On the verge of bankruptcy

One of the more surprising things I’ve learned about successful late stage startups is just how many of them were on the verge of dying at one or multiple points in their journey.

There’s the famous stories about Lyft being 6 weeks away from missing payroll and AirBnb’s founders selling cereal to try to keep the company alive, but I was a bit shocked to see that this was quite often the norm.

I’ve met and worked with a lot of successful companies in the last few years who were months, if not, weeks away from declaring bankruptcy. Some of the most successful $1b+ tech companies that we know of today were in that boat as recently as a few years ago.

It’s one of these things that’s incredibly stressful but inspiring at the same time. No one wants to be that position to be close to a dying business, but at the same time, it’s part of the gig of being a VC-backed startup. If you are in that position, then there’s not much you can do but put your head down and get to work. It can and often does work out.

Unfortunately, I imagine there’s a lot of startups out there that are in that position today. I’m hoping most of them are able to make it out of this down market and are able to continue building.