Right out of college, I joined a startup. Within a month, they stopped paying my salary due to “cash flow issues.”
One of the co-founders was based overseas. The founders had only met a few times, and I could sense real tension between them. The distance and lack of alignment only made things worse.
It reminded me of couples on the brink of divorce who believe having a baby will fix everything. Startup founders do the same thing. They try raising money or bringing in a new executive, hoping it will magically solve their dysfunction.
Unfortunately for me, I was that new executive.
When I looked into the accounts, I discovered money was being siphoned away. The remote co-founder was embezzling company funds.
When we confronted him, he locked us out of all accounts.
My boss, Jack (the local founder) turned out to be a victim too. Together, we poured every dollar of new revenue into legal fees.
But the deeper we went, the more it became clear: a lawsuit would drain us completely.
Eventually, someone gave us the best advice we could have received: stop chasing the lawsuit and start building something new.
So that’s exactly what we did.
What began as a disastrous startup experience turned into the foundation for something much bigger. Jack and I went on to build a new company together — and seven years later, we sold it for $780 million. Read the full Vungle story here.
Here are the key takeaways from this article:
What feels like a setback can be the starting point of your biggest success.
