash, the identity crisis, and the nonlinear path to whatever’s next. Because when the startup ends, the story doesn’t. You just have to find your way.
You don’t have a company. You don’t have a team. You don’t even have Slack! Just a blank calendar and a full-blown identity crisis. This is the in-between — post-founder purgatory — where you’re no longer a founder, and you have no idea who you’re going to be next.
It's time to reconnect with the version of you that isn’t pitching, hiring, or obsessing over dashboards. Before you pick your next path, you need to get reacquainted with the person choosing it.
Contracting, consulting, advising. It’s a way to stay close to the work, keep your autonomy, and build a fulfilling career — without building a full-blown startup from scratch.
You’ve still got the fire, just not the desire to start from scratch. Or be in charge. Bring your superpowers to someone else’s mission — and find success in a supporting role.
Some of us are just wired for it. Can’t stop, won’t stop. But this time, starting again isn’t about proving anything — it’s about momentum, curiosity, and the thrill of building.
Teach, research, and share what you’ve learned with the next wave of entrepreneurs by heading into academia. It’s a slower pace, with fewer fires to put out — and a deeper sense that your hard-won lessons are helping someone else get started.
Trade chaos for stability — and a sweet 401(k) — by moving into the corporate world. Turns out logging off at 5, having health insurance, and not being the final decision-maker isn't the worst thing in the world. As long as you can handle a slower pace.
Support the next generation by stepping into an ecosystem role. Shape an accelerator. Strengthen a community. Create policy. You're not scaling a company. You're scaling what’s possible.
Be the investor you always wish you had. Angel, scout, VC — you're not pitching anymore, you're vetting ideas, sizing up teams, and writing the checks. Same instincts, a different seat at the table.
Move into a mission-driven role with a nonprofit or NGO. Trade scale for service, and chase impact over exits. Maybe it's time to focus on a cause that actually matters to you — and make a difference in a completely different way.
You know you can walk away from tech entirely, right? Paint murals, write a book, restore old houses, build trails. This is reinvention without a roadmap, creativity without a pitch deck, and fulfillment that has nothing to do with scale.
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